- Really can't fart right now.
- Hi, I'm Garrett.
- And I'm Nicki.
- We're fascinated by how other people live.
- [Nicki] So we're gonna try and find
some really interesting living situations.
- [Garrett] And live there,
experiencing a totally different lifestyle.
- [Nicki] To see which ones will bring us closer together.
- [Garrett] Or push us further apart.
- This week, we're living in an earthship.
- It's like a friendship,
but made out of earth, instead of friends.
(upbeat music)
- Hi my name is Michael Reynolds.
We have a company called Earthship Biotecture
and we are developing sustainable off grid,
independent autonomous buildings all over the world.
I've been working in this direction for almost 50 years.
- Hi guys welcome to Earthship Biotecture my name is Ryan.
- Hi Ryan, I'm Garrett.
- Garrett - Nikki.
- This is an earthship.
- Earthships.
- I don't even know what that word even really means,
it sounds a little highfalutin and hippie dippie.
- Earthship makes it sound like a group of aliens
landed on earth and decided to like blend in with humans.
- It looks like it's gonna be the nicest house
Nikki and I have stayed in to date.
I'm really excited about that.
- But why are all these places in the desert?
- Every human has to address six issues.
One is comfortable shelter that doesn't use fossil fuel.
One is electricity, water, something to do with their sewage
Food and all humans these days produce garbage
and whether we like it or not we have to
come up with something to do with it.
So we have made a vessel that we have called the earthship
that addresses all six of those points.
- Here we are.
- Whoa it's warm in here.
- Oh my gosh, it's a garage with like, plants in it.
- Plants, power system, gray water system.
The gray water system is gonna take care of the water
that comes from the sink and the showers.
It goes into the planters taking it through a filter
and running it to the toilet.
- So before it even gets out there,
it's been used like three times,
basically. - Correct, yeah.
- [Garrett] Wow.
- What are these?
- This is for ventilation.
- [Nikki] Whoa.
- While you're exchanging the air
you're cooling the space down.
This is your thermostat.
- Apparently you have to help your house breathe?
Which is an interesting thing that I've never thought about.
- It's very practical in like,
I think they grow their own vegetables
and know how to like reuse their water.
- Notice the solar panels that line
the front of the building.
- [Garrett] Uh huh.
- Those are coming into the charge controller
that's taking all the sunshine,
going through the algorithms, turning it into power.
- [Nicki] So it's all solar.
- Correct, all solar.
- This is a very efficient house.
And we're only in the garage.
- I am really excited to have
something that actually resembles a house.
And doesn't have any sort of,
like, labor associated with it.
- It sounds like we'll learn a little bit about how this
house is new and futuristic
but also we will enjoy creature comforts.
- [Ryan] We do have a flat screen TV there.
We have wifi.
So we're trying to gear it towards people that
aren't familiar the earthships and then they come into one
and they are like, oh.
It's built out of tires and bottles and cans and all
sorts of repurposed materials.
- [Garrett] And this is a full kitchen.
- [Ryan] A full kitchen as well, yes.
- [Nicki] This is gorgeous too, my goodness.
- [Ryan] Yeah copper countertops,
custom built cabinetry so it's all built onsite.
- So people are suppose to be able to
build their own earthship.
That's pretty cool.
As somebody who likes to build stuff,
I'd love to learn about how they built these earthships.
- I don't really have a desire to build my own home.
In my relationship, I'm not the crafty one.
I'm the more, let's play video games
and eat at great restaurants.
- So the master bedroom is down here to the left.
- Oh my gosh this is enormous.
Look at all the closets.
- Closets, closets, closets.
- [Ryan] And a bathroom, we have towels laid out for you.
Shampoo, shower gel, conditioner.
- [Nicki] Look at this.
- [Garrett] Oh my gosh.
It's like stone shower. - It's gorgeous.
- [Ryan] We'll have to work on adjustable shower heads.
- I can see all the way to the mountains, though.
Over the shower curtain.
So I'm showering looking at the mountains.
(laughs)
- Oh no I just kicked this thing over.
(gasps)
- [Nicki] Did he just break that?
He can fix it, right?
- [Ryan] And we got on camera too so.
- [Garrett] Yeah.
(laughing)
- This is definitely his fault.
- Oh shoot.
- I'm a little nervous that because we don't have
any like activities, we're going to go stir crazy.
- We'll probably bump heads again.
Because I'm not sure
there's a whole lot to do in this desert.
- How many earthships are here right now?
- About 76 and, say, 77 with that one.
And I'd say at least 50 of them are permanent residences.
