Earthship home

EARTHSHIP HOMES: A blueprint for the green life

Last updated: March 11th, 2021

They say home is where the heart is, but let’s face it, from an environmental perspective, home is where the waste is. Indeed, there’s something terribly wrong with the way we build our homes, not to mention the types of homes in which we choose to live. The amount of materials that go into building a typical single-family home is truly mind-boggling. And this is overshadowed only by the amount of energy a typical home consumes over its lifetime. The typical North American detached single-family dwelling consumes roughly 10,700 kWh (kilowatt hours) of electricity annually. With more than 107 million households in the United States alone, a total of 1.14 million gigawatts are consumed each year. Of that figure, approximately 42 percent goes to heating and cooling.

Since the 1960s, U.S. homes have been steadily growing in size, increasing the amount of space that needs to be heated and cooled. As of 2009, the ecological footprint of the average American house is approximately 1.5 hectares per person. That’s a total American footprint of about 161 million hectaresthe size of Greenland!

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the conventional housing model is fundamentally flawed and unsustainable. Just like a patient on life support, nearly all houses are dependent on centralized municipal utilities. Without these lifelines, most homes would be rendered completely useless, yet most people find themselves living contentedly in poorly designed homes because they are the most widely available option.

One can easily imagine the limitations, dependency, and vulnerability of being on life support in a hospital. What if you found out that you had to stay on a life support system for the rest of your life? Many people would rather die than live this way. We are living this way.—Michael Reynolds

Thankfully, as we move into the 21st century, more practical and ecologically-sustainable options are becoming available. Some homes interface harmoniously with the systems of the Earth, allowing us to work with nature instead of against it. This type of dwelling is capable of fuelling itself and can also heat and cool itself. It’s capable of harvesting and recycling rain water, growing food year-round, and dealing with all its own waste, all while saving the homeowner time and money. Many who are truly committed to green living are abandoning conventional modes of housing for the most radically green alternative–the Earthship.

Earthship Biotecture


Invented in Taos, NM by renegade architect Michael Reynolds of Earthship Biotecture, the Earthship is a low impact passive-solar home, which doesn’t rely on centralized municipal utilities. Thirty years ago, Reynolds realized that “the accepted concept of housing supported by massive centralized systems is not appropriate, safe, or reliable.” He understood that if we were going to be serious about drastically reducing global environmental devastation, we would need to evolve beyond our dependence on centralized systems. Thus, he began pioneering a whole new field of architecture, which he coined “Biotecture”–a synthesis of architecture and biology. Essentially, Biotecture is concerned with building homes that are in congruence with nature, interfacing with the existing systems of the planet instead of exploiting and defacing them. Much like an organism, the Earthship is in a symbiotic relationship with its environment. It is not separate from the earth, but rather in unison with it; harmoniously interconnected, its systems are highly in tune with the organic rhythms of the planet. It does this by adhering to six core principles of sustainable living: heating and cooling without fuel, power generation, harvesting of water, on-site sewage treatment, in-home food production and building with recycled materials.

Thermal mass and passive-solar design


In developing the Earthship, Michael Reynolds tackled the problem of how to heat and cool a home without a conventional heating and cooling system. The solution was thermal mass, which (much like a battery) stores and releases heat energy. The living spaces in an Earthship are designed as a series of U-shaped rooms, surrounded on three sides by thermal mass in the form of used automobile tires, rammed with densely packed earth. To give you an idea of how densely the tires can be packed, consider that the average tire can store as much as three wheelbarrows full of earth.

These U-shaped rooms are aligned towards angled windows along the entire southern face of the building. The windows allow plenty of sunlight to enter, which heats the massively dense walls. In the winter, when the temperature in the house drops below the temperature of the walls, heat releases from the walls and warms the living space to a comfortable room temperature. In the hot summer months, with the sun high in the sky, direct sunlight enters only the front of the home and doesn’t heat the U-shaped rooms. Since the Earthship is partially built into the earth, the naturally cool temperature of the earth keeps the Earthship nice and comfortable. Most people are shocked to find out Earthships can maintain room temperature in both the scorching heat of the desert and in the penetrating chill of the winter, making them suitable for nearly every climate on earth. This passive-solar design is not only ecologically friendly, but economically friendly as well. It saves residents from both rising heating and cooling costs.

