Earthships for the win! Lot's of them here in Crestone, CO... only 2 hours away north of Taos, NM where they orignated from! Awesome to see more all over the world!

Earthships are always the "gateway drug" of off grid living, ppl think theyre quirky and fun, just like i did in 2004, but over time I've had some reservations about how thwyre made. First is cost, an earthship will cost you as much or up to 10% more per square foot than a conventional home, mostly due to the systems, labor, equipment, etc. not to mention they are a huge TIME sink unless you have an army of people. in the 70s a lot of hippies dropped out and we able to pound tires for tofu, a cot and listening to lobo on 45's ^^ The second thing is the tires....now some will say they offgas, some say they dont, TBH not the biggest concern for me, maybe if i had small kids tho or was gonna live for 70 yrs in it, maybe. The biggest issue with the tires is its a very laborious misguided method to stack earth as a thermal mass for a wall of your home. The pic you should of young Mike says it all, look back to when they were first thought up, a bunch of boomers in the 60s and 70s thought they could get rid of garbage by doing different things than putting it into dumps. Bill Mollison, the grand poo bah of Permaculture in his manual showed things like planting potatoes in the springs of an old mattress....do you plant your potatoes that way??? Probably not, cause its f'n dumb!!!( and thats coming from someone that learned from Geoff Lawton). Individual people onbording municipal trash that can be more efficiently dealt with at scale is a stupid idea...something a bunch of pot smoking hippies thought of in the quad before Mr. Magarnacle's history class or something LOL. You should reach out to Geoff Lawton, the video clip of it is part of a paid course so I dont want to snip it and send, but he would be a good interview not just for building, but his Zaytuna farm produces a ton of produce, animals, food forests, ponds, dams, swales, etc. You aka Mr. Homesteady, have a great advantage at your disposal with your family that has access to Yellow Steel, big excavators etc. If you want to build a thermal mass home with earth as its walls and have passive solar glazing & you can borrow better ideas from the greenhouse world if you want them at angle or go conventional window angles and give up some solar gain. Use that leverage you have especially being busy with a family and KZfaq channel, I would wager TIME is your tightest resource constraint. Use the machines to build and compact your thermal mass walls and berm and dig your climate battery, much faster and you'll need to buy less tofu and hacky sacks LOL Geoff Lawton talked about how he used an excavator to build such a home for a client when doing earthworks there during his course, and gave a similar opinion to the use of the tires that I have. Also as far as heating/cooling a climate battery will be much more efficient and less costly that the tubes out the berm. In PA you'll be a bit more north than Ohio, and I know one fellow in Alberta Canada that has a wood stove in his earthship, in colder more cloudy climates the winter chill is more of an issue than the brighter southwest US. Theres a fellow a couple hundred miles from me that has one, i'd have to look if he has a stove in his or not, but be ready to possibly need one, depending on where you are. A good solution to that is use a geothermal option like the guy in "Citrus in the Snow" uses to grow citrus fruit in Nebraska in his greenhouse, his home and greenhouse are hooked up. There's also much cheaper options than the full on "official" geothermal YT channel Simple Tek has some good ideas. I was surprised to see a composting toilet there, usually earthships have indoor blackwater plumbing, that goes to a willow/wetland remediation bed, although a composting toilet allows you less need for water, but one of the big claims of an earthship is you can flush your toilet with greywater, not having to use fresh water (although that toilet seat was a sight LOL) Another issue is they vastly overstate the amount of food you'll grow in the front of the house, basically treat it as a greywater treatment/herb garden and you'll be fine, but even the most wavy gravy hippie isnt living off what an earthship garden can produce. Sorry if i sound harsh on them, I get it how theyre lovable and awesome at first, I felt that way too, but as I've learned more, I've seen better and easier ways to do the same things without all the patchouli and tye-died crap that sounds good, for the time that the idea came out, it was the best option available, but ideas have grown and moved on, how many songs have you listened to on wax cylinders lately???? If you want a smaller scale version Cody Lundin has build a passive solar place thats doable as well...no tires required.

This is the stuff us now homesteaders were getting our minds blown with 10-15 years ago when we were green to these alternative lifestyles. Thank you for talking about it again and getting us excited for what we could be living in all over again.