- The thrill in life for us is
seeing more and more people have a life.
We're sitting here in a building
that's not hooked up to any grid.
Has food growing.
Doesn't even have a heater of any kind in it.
This is available to the world.
And this could change the world.
- That's so cool.
- It's fun.
Like I said it's a lot of work but I'm building my freedom
- Thank you so much.
- Yeah, thank you for
staying with us. - We're so excited.
- Thanks a lot, Ryan.
- Of course.
- [Nicki] Let's go.
This is exciting.
- [Garrett] This is like the most
beautiful house we've lived in.
Sorry everybody else.
- I feel you should take the master bedroom
because you broke the bathroom.
- All right.
- So I'm gonna take this one.
- Okay, have fun.
- Mm-hmm.
- Oh yeah.
Look at all this space.
- My broken shower.
I don't know how I'm gonna fix that.
Well we'll worry about that later.
I don't like that skinny cat one bit.
I'm gonna go take it to Nikki's room,
she likes cats.
- You can't rearrange decor.
But fine, I will gladly accept this cat.
Thank you.
Isn't this a great view to wake up to?
- [Garrett] Yeah.
- I think we're gonna be very comfortable here.
- I think so too.
- Bam.
Look at how much space there is.
This place is huge.
And I can stand all the way over here
and Garrett can be all the way over there.
- This by far the nicest place we've stayed in.
We got all these plants and lemongrass.
Everything smells amazing and alive.
Even though it's December in the middle of the desert.
- Hopefully we remember to do
all the things we're supposed to do
to take care of the earthship.
'Cause it's like a living, breathing thing.
We're literally in a house of recycled garbage.
And you can not tell.
- It's still so much nicer than my house in Los Angeles.
So there are all these windows and things
that we have opening and closing.
I know there's a combination
that will make us freeze to death.
Hopefully we haven't
gotten that. - Wait really?
- [Nicki] I know out there is just greenhouse.
Because I can't see through it 'cause it's dark.
All I see is myself.
It makes me feel like someone's there.
- It's night time.
Nikki and I are both working.
Tomorrow we're going to learn a lot more about
how to actually build it.
- This is fascinating.
I don't know how it all works,
but it's amazing that it does
and I'm very happy to be here.
- [Garrett] Goodnight Nikki.
- Goodnight.
- [Garrett] Are you comfortable?
- Mm-hmm.
Oh wow you opened that door and I just
smell everything. - Is it too cold?
- [Garrett] Isn't the smell amazing?
- Plants.
- [Garrett] And there's that demon cat.
- It's not a demon.
Don't say that.
(upbeat music)
- It's very bright in my room.
- I didn't even need my alarm.
Hello. - Morning.
(laughing)
- [Garrett] I'm showering.
It's still a little low, but I'm bad.
Nikki.
- [Nikki] Huh?
- [Garrett] Let's make food.
- Oh yup, yes.
♪ Avocado toast. ♪
Wouldn't be cool if we were growing avocados out there
and then and then we would just be like boop.
- I think that's like
Part of the goal - That's the goal, right?
- [Nikki] I'd love for that to happen.
- Cheers.
- Breakfast in our home.
- This is probably the best ones you've made, too.
- It's like 20 degrees outside but we need to.
It's like 80 degrees in here.
Whoa, I just got water all over me.
- It's hot.
It's like the full power of the sun.
- Yeah I can see why we could grow bananas in here.
- I'm not a banana.
- Here we are at the great world earthship community
and we are working on the house under construction today.
Sounds like you wanna do some adobe plaster.
It's so dry here in the desert but this dirt is
pretty much 100% clay.
So we're gonna sift all the rocks
and all the big stuff out
and make it more fine.
- [Garrett] Have you done much shoveling, Nikki?
- [Nicki] No.
- [Garrett] Never had to like hide a body or anything?
- No.
Have you?
- [Garrett] No.
- [Phil] This will be the adobe mixer.
Let's start with about a half a bucket of water.
Now we're gonna put in two full buckets of sand.
- It's like making cookies.
- [Nikki] Oh, a dog.
Oh two dogs.
- I think initially you all
may want to kind of slap and smear.
Every wall surface is done like this.
You gotta slap and smear it up.
- Oh my gosh it's like building a sand castle.
- All right, okay.
- Yeah you getting better?
- I'm getting, making progress
- Well, we're doing a pretty bad job, but we're learning.
- It's very satisfying, like literally filling up holes.
- Special edition, construction Nikki,
comes with a hawk, a trowel and a winning attitude.