Renewable energy


Earthships use solar panels and wind turbines to generate renewable energy from the sun and wind. Power is stored in a series of batteries and sent to a power-organizing module, which converts the energy into conventional circuit-breaker panels. The number of solar panels and wind turbines needed is up to the homeowner, but since lighting and appliances tend to be energy efficient, a relatively small amount of power generation is required.

Rainwater harvesting


Reynolds wanted to design homes that are completely independent from municipal water supplies. He realized that fresh water scarcity is a big issue for humanity. Only 2.53 percent of the planet’s water is fresh, two-thirds of which is locked up in glaciers. The remainder is stored in lakes, rivers, aquifers and rainfall run-off. According to the World Water Development Report, in the worst-case scenario, by 2050, seven billion people in sixty countries will be faced with water scarcity.  An Earthship directly addresses this issue by connecting to a direct and permanent source of fresh water–rainfall. Earthships use roof catchment systems to collect rainwater, which is then stored in a giant cistern outside of the house. Gravity pulls the water into the water-organizing module, which filters and pumps the water to a solar hot water heater mounted on the roof. The water is then distributed to where it is needed. Reynolds designed the Earthship to recycle its water four times, allowing it to harvest water adequately in countries that receive as little as 7 inches of total annual precipitation.

All the harvested water is treated on site. Dirty water from sinks and showers travels through a particle filter into a series of rubber-lined planters, called “botanical cells.” The water is oxygenated by the roots of the plants and cleaned up enough to be used for toilet flushing. The black water from the toilet is then pumped to a conventional septic tank. After being recycled four times, the water is used to nourish plants grown outside.

Food production


In addition to the shortage of fresh water, humanity is faced with yet another obstacle to overcome: food scarcity. To address this looming issue, Reynolds realized that it’s imperative for homeowners to grow their own food so he designed the Earthship to double as a greenhouse. The botanical cells running along the south-facing windows receive ample sunlight for vegetation to grow throughout the year. Tropical plants, such as bananas, kiwis, pineapples and avocados, flourish indoors, even during the winter season. Some Earthships feature expanded food production capabilities where one-third of total square footage is dedicated to additional greenhouse food growing and raising of animals, including chickens, goats and pigs. The goal is to produce enough food in one’s home to be self-sustaining.

Recycled materials


Lastly, Reynolds concluded that a home shouldn’t have to be built out of expensive and ecologically damaging materials. Instead, he looked towards what we obviously have in overabundancegarbage! He designed the Earthship to be built using recycled materials such as used automobile tires, bottles, aluminum cans and reclaimed wood. Used tires may be the most abundant building material we have. In some rare cases, people get paid to take away large piles, but in most cases, old tires are simply given away in bulk because disposal is so difficult.

Earthship tires

Depending on the size and design, an Earthship can use between 500 and 5000 tires. Tires are filled with dirt and compacted in place. They are staggered like bricks, creating massive walls which are load bearing and wide enough to serve as their own foundation. Furthermore, the Earthship’s tough and rugged design can withstand earthquakes, hurricanes, and seasonal flooding. They’re even virtually fireproof. Bottles and cans fill in the gaps of the major walls, and are then covered with mud or adobe. As a decorative touch, colourful glass bottles get embedded into the walls, allowing light from outside to pour in, forming radiant, jewel-like patterns on the walls. There are no limits to how beautifully and creatively an Earthship can be built.

By following these core principles in sustainable-housing design, Reynolds tapped into something incredibly powerful. However, Reynolds maintains he has only begun to scratch the surface of what’s actually possible. Being only thirty years old, the Earthship concept is still in its infancy. Reynolds admits it has a long way to go and encourages people to be creative when building. It’s only through trial and error that we can make new discoveries and develop the Earthship to its fullest potential. Indeed, the Earthship design is the closest thing humanity has to a “Noah’s Ark.” It’s no surprise that these independent vessels are rapidly being constructed all over the planet. Like a species awakening from a coma, people all over the globe are realizing the fallible nature of their poorly-designed conventional dwellings and are now substituting them, along with their lifestyles, for a better green alternative.

by Daniel Pie (Republished from Green Lifestyle Magazine issue 2, 2009)

image 1: R0Ng via Compfight cc; image 2: jessicareeder via Compfight cc

  1. This is so inspiring – what a wonderful idea that blends so many different concepts. A greenhouse, too! Wow. I’m somewhat speechless 🙂

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