﻿A suburban home has become an integral part of the American dream.
Aerial views of every American city capture endless seas of pitched roofs,
backyard pools and green lawns. There are around 120 million households in the US, of which 70%
of them or 83 million are single-family homes. Suburbs provide an increased quality of life,
a sense of community and privacy that isn’t found in cramped urban areas.
However, suburban homes are built as fast and as cheaply as possible. They have weak walls,
inadequate insulation and flimsy siding and roofing.
They are consequently energy-guzzlers and major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.
In fact, heating and cooling our buildings accounts for 51% of the total energy use
in the US. The actual construction of homes is also very wasteful. It is estimated that 30% of
building material delivered to a construction site can end up as waste. Another problem is
the reliance on public utilities like water, power and waste disposal. City grids cannot keep up with
the exponential growth in demand. It is barely the start of summer here in Texas, and ERCOT,
who operates the electric grid, has asked Texas to conserve power and prepare for blackouts.
Something needs to change. We need to build better homes that aren’t energy-guzzlers, we need
to drastically reduce construction waste and we need to reduce our reliance on public utilities.
This is exactly what earthship homes achieve. These are off-grid structures that minimize their
negative impact on the environment. In this video, we’re going to look at how earthship homes work,
their pros and cons and whether they can revolutionize the construction industry.
Earthships are the brainchild of architect Michael Reynolds,
also known as the Garbage Warrior. After graduating from the University of Cincinnati,
my alma mater, he quickly turned away from traditional architecture. He addressed the
problems of trash and lack of affordable housing by building low-cost homes made of trash.
The first walls he built were made of packs of ten empty drink cans wired together to make a building
block. Through trial and error, Reynolds has refined his building concept into what he calls,
Earthship Biotecture. He has defined 6 principles to live self-sufficiently and sustainably:
shelter, heating and cooling, power, water, sewage and food production.
First off, using recycled materials for shelter. When building earthship homes,
old tires are packed with local earth and pounded with heavy mallets till they are stable.
Each earth-filled tire weighs 300 lbs and takes approximately an
hour to prepare. Layers upon layers of these tires are stacked to create load-bearing walls
that act like a thermal battery. They store heat during the day, and slowly release it to the
interiors at night. It is estimated that tire walls act like an equivalent R 40 wall. Interior,
non-load bearing walls can be made of aluminum cans, glass and plastic beverage bottles.
Bottles are cut in half, the bottom ends are taped together and then stacked with the help of cement
or mortar. These simple masonry techniques allow the freedom of curved walls and organic features.
The second principle is passive cooling and heating. Earthships are oriented for maximum solar
exposure. In the northern hemisphere, large glass facades face south and in the southern hemisphere
they face north. Sun shines into greenhouses that are usually in the front of the house.
Behind another glass barrier are the bedroom, bathroom, and living rooms.
To cool the interior spaces, 30-foot metal tubes run through the earth berm. When a skylight in
the greenhouse is opened, convection sucks warm air out of the earthship. These passive methods
of cross ventilation and heat gain keep the interiors at 58 degrees throughout the year.
The third principle is producing clean energy. Earthships produce all
the energy inhabitants need with solar panels and wind turbines. Batteries,
charge controllers and inverters store this energy so that the home is powered even at night.
The fourth principle is water use. Rainwater and melted snow rolls off the sloped metal roof and
into large cisterns behind the tire wall. A water organizing module fitted with pumps and filters
purifies the rainwater so that it’s potable and fit for indoor use.
This water is used in sinks, showers and bathtubs.
In most suburban, grid-tied homes, water isn’t reused. After we wash our hands or
flush the toilet, wastewater heads straight to the sewers. In earthship homes, water is treated like
a precious commodity, which it is. This brings us to the fifth principle, dealing with sewage. There
are two main types of waste water. Gray water is waste from sinks, showers, baths and laundry.
It doesn’t contain any fecal matter or harsh chemicals. Black water is wastewater from toilets.
Gray water from sinks, showers and bathtubs drains linear planters. Water is collected from
the bottom of these planters, filtered again and pumped into toilet bowls for flushing.
The black water from toilets is redirected to outdoor anaerobic septic tanks. Water from the
septic tanks overflows into a botanical cell that is filled up with exterior landscaping plants.
The last principle is food production. Interior and exterior botanical cells
are used to grow a variety of fruits and vegetables throughout the year.
The Earthship visitor center in Taos, New Mexico, has also designed mini-hydroponic planters
in suspended buckets. They provide herbs, tomatoes, kale, cucumbers and more.
Some Earthships have a dedicated greenhouse and coop for raising chickens and pigs.
The goal is to produce enough food in one’s home to be self-sustaining.
When researching earthship homes for this video, I was reminded of the video on earthbag homes that I
made a couple of years ago. However, the concept of earthships seems to be better thought-out. They
aren’t just about building cheap, but also about creating a self-sustaining home and lifestyle.
A simple earthship in a remote location can cost less than $100,000 but more elaborate earthships
like the Desert Flower in New Mexico can cost over $3.5 million. This home proves that you
can have all the modern day conveniences while reducing your footprint on the environment.
I love that Earthship homes promote awareness of one’s surroundings
like incoming solar radiation. In architecture school, we’re taught to conduct sun studies
and calculate how much heat is gained on each facade. That information is supposed to change
the way a building is oriented. In real life, none of those calculations are taken into account.
A city’s grid dictates how buildings are oriented. In the suburbs, random winding roads or highways
dictate how homes are oriented. Earthship homes are intentionally built on an east-west axis so
that the long southern side of the house faces the sun, when the house is in the northern hemisphere.
Another advantage is the awareness of rainfall levels, water consumption and energy consumption.
The water in an earthship can be used up to four times. These homes use approximately 75%
less energy than traditional homes of the same size. A self-sustaining lifestyle
automatically makes one more conscious of their consumption and relationship with our planet
Earthship homes also seem to be fighting against planned obsolescence.
The inhabitants of the earthship community in New Mexico help each other fix broken appliances to
prolong their lifespan. There is so much we can learn from their construction and the lifestyle.
However, it’s not an easy lifestyle. Earthship homes have many drawbacks that
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We’ve discussed the features of Earthship homes and their advantages,
but what about their drawbacks? Like many alternative construction methods,
earthship homes are too reliant on manual labor, the process isn’t automated and they
don’t have any standardized components. Building permits and insurance for these homes can be
expensive because of all the unknown variables. Reselling these homes can also be difficult,
because very few people would want a home that’s so drastically different from the norm.
These two earthship home builders say that transporting donated materials
has caused significant wear and tear on their vehicles. The size and appearance
of their home was determined by what they had found for free or cheap,
which is a very unpredictable way of building. Opponents of earthship homes say that they are not
as natural or organic as they may seem. More than half the volume of materials used in the build
is concrete, which has a high carbon footprint. I personally don’t see that as a major issue.
Most commercial buildings are built with concrete and steel. If the home is going to last longer
and perform better than stick built homes, we shouldn’t completely dismiss the use of concrete.
Earthships might work in New Mexico, but would need to be adapted for cooler northern climates.
Active heating systems are required for winter months. Finally, I think the biggest drawback is
that building an earthship is very time-consuming and labor-intensive. Sourcing discarded bottles
and tires and transporting them takes time. Pounding earth into car tires takes. We’re
living in a world where time is money and we’re already stretched thin. We’re juggling kids,
work, life, mental health, physical health and more. It’s almost impossible to tear yourself
away from duties and responsibilities to go learn a new way of building and running a home.
Again, I am all for reducing our footprint on the environment and building off-grid
homes but I don't think earthship homes are the answer. I think we need to apply
some of their concepts to existing homes. Building codes need to encourage passive energy systems,
rainwater harvesting, active energy generation, sewage treatment, etc. We can’t expect every
homeowner to learn all these concepts. Instead they should be integrated into suburban homes.
Earthship homes can teach us to prioritize a building’s performance and footprint. Let
me know what you think about earthship homes in the comments below. I’ll link my Patreon page in
the description. If you can support me, I’d really appreciate it. A big thank you to everyone already
supporting me. I’ll link all my sources in the description below and on my website. Don’t forget
to hit that like button, subscribe button and the notification bell too. Thanks for watching. See ya