February 10, 2020 – Roadwarners

More baking happened this morning.

And we left Colorado to drive south to Santa Fe, New Mexico where Edwin’s 2 sisters live.

One of the employees from the hot springs last night was telling us about how she moved out from California and built and is living in an Earthship where she lives completely off the grid. She told us about a large community outside Taos and we should check them out. We were planning on driving through Taos anyway on the way to Santa Fe because Edwin’s parents were married in Taos.

We stopped by the earthships.

So what exactly is an earthship? Earthships are “off the grid” homes. They are built with 3 sides of the home covered in dirt to provide thermal mass. The construction of the dirt walls are often built with rubber tires filled with dirt. The tires and dirt absorb the solar heat from the day and radiate the heat back into the home during the night and provides temperature regulation.

Most homes are covered in solar panels and/or wind turbines to store the energy in batteries. Earthships are designed to collect and store their own power. They are not plugged into the public utilities.

So what about water? Earthships are designed to catch all the water they need from the local environment. They catch rain water and store in 4-8 1500 gallon cisterns that are buried underground next to the home.

And how do you make the water last? Well it’s designed to be used 4 times. 1)Water is used for drinking, showers, washing hands etc… 2)The water is then recycled and through gravity is led through the home where it provides water for the plants and vegetables inside the home. 3)Then the water is recycled and used for toilet flushing. 4)Water is then used for outside landscaping and growing things that are not leafy greens or food with large root systems.

For the 2nd cycle the water is used to grow a vegetable garden inside the home or plants for carbon dioxide/oxygen exchange.

Earthships are also designed for low cost building as well as using recycled materials. Tires are in abundance everywhere including 3rd world countries. So are other materials like bottles, aluminum cans or plastic garbage. These materials are used in building to provide structure, be a low cost for those in poor environments, and to use up resources that would otherwise be landfill. Aluminum cans from below can be built into a “brick block”. You can also collect plastic bottles, fill them with plastic garbage.