That right there is an Earthship. What is an Earthship? It's not just a home, but a vessel
that lives in harmony with planet earth. And we're not talking roughing it, this is luxury.
The Earthship Biotecture is a community of over 70 homes in the desert of New Mexico.
Each of these dwellings provides for all of our basic human needs of shelter,
warmth, water from the rain, energy from the sun, and they grow their own food. And what's more,
they do it all completely off the grid. They're built from discarded tires, cans, and bottles.
When I heard about this community I wondered, is it really possible
to live in symbiosis with planet earth? I have discovered one unpleasant thing.
Is it possible to have a minimal human impact while still enjoying basic comfort or even luxury?
Would the water be hot? Would the WiFi work? Would I have everything I needed?
I rented and stayed in one of these trippy beautiful vessels to answer that question.
It's the Earthship biotecture. So when you come in there's all these like no trespassing signs,
but we're staying here and I'm seeing my first one now.
Here we are. Ready? I am more than ready.
Really ready? Really,
really ready. Wow.
So this is a totally off the grid situation and everything in here I guess was built using
recycled materials. We're gonna learn more because the owner is gonna come by and give us a little
tour, but I wanna walk through ourselves and see what this is all about. This is our
kitchen, a gas stove, rainwater sink. So all of the water here is completely rain and snowmelt,
and it's been filtered, which is also really, really cool. This is our little seating area
where we have just like this...I can't get over the view. It's just this amazing whole
side of the building where you're just looking out at beauty. And then this other side behind
us is built into the hill. Okay. But this is the part I like the most over here.
Plants. It's an atrium inside and it's flourishing,
like, look how happy all of these are. These are all tropical plants. Look, a flower. Tons of aloe
vera here. Oh, my gosh, look at this jade plant, this is so cool. This is our bedroom over here. I
love the way this house curves, it's so cool. Some really cool art here. Look at these guys, they're
gonna be our friends for the next two days. I love the flower lamps. I have to do the bed test.
It's a nice firm mattress, but not too firm. Got modern conveniences like TV, here's the heater,
and there's wifi over there. Got all these bottles on the wall, and this is our bathroom.
This is our home for the next two days. It's awesome.
Living in an Earthship baby. I gotta turn the internet on.
We are in the middle of nowhere. So there's no cell signal here really, no LTE,
but they do have an inverter and when that's on apparently the WiFi is pretty fast if the other
Airbnb reviewers are to be believed. Pull the switch towards
you to turn on the inverter. Okay. I think I did it. All right. That's
how you do it when you're living off-grid. It looks like it will.
Yeah. What are we eating?
It's inspired by this food I had at Cafe Phoenix when I went to Humboldt last week,
they called it a bowl of good food. I'll be the judge of this bowl
of good food. You will.
Pots and pans of all sizes. This one will do me just right. I love it when Airbnbs have spices,
one of my favorite things to do when we're traveling is just get beans and make chili
or something like that, or whatever fresh veggies we can find and I just cook them all up together,
put some chicken sausage in it and it just makes the perfect little meal.
So we have two nights here and what I'm making now should feed us for the next couple of days.
It's good. Yeah.
Yep. So far this isn't that different
from living in like a normal house. Other than the dishwasher,
but that's not a huge deal. Yeah. Not a big deal.
Oh, beans.
This host is a woman after my own heart. Thanks to the sun for providing the power to grind this.
This smells amazing.
We have some potentially menacing clouds behind us, but
our lovely host left us these mountain bikes. So we're gonna go to the visitor center,
check that out, learn some things and just check out the neighborhood.
Here we go. Got our directions. Yeah. So the idea of this is that you can grow your own food
inside of your home. It smells so good in here. Suspended buckets to increase the growing capacity
and they bottom water it so that the roots grow down and the plant grows up. That looks yummy.
This is what's possible when you're in harmony with your environment. Gosh, it's a pineapple.
Pineapple. This wandering
jew plant. Oh my goodness. That's the whole thing.
This is like a millennia wet dream. The Earthship biotecture is the brainchild
of Michael Reynolds. And you can visit the visitor center and do the same tour that we did.
You'll learn that the building is made from tires, and that rainwater is collected on the
roof. It gets recycled several times. First, it's the shower, sink, and drinking water...
You know how some solar showers are just not that hot, you can tell from the steam here that I just
had a very steamy, wonderful shower...which is then filtered through the planter
and used for the toilet water or blackwater system. And the great water is gonna go
in there to reuse it, which is then filtered outside to water the landscaping.
The energy is all solar-powered. Apart from tires, they use cans and old bottles for construction,
and that's what gives it such the unique, interesting look. All of this together allows for
true off-the-grid living with no need to plug into any water or electrical systems. And even though
the desert doesn't get all that much water, we just so happened to get really lucky that day
It's raining on me right now, very windy, so this'll be fun. I am wet. Shit. Oh my God.
