Flickr – Compartilhamento de fotos! Touch the Earth Ranch. Black Forest, CO A beautiful example of what can be done with tire-building, this home sits at more than 7,500 feet.
The 10' solar-window wall faces south and overlooks an gorgeous forest and mountain range below.. read more » Colorado Springs, CO At 9,400 feet over Colorado Springs, Russ and Gloria began building their own home within the Rocky Mountains... read more » Excerpts from the 'Union of Concerned Scientists' newsletter, Earthwise: "At 8,400' up in the Colorado Rockies, often above the clouds, Jerry and Diana decided to build an ecologically friendly house that would make them virtually self-sufficient in terms of their energy needs"... read more » Penrose, CO Ron & Julie preferred a more contemporary decor, but that didn't stop them from including a greenhouse and building at 5,500 ft. altitude!
Read more » David and his wife Suzi fell in love with the concept of our own home during the building process. Read more » Guffey, CO. You know it's true. Earthship Tour – Tire House Where We Live in the US. Our home for the summer is called an Earthship.
It’s a type of home that is passive solar, made of recycled and natural materials, and tends to be off-the-grid. A man named Mike Reynolds began developing the Earthship idea in the 1970s. Since then, the idea has been taking off around the world. Now for me, the idea of saying “I live in an Earthship” sounds kind of freaky. It reminds me of something like Y2K all over again. UPDATE March 2012: The descriptions I give in this blog post of how fabulous this type of home is to live in were based on literature I read and things the owner (who has never lived here or spent a winter in Montana) told us. As you can see from our front door, the house is made of gobs of old tires – some that are visible like in this retaining wall, and most that are not. Tires make a wonderfully clever building tool because there’s not much else people can do with worn tires.
If you’re like me, the next thing you immediately think is, “Ha! Earthship Construction. Our Earthship Experience: So, what exactly is this thing?
Christened an "Earthship" by designer/architect Michael Reynolds, literally hundreds of these homes (made primarily from old automobile tires and beer cans) have been constructed in the Southwestern U.S. This project is the first Earthship constructed within the state of Ohio. The concept is pretty cool - taking advantage of the natural heating and cooling properties of the earth, the passive heat of the sun, discarded and problem waste materials and mixing these with an embracing attitude toward your environment - the result is a comfortable and peaceful place to live.
If you want to find more background on the concept (and a whole lot more), check out the source at www.earthship.org. Our ExperienceAfter attending a workshop put on by Solar Survival, reading all the books, and purchasing a set of generic blueprints... we were ready to go. So just how do you go about building an earthship like this? Building an Earthship « Green Building Blog.
Having built an eco-house myself I thought I had a basic grasp of how an eco-building works and why.
However, I have since realised that I had only just begun to understand the principles of eco-building and how they work with each other. Two weeks ago I attended a training course run by Brighton Permaculture Association on ‘An Introduction to Self-Building an Earthship’. I went to learn more about the principles of Earthships – buildings made from walls of tyres rammed full of earth. However, I learnt a whole deal more and thoroughly enjoyed myself at the same time. For anyone remotely interested in eco-building, whether an Earthship or not, I would recommend this course. Brighton Earthship Photovoltaic system on top of Brighton Earthship The course, and Earthships, raised some interesting issues in terms of building affordable eco-homes in Britian: One of the practicals during the course was to start to build a wall using tyres and ramming earth into them.
Plastering a tyre wall. Radically Sustainable Green Buildings Designs.