Posted: 4/1/2013 12:20:55 AM EDT
| Looks doable for someone on a lower budget, and offers a self sufficient home off the grid. Has any one here ever considered building one. |
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I have.
Eventually came to the conclusion that they aren't cheap at all. The physical labor required to pack tires is just too great. The tire bundles is the way to go if that's your thing, but it still won't be cheaper than a stick build. Even if you get the tires for free. The problem is the cost of the concrete required to encase them. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that an adobe house was my best bet. But since I'm in the Sonora desert, that should surprise no one. If you are in an area with lots of stone and uneven grades, I'd recommend " Earth-Sheltered Houses by Roy Rob " The book is extremely well done and gives you all the ins and outs of building an actual working home that will be livable for a family ( happy wife unit ) instead of a trendy, liberal DINK trophy house. Using the local material will be cheaper than an earthship too. Our ancestors were smart. |
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My sister has one in the desert in New Mexico. I lived there for about a year when I moved here.
Photovoltaic and wind power for the batteries for household appliances. 650' deep well which must use 220vac, hence a 2500 watt generator is needed. A 300 gallon Propane tank for cooking and hot water lasted me an entire year because there is no heater in the house, and none needed. Temp never got above 80 in summer nor below 65 in the winter. As for the costs of construction, I'd say be very careful and find out just how much it'll cost. If you can scrounge the materials you should be OK. One fairly major problem is finding tires of uniform size for the walls. Her place is an oval, maybe 25-30 feet long by 15-18 feet wide (I never measured it). It's very cozy. OK for 2 people, 3 people get a little cramped. You WILL learn energy conservation in your earthship; I found that during sunny weather I could do 2 loads of laundery max before the batteries started getting depleted. (I line-dried my clothes all the time, used the propane dryer only in emergencies.) |
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some friends had a super insulated house built here in Maine. Use alittle over a cord of firewood annually. 8" of foam under the slab, 8" SIP panels on the walls ,Triple glazed windows. Also grid tied photovoltaics. Probanbly5-10% more than standard construction. Quick to build as "regular" construction. Minimal naintainance. they Like it a lot.
rob Roy's first book was a cordwood construction home I think 28'x28' set with a wall of glass on the south and small window in the gable end with sod on the roof. Other friends built one and reported to me after going away for the winter and covering the south facing glass wall it never gotbelow 38 degrees F with no supplemental heat.they later added a green house on one side. This looks like a very doable home,both in cost and comfort,maintainance,etc. 
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I have. Eventually came to the conclusion that they aren't cheap at all. The physical labor required to pack tires is just too great. The tire bundles is the way to go if that's your thing, but it still won't be cheaper than a stick build. Even if you get the tires for free. The problem is the cost of the concrete required to encase them. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that an adobe house was my best bet. But since I'm in the Sonora desert, that should surprise no one. If you are in an area with lots of stone and uneven grades, I'd recommend " Earth-Sheltered Houses by Roy Rob " The book is extremely well done and gives you all the ins and outs of building an actual working home that will be livable for a family ( happy wife unit ) instead of a trendy, liberal DINK trophy house. Using the local material will be cheaper than an earthship too. Our ancestors were smart. That was my conclusion as well you could have built the earthship house out of concrete with all the concrete you use to incase the tires. Interesting concepts on water collection and grey water use that I would like to try. +1 for Rob Roy great book! |
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Biggest thing with straw bales is making sure everything is dry. Lots of reading on building stuff with straw bales and if you enclose them in plaster or whatever, forgetting the proper terminology, they won't burn because they are enclosed and no source of air will feed them if it is all sealed up properly. Cord wood might be an option as well, basically mortar and small logs of split wood used as filler in the wall to take up space. But I forget the insulation concept on this one. Lots of options. To some extent it comes down to finding a whole lot of something that is easily accessable and cheap or free, and then figuring out how to build a dwelling with it. If I get some property I kind of want to build some various sheds with different designs just to mess with options. |
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Looks doable for someone on a lower budget, and offers a self sufficient home off the grid. Has any one here ever considered building one. Yes, Yes I have. And I just took a very, very brief course on Green building trends and green financing. Very brief. If you build it to be off grid, it can be a very efficient off grid structure. Or a very efficient on grid structure. Efficiency in and of itself does not preclude grid connection in any way. You can have either or both if you want. Also, the structure, while efficient is not a self sufficient home without additional energy inputs. It does require additional energy for air exchange, water, cooking, ect. That being said, all of those can be provided with supplemental renewable energy systems (solar is the most obvious) adding to the self sufficiency of the home, but the efficiency offered by the design style in and of itself does not offer self sufficiency, rather assists one in obtaining self sufficiency by negating the heating/cooling requirements of traditional building in most climates. Not at all. Unless you happen to be an engineer with significant construction/contracting experience who owns a lot of heavy equipment. |
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What about straw bail house? Looks like the labor in setting the bails would be much faster that the Ram'd earth and tires. It would be really good for Colorado. Bales could probably had for next to nothing. I don't know about Colorado, but here in Texas hay bales