My name is Ryan Halpin. I am building an off-grid sustainable home. It's called
the bachelor ship and I plan to do it for under six thousand dollars.
Originally I found this many years ago when I was working at my dad's tire shop
back in Wisconsin when green buzzwords were all out. Solar,
sustainability, self-sustaining. I was searching that and Earthship kept popping up. I was like
holy cow this is everything I've been looking for, I just finally found it.
Years later I went to a seminar in Denver that Mike Reynolds put on. Ended
up helping with the slide show. He bought me dinner, margaritas, gave me a book
and a t-shirt and I was hooked. I was like, "all right, I'm coming to Taos and will be hard
to get rid of". Three years later here in Taos New Mexico
I have purchased land and start building my own place. I moved out here mid June
of this last summer. Started tire work, as far as laying it out, and pounding the
tires for the dirt. I was two weeks away from getting the roof on this October
and I had a backhoe driver incident. I'll just leave it at that.
So at any rate we took 60 tires down and now I have to repack 60 to 70 tires and
get to the point where I could put the roof on. It should have been by
Thanksgiving, but I hope to be in by early June as far as enclosed, basically
camping with a roof.
This is going to be the inside of my Earthship inspired Bachelor Ship. We got
the tires that are packed full of dirt, packed to a point where they're about
90% compacted so they're pretty stiff. Each one weighs about 300 pounds when
you get done pounding them so with that amount of weight coming down on them
it's important to have them staggered so they lock into each other and give you
that structural integrity and support that the walls should give you. I got the
tires somewhere in town here. There's two tire shops that were more than happy
to let me take them. I worked it out with them like, "Hey guys I will stack up, I
will make this a prettier pile than it was I got here" and sure enough it was
and every time I came they, they were pretty happy to see me. Once we get the
tires packed out we then get into it with an adobe mixture. This is just to
save money. A lot of places you'd use concrete, but I don't feel like concrete is
necessary out here. I have all this adobe dirt at my disposal so haul out a pile of
sand, get some straw, cut that up, water, adobe, and just start throwing fast balls
into the tire work. Once you do that you can also put rocks in and that way
you're not using near as much adobe mix. Then I'll keep going with that adobe
work until it's flush with the tires and then at that point I can start
plastering it over. That's going to cover up the tires alleviate any concern of
off-gassing from the tires. So here we have the cooling tube which is a 10-inch
culvert pipe, 20 feet long. What that pipe is going to do is bring in cool air in
the summertime so I'll have the front face, which faces south, that's going to have a
door and a bunch of windows. Above that door is going to be operable window that
the heat is going to go up and out that window and it's going to draw a cool air
in from the cooling tube here. Basically convection and science are going to work
as my air conditioner. I'm not going to have a mechanical forced air system. I'm
just going to let science do science and cool my space down and then have a
lofted bed above the cooling tube and my closet underneath the bed and then I'll
open up all this space in front of it for table and chairs, sofa, a small
kitchen area. I'll be using either a rocket stove if I can figure out how to
do that in here or the isopropyl alcohol stoves. You know a jug of water hanging
gravity-fed so I don't have to have pumps for that.
You know, really simple systems to get me through, get me enclosed basically
camping with the roof until I upgrade my systems. I have the living space here
which is 16 feet deep 13 feet wide. Not much space in there for growing so
that's why from this wall I'll go about 10 to 12 feet wide and that's where I'm
going to put my Aquaponics system. Grow all my food whether it's in the gray
water planter cell, which is water that will be coming from the sink into the
gray water to feed and water the plants and then someday move that to my toilet
to flush the toilet using gray water multiple times before I finally expel it
to the outdoor landscaping. So with this big green house it's also going to
increase the performance of the bedroom area because that green house acts as a
buffer. Winter time when the Sun is low and shining right in, it's going to
increase the heating and comfort level of both spaces, the greenhouse and my
living space, and then in the summertime when the Sun is directly above us for
the most part that's also going to help with the convection of that cooling tube.
So the way the homes are set up facing south you're able to take advantage of
the low winter sun and the high summer sun for both heating and cooling and it's
just passive. So this is the back berm of the house the berm is basically a big
source of insulation. As the temperature drops on the outside a thermal mass is
going to slowly just radiate out keeping that internal space around anywhere from
60 to 70 degrees. Along with in the summertime with the cooling tube that
travels through the berm it's tapping into that cool earth temperature and in
turn give me my air conditioning. One of the more important or the most important
system I believe especially here in the high desert Mesa is the the water
catchment and filtration system. With our annual precipitation around seven inches
a year, if we're lucky, I'm going to want to
catch as much water as I can diverting it to the cistern but having
the cistern high enough to where the water is gravity fed. I'm looking forward
to doing an outlaw septic and by outlaw it's something that the earthships have
used in foreign countries where you don't have access to a conventional septic
system. You basically dig a hole, you put some semi tires in there, you put some
rocks on the side of it, pour a cement dome over top of it with a hole
that you can put the toilet on and it has an overflow so as you're filling the
system it overflows with your affluent water out into the outdoor landscaping.
In this environment you're going to be able to grow trees, native shrubs,
bushes, pollinating flowers. Some flowers for the bees and butterflies and the
things that you wouldn't expect out here in the high desert mason.
I want to be able to show people that it is possible on a low budget to take control of your
life, you know. I was on the grid living in an apartment working 40-50 hours a
week, short haircut, shaved face, tie and it wasn't for me. Moved out here, started
doing this. I was like, "okay, I can be my own boss, I can set myself free" as far as
my living arrangements and do it in a way that's going to actually benefit the
environment, you know. Humans in general are bad for the planet. Just our daily
life in the normal city or town it's just all-around destructive. This is a
way to where you can live but still give back to the environment and take care of
it allowing it to take care of you as well. The message I'd like to get out there
it's just no matter what situation you're in right now whether you're
already working towards this type of lifestyle or are just viewing this video
for the first time it's possible to get to this point, but it's baby steps. Like I
said, I was clean shaven working in a corporate office and I just slowly
started to reduce my amount of plastic. I would only allow myself
five items that had plastic every time I went to the grocery store so that would
drastically started reducing my waste, but also you know, made my diet better
because I was getting fresher fruits and vegetables instead of the plastic wrapped
stuff. Little steps like that or if you live in an apartment complex see if they
can start a compost pile for everybody to use then you use that to grow
tomatoes. Starting locally and just working on yourself a little bit at a
time it's just like working out, you know. You start with two or three push-ups and
you're doing five push-ups a day and you're doing 15-20 and next thing you
know you're pounding tires building your own self sustainable home. Any baby step
you can make it just starts snowballing and you can make a difference so just be
the change. Do what you want to see in the world.
If you enjoyed that video hit the like button. If you're new here subscribe to
the channel for more videos similar to this content. Right now I'm in Joshua
Tree California, if any of you guys are out here in Joshua Tree tweet at me at
@dylanmagaster and let's go on a hike.