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Sunday, November 5, 2017

The Earthship Idea

Lately, we've been getting really excited about the idea of an adobe earthship.  The terrain where the homestead sits makes it just about perfect to keep the place cool in the summers and warm in the winter.  We figure if we face the big windows toward the south, we'll be in great shape.  Plus it gives me a great opportunity to build a pseudo replica of Luke Skywalker's homestead from the original Star Wars movie...

After watching some videos online, I'm excited and discouraged to see that most of the labor is relatively EASY labor (i.e. not mentally impossible), yet it is LABOR.  Hours and hours of hammering dirt into tires is in our future.  Just hammering dirt.  Rammed earth tires for the walls, we'll mud over them, paint them, and bam, we're pooping in tall cotton.  The tires are great for walls.  They'll keep the heat inside when it's cold, and they'll keep it cool inside when it's hot in the summer.  We'll hopefully be able to reclaim and reuse a bunch of water, up to four uses, which will help a lot in a place that gets about 10 inches of rain every year.
The idea is simple, but I suck at explaining things and I'm lazy, so I attached a diagram and some examples.  More to come.