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Earthship - Stand Alone Homes


Environment  (tags: conservation, recycle, environment, nature, Sustainabililty, water, sanitation, ecosystems )

Gregory
- 623 days ago - earthship.net
VIDEO: How would you like to live in a home with no house payments, no utility bills and is Earth friendly? Humans need comfortable temperatures, light, electricity, hot water, food, sewage treatment, etc. These necessities are all available
Comments

Hans L. (1002)
Thursday March 20, 2008, 1:53 am
Hi gregory! Great story! Like this guy!
This is exactly the sollution RE USE not recycle!
Recycling is most of the time a terrible waste of energy!
Resusing the products is the best way ! You cannot go more sustainable
than this guy does....
 

Michael Sandstrom (329)
Thursday March 20, 2008, 1:59 am
That is great! TY Gregory
 

Marian E. (175)
Thursday March 20, 2008, 2:11 am

I live in a house that has a number of green features, but nothing like this. This is a terrific home!

Thank you Gregory.
 

Past Member (0)
Thursday March 20, 2008, 2:32 am
gimme my move in date please Greg lol
 

Past Member (0)
Thursday March 20, 2008, 5:01 am
GOOD STORY GREGORY TY
 

Phyllis P. (401)
Thursday March 20, 2008, 7:15 am
wow...wouldn't that be a perfect world. thanks for posting
 

Elle J. (236)
Thursday March 20, 2008, 12:05 pm
Great Story....Gregory. I would love to live like that.
 

Ruud Hulspas (34)
Thursday March 20, 2008, 12:36 pm
Yeah ! But this is not new, isn't it ? I think I've seen a couple near Taos (NM).
 

Ds R. (45)
Thursday March 20, 2008, 12:46 pm
This is A-W-E-S-O-M-E!!!! I've never heard of anything like this before. I hope to one day own a house and this is something to look forward to!
 

Past Member (0)
Thursday March 20, 2008, 3:28 pm
What a way to live.......Super!!

PLANT TREES FOR LIFE........
 

Carol W. (125)
Thursday March 20, 2008, 5:01 pm

ty
 

Past Member (0)
Thursday March 20, 2008, 5:34 pm
Noted, tnx for sending Gregory
 

Penelope P. (101)
Thursday March 20, 2008, 6:01 pm
Thankyou Gregory this is the sort of news we all need- I still howeverback the dymaxion house- Google it
 

Janet Pearson (8)
Thursday March 20, 2008, 6:11 pm
Earthships have been around for what, 20 years now? Remember the TV actor Dennis Weaver? He built a 2-story earthship out west, either Colorado or New Mexico. So far, I have only seen them built in fairly dry climates, with enough sunshine to make the solar options practical. There are some intentional community who have built homes this way.
 

Katina F. (35)
Thursday March 20, 2008, 6:42 pm
I want one! I have some of the same ideas. I just want to live in a home that helps, not hurts, the environment. I want to live in harmony with nature and minimize my negative footprint/maximize my positive footprint while on this earth. I will be doing some research on this.
 

Eduardo L. (103)
Friday March 21, 2008, 10:39 am
Thanks Greg! It's cool. I like it.
 

Kim stands for PEACE (140)
Friday March 21, 2008, 12:30 pm
*noted with thanx Gregory :)
 

Past Member (0)
Saturday March 22, 2008, 5:28 am
TY, Gregory. noted. I have been doing a lot of research in off-grid homes. It's my dream. This was very informative.
 

Lauren Stone (579)
Saturday March 22, 2008, 9:58 pm
No, earthships are not new, but they are timeless. There IS a better way and this is one of them. There are entire communities of earthship and other alternative technique homes.
I've been researching alternative building methods for many years and hope someday to build an eco-home.
This site is a wealth of information on many varieties of alternative green building;
http://www.greenhomebuilding.com/index.htm
 

MJ T. (0)
Sunday March 23, 2008, 3:55 am
I loved this! Thank you!
 

Carl Nielsen (6)
Sunday March 23, 2008, 3:02 pm
Several comments:

Glass bottles and aluminium cans are some of the BEST material for recycling. If you have a proper setup and standardize your glass bottles they can be reused several times just by washing. We have done that for ages here in Denmark for beer and soft dring bottles. Even if recycled rather than reused I am not sure resources are saved by producing new glass instead of recycling old glass. Aluminium costs a lot of energy resources to produce MUCH MUCH more than it cost to recycle them.
So I think not recycling glass containers and aluminium is a bad idea for the environment.

Solar power isn't really an option in my climate (temperate). If I invested in solar power I might be able to cover about 25 % of my electric power needs at about twice the cost of buying the power from the grid over the lifetime of the equipment. Alternatively I could cover my need for warm water for washing and bathing (NOT heating). In addition I would have to give up having big trees in my garden and convince my neigbourgs to also give up theirs (shade really hurts solar power generation in a big way). I HAVE done the computations - how many else have ?

This kind of housing also requires a LOT more space per inhabitant, than is available to most people.

I also think the houses I saw in the video would have a very hard time surviving in my climate without massive maintenance.

I live in a house built by my great-grandfather over 80 years ago - it is still as good as new and with a moderate amount of maintenance it will last forever - I bet stying here will have much less environmental impact than builing any new house (lots of modern house components like windows only have an expected lifetime of at most 10 years if you are lucky and don't get a leak in the double glazing).

What is the expected lifetime of these so called green buildings ?
 

Rod Gesner (57)
Wednesday April 2, 2008, 3:04 pm
Earth Ships are a Fluid adaptable Design and So Far have Lasted 40 Years They May Not Be a Design For Every Taste But the amount of Space They Use is Offset By The Many Cheap or Free Materials and the total energy/Resource independance the achieve Energy Can Be obtained by wind and Even Rainfall; But Solar is Rapidly Grow to Much more affordable Efficiencies.!
Michael admits that mistakes are part of the learning Process But has Recently Gotten a law passed in NM For Experimintal Sites That Can Operate outside the normal Zoning/Code Rules.!

If anyone wants to See More The Sundance Channel is Running a Documentary "Garbage Warrior" and While Some Snear at his Use of Garbage that Should Be Recycled or Not even Produced in the first place at least he is Doing Something With it Besides Sending it To a Landfill Which Still happens in the USA when Corrupt Recycleing/Garbage Co's Dump Recycleables that Do net have a High enough Demand To Sell at Hauling Costs.!
 

Eternal Optimist (115)
Wednesday April 2, 2008, 4:54 pm
Noted with thanks Gregory :) Awesome
 
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