I'm feeling a lot more confident with the trowel,
so that's like a skill I just picked up.
- Until about two hours ago I had no idea
what adobe was or how people used it.
But now, I've mixed it and I've laid it.
I have helped build a tiny piece of this wall.
- I think it looks great.
- Really? - Yeah.
- Great. - Nice work.
- Yeah I paid the price for it.
- Yeah, hey what happened.
- [Nikki] I don't know.
- Thanks Phil.
- Anytime.
- Good luck with the rest of this wall.
- [Phil] Yeah I don't know what we'll do without you.
(laughs)
- So what do we have here?
So we're at The Phoenix earthship and this is where
Mike took the concept of the earthships
and went wild with it and made it really eccentric.
And a lot of artistic details in this building.
- This direction puts power to the people.
It empowers them to take their energy from the sun.
It's right there.
It's free.
People should have the right to encounter the natural
phenomena of this planet to sustain themselves.
- Man this is like a, like a jungle maze.
- [Ryan] Right so this is actually where
the gray water starts from the sink
of the shower in the bathroom.
- Do I hear birds?
- There's birds.
- [Nikki] There's birds?
- [Ryan] There's birds.
Two cockatiels and two parakeets.
- This is straight outta some, like
fantasy. - This is Zelda level.
- [Garrett] Is this a TV?
- [Ryan] Yes sir.
- We haven't even gone out
into like the greenhouse part of it.
- You can't argue with
bananas in your living room in the winter.
You can't argue with the sun heating your house.
These things can be machines.
So there's a long way to go.
- [Ryan] So the house is about 5300 square feet
and about 2000 of that is greenhouse space.
- There really is no limit to what you can create out of it.
- [Ryan] Right, and we're just scratching
the surface of what's possible.
- We're going to Puerto Rico in a month.
Because their power's down, their water's down,
their infrastructure's down.
This building has its own infrastructure.
We're gonna build a building
that can not be blown away by any hurricane.
- [Nikki] Like living in a house
can be exciting and ever changing.
- [Garrett] It grows with you.
- You take care of it and it takes care of you.
- Yeah.
- This concept is a way to stay alive longer.
(light music)
- So after work today we found that our rental car
had some trouble with the tires.
So Garrett had to drive it into town
and get it sorted out.
He's not gonna be back for another like two hours.
So I started cooking dinner,
so I'm gonna pick a few sprigs,
aw it smells so good.
I'll put that in my pasta sauce.
That bowl's for Garrett when he gets done.
So keep it warm for him.
- Like I had to go drive that and then drive it back.
At the end I was just really exhausted.
Four and a half hours later here we are.
- Here ya go.
- Thank you Nikki.
- Well there's more over there and also there's salad.
Today's been really fun,
I'm very fascinated by earthships.
- We got to see another earthship today which was
beyond anything I could comprehend.
Phoenix is like something out of a sci-fi movie,
I can't imagine what it would be like
to complete your own earthship.
- It's very simple in practice but also a lot of hard work.
- [Nikki] That's got to be an amazing accomplishment.
- Good morning plants.
Good morning earthship.
Good morning.
- We did it.
We lived in an earthship.
It was so much more comfortable than I thought it would be
especially since it's made out of garbage.
- Because this is such a comfortable house to live in,
it's been very easy for Garrett and I to be roommates.
Now the house can breathe.
- Ahhhhhh
This is like the first time where I'm walking away thinking
oh yeah I'd maybe like to take some of these principles
and apply them to my own house someday.
- [Ryan] This is the Earthship Village Ecologies, E.V.E.
This is what we're trying to basically get an earthship
apartment style complex going.
So we have people living together.
Working together towards building a better future
as far as the homes.
But also growing food together, living together
and just sharing the space and coming up
with a better way for the future.
- That's kale.
Like I think when people think about sustainable,
living that's very good for the earth,
they think that they have to relinquish some comfort.
And we did not.
- The idea of building my own earthship sounds so much fun
that like maybe even when I retire that's what I'll do.
I'll just build earthships.
Like I can make showers that'll fit me.
- Everything that I've learned here makes me
so excited to think about the possibilities
of earthships and what could be next.
- Bye earthship.
Next week.
- [Garrett] On Home Buddies.
- Welcome to our mansion.
- [Garrett] We're finally going to a mansion.
- [Nikki] This is my richie rich moment.
- [Garrett] This mansion's so big.
It's like the American dream, right?
- [Nikki] This the lifestyle that everyone must experience.
This is it.
- Ahh
(sign creaking)