Oh, man. It's like riding directly into the wind. It's like, it's just pain.
It's fine. Man 1: It's pretty over there though.
Voice: Many hours later. So, I'm with Kirsten now. She's our
Airbnb host and she built this Earthship. I saw in the manual, you talked about building it over
the course of eight years, and I'm just curious about that story. You built it with tires, cans,
bottles. It's really fascinating to me. I want to know more about it. Did you do it by yourself?
Kirsten: I did it mostly by myself and that's kind of why it took so long. And I didn't have
full time to spend on it, I was working a job. And so that's eight years of on and off on the
weekends and I was paying for it out of pocket. So I'd have to save up money for materials and
like do a little bit more, and do a little bit more. And sometimes I would lose inspiration and
go take a trip with my money instead of working on the house. I wasn't like the most dedicated
builder, but I was inspired and I just kept on it. You know, if you have a crew building a house like
this, it can take six months to a year. Doing it yourself is a little bit different, but because
these buildings are more labor-intensive than a conventional home, it's a way that you can save
money on the construction because you can put your sweat equity into the building.
Woman: I mean, what inspired you to do this? Kirsten: Well, Earthships have been around for
a long time and I heard about them when I was in college, and it just kind of clicked
to me like building something out of what most people would consider to be garbage
is really exciting to me. And you go into a building like this that's in and of the earth and
has massive walls. And you feel the solidity of it. Everyone I knew was building their own house
and it just seemed like the logical thing to do. I was happy to have the opportunity to do it.
Woman: It feels good on a soul level to be here because you know that you're not taking energy
away from something that's polluting the earth. So the water system here fascinates me. I think
that maybe everyone should try this. And so I wanna ask you about it because very few homes,
you have this like garden here... Kirsten: You use every drop of water
four times. And that's how you're able to do these types of systems in such an arid
climate. You know, Taos has... Woman: This is a desert.
Kirsten: Yeah, it's a complete desert. And so we get like 8 to 12 inches of rain
per year, but you're really multiplying that times four in terms of your water use, and we're still
cautious and aware of your water. But the great thing about living in a building like this is
with the power systems, with the water systems, with how the building heats and cools itself and
relates to the seasons, you start to engage with your house. That engagement becomes part
of your daily existence. Are there any
downsides to living this way? Kirsten: I don't see it that way. I mean,
maybe other people would see it. If you're wanting something that's absolutely unlimited,
72-inch flat-screen TVs, I don't even know if that's an actual size, but if you're willing to
look at what's available to you and just slightly adjust your lifestyle to what nature can give to
you, then it's really easy to enjoy it. Well, thank you so much for inviting
us into your space. It really has been beautiful and it's just super inspiring.
Kirsten: Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. So that Earthship was amazing,
such a cool experience and I liked it so much, I booked another one. So
this is kind of considered like the Flagship Earthship, it's called the Phoenix Earthship.
It is like big, beautiful, and I'm parked outside of it right now. Let's check it out.
Oh my God. Oh, I might cry.
This is insane, oh my God, look at the bathroom. Okay, here we have the bathroom and I have to be
honest, this was one of the things that made me book this place because all of these bottles,
which I now know, it's two bottle ends that are put together so they have to be matching bottles
just make for such a pleasing aesthetic. It's a solar-heated shower, so there's a dial that
you turn and then you wait a little bit for it to turn on. That's a little bit different than
the last one I stayed in where the hot water was just automatic, but that's fine, I don't mind.
And I can only hope one day to have a monstera that is this beautiful. So this is the bedroom.
There are bottles all throughout these walls. Theme is definitely red. You
have the wood across the ceiling. This has to that Gryffindor room flavor, and I can dig it
as a Gryffindor. Here's other sleeping area and this one has two beds in it. So, I
don't frankly know which bedroom I'm gonna use because this bed looks really amazing,
that bed looks really amazing, and the one in the bedroom looks really amazing.
I think I have to do the jump test to know for sure. A nice firm bed. I can dig it, but I think
I love the princess feel of the other one, so it wins. I can hear the birds outside in the atrium.
Something that's different about this one is there are animals here. There are chickens outside,
there are fish in the koi pond, and there's food growing inside.
That's sort of the whole idea of the Earthship is that it can feed you, it could feed a whole family
and that is really exciting. Now we're standing at the little walkway that you would come into
if you're entering through the front yard. And I just love the stain glass feature that I'm
looking at right now. I love the shape again of this doorway. It feels a little bit like I'm in a
Hobbit kind of movie. Just makes me want to break out into song. All the birds sing words and the
flowers bloom in the tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki room. I won't subject you to any more of that.