My partner used to build earthships as a contractor, and has worked with and learned from Mike Reynolds. I have also volunteered at the build-site of a few. What a lot op people do not realize, is that the pounding of the earth into those tires is VERY labor intensive. Since labor should be seen as a cost, straw houses will likely end up being the better option. I would absolutely recommend trying to properly finish one tire before planning to use them for a whole wall... that way you know what you are getting into.

It took us 1.5 years and $60,000 to build our off-grid, solar passive design home. It's not earthship. The coldest it's been inside our house this winter is 62°. 🌞

Love my earthship here in Taos. Thanks Michael Reynolds.

Thank you for sharing this it's really neat

I love this concept. Using materials that would be discarded in trash piles.

thank you so much for this

Awesome job, and yes we are moving on, selling the old to downsize to the new. It is in the works. Blessings to the path.

So cool!

Awesome video Aust I love the theory of earthships

Thank you ❤

That was very cool looking 😊😁

If you take a look at a book called healthy home you'll see that the amount of off-gassing from lumber that is treated with formaldehyde also the insulation and plastic produce gases and harsh chemical that off gas for years after construction. If you walk into a modern-day home that is built with two-by-fours soaked in formaldehyde insulation produced with oil and chemicals you will see that it smells for about two years after construction.

In Australia we often use rain water tanks and no additional filters etc and NEVER have gotten sick from it in 15 years. It’s lovely water :)

Very interesting.

Yess. I was waiting you to make a video about it. It was missing

Hi Aust I watch a Documentary on Michael. Very Cool and informative. He said he was highly Hated when He started. And then they went inside! LMBO , He is 5hinking about Texas next ! JO JO IN VT 💞💨❄️☃️

The new method is getting tire bales, not individual tires packed with dirt. Tire bales are big "bricks" of tires that have been compressed into 4x4 to 6x6 ft . Then these loaded on semi unloaded and stacked. And easy and fast to bulid with and stack with machinery vs having to line up and pack every tire with dirt. Look up tire bale houses. If still dont like tires, look up hemp crete houses. Where use hemp blocks and concrete to make a house yourself

Please tell me a hempcrete video is coming soon?!

Provident Prepper channel did a video yesterday about MANTI Homestead and a GEOTHERMAL greenhouse they built (that's completely off the grid). They live further North than you do and grow banana's in the winter in their greenhouse. I Know you aren't building a greenhouse but a GeoThermal house Might be something you should look into. Manti Homestead has a you tube channel as well and have a couple of videos about their build.

From what I've seen your R-factor is better than traditional insulation. Interesting build.

I wish I could have an earthship... I'm so wanting one these, for each my children

Dustin just buy a sawmill and mill your own logs for a log home or post and beam.

There is actually one in Pennsylvania already.

In Canada cement dome houses are growing in popularity.

It has been years... can you still smell the old tires "rubber stink" smell?

This is information from 10 or more years ago. . . . I learned about these exact people 10 years ago and about earthships at the same time

just the video I wanted to see.

Those tires cause a problem known as outgassing. And that of course is toxic. But that’s a definite problem with earthship houses other than the obvious problem that they tend to overheat.

Why not just get a modular house they cost between 100 to 200 thousand if you choose a display unit they can be under 100k and there complete I about a week. I am well aware of the stigma of living in a “trailer” but it remains a great way to have a solid home relatively cheap

Why do they call it a ship???🤷‍♀️

That empty spot in every person is reserved for Christ. Seek HIM while HE may be found.🙏 Great video 👍

Earthships are neat, but old tires do have other uses so the recycling angle is tenuous. And there's an idiotic amount of labor involved. Depending on how you value your time, or if you'd have to pay for the labor, an earthship can be more expensive than a well insulated traditional build.

Big problem with tires is they leach all manner of carcinogenic/mutagenic chemicals and heavy metals into the soil and water table if they do meet with moisture, and all of that nasty is actually IN the walls of your house. You're living with it daily. I'm all good with recycled materials, but not that. That tire platform under their cistern made me flinch.

Why not call it an earth berm house🤷‍♀️

These are horrible if you're not in the desert

Thos tires put off poison