This is the atrium and it's actually a little humid in here, which is amazing because we are in
the middle of a desert right. I'm looking at these adorable little birds, it smells amazing in here.
This is where we have some citrus growing. There is a koi pond here that could also be tilapia, so
you can eat those. As kind of a hippie who loves plants and has 60 plants at home, I am really just
like so excited about having this beautiful atrium inside. That is super cool to me that every time
I take a shower or wash a dish, I'm actually in some way, giving back to these plants. This
room is just like a design dream. The fireplace here also has a waterfall. It's just so cool.
It seems like this fireplace is about ready to talk to me and give me some ancient wisdom.
It almost looks to me like a tree growing up. Just, yeah, really makes
me feel like I am in a movie or something. This is one of the coolest rooms, the kitchen.
It took me a little bit of time to figure out where the fridge was and how to open it. But
it's just so cool, the way that it's worked into the design here. Just like in the other Earthship,
we have a stove here that is gas-powered. There's a water filter at the sink. The
fridge is always powered on and that's all run again by solar and then they have batteries to
run it when the sun is not shining. Finally, this is the dining room,
and again, all these bottles on the wall, like I really wonder how many bottles went
into the construction of this building, but aesthetically, it is so pleasing. I don't know,
everything about it is just so like well-designed and well thought out. I'm so excited to spend
the next couple of days in this Earthship, get to know it. And maybe by the end of it, I'll be sold.
Who knows? I've discovered one unpleasant thing, there's a couple of mice who also seem to call
this place home. I think the thing is you've got so much opportunity and like intrigue here
to encourage critters to come in. And I think you have to really think about how much of the outside
you seriously want in, because this is a jungle in here. And I think no matter where you are in the
world, you're gonna deal with pests as a result of that. So how much does that bother you?
After visiting two Earthships, I thought that that meant my exploration was over,
but I met a couple of guys earlier in the day and they invited me to check out theirs as well. Some
friends who rented one of these. There's Matt. Matt: Welcome to our Airbnb.
Woman: Yeah. Welcome to the crib. Oh, cool. Matt: It definitely gives you the ship vibe in
here especially at nighttime. Woman: Oh, this is a lot
more like a house house. Matt: They've got these vents where...
Woman: Wait, yours has vents? Matt: Yeah, so on the outside by the openings
out there are vents that...this air is... Man 2: It's cooled by the geo mass of the dirt.
So it's like a natural air conditioner. Matt: If you feel it, there's cold air
coming out of it. It's like an AC. Woman: Dude, neither of mine have that.
That's really interesting. Like the walkthrough closet, not the walk-in, but the walkthrough.
This is cool. Matt: Yeah. And this is just like in the
middle of the room which is kind of cool. Woman: That's super cool. So it's like a
separate room. Man 2: Yep.
Woman: Nice. Thanks for showing it to me.
Let's talk about if it's worth living this way in an Earthship completely off the grid.
I think in terms of just the impact on the earth, the style of the place, how freaking cool it is to
have this experience, it's so wonderful and it's really unparalleled. In terms of true livability,
I think having a full-on farm inside your house is going to come with a whole host of issues. If you
have a farm inside your house, you're inviting all of the pests that come along with a farm. And so
you're gonna need like some cats or like, I don't know, something to help you deal with that because
this is just the perfect environment for no matter where you're located, whatever the biggest issue
is there, it's gonna just come right in because you've created this perfect environment for it.
That said, if there ever is a situation where you need a full-on oh shit plan, you've got a whole
like little world in here where you really are not reliant on anything else. And having that ready to
go, being prepared for that is probably a really good idea. And as a Californian seeing how utility
companies are really not here to like help us is, you know, it's really sobering to be in a place
where it actually is possible to live completely off the grid. There is really something to be
said for the artistry of this place. I mean, they are not bound by corners. It's just like going in
and sculpting whatever your mind can imagine. It's an honor to really see how much ingenuity, thought
and ability had to go into this. I mean, this is no small undertaking and I can appreciate how much
passion and dedication that takes. And I truly am inspired by this.
First Earthship I stayed in is like amazing. Definitely, the one I would recommend, super
livable, but I'm glad I got a chance to check this out too because then I wouldn't have really been
able to see the full potential and also the good and the bad things. You know, taking little bits
from this experience, I wonder how much we can incorporate into like a normal house if you will.
It's so ridiculously logical and it makes me wonder why we don't do that because we are so
low on water, we are so low on raw materials. Like, why not use tires and bottles like this
to build with when they are so sturdy? Can you improve upon the system? I definitely think so.
But having had this experience now, it definitely makes me think about my impact on the world. I'm
curious if you think you could live like this. Let me know in the comments below. See you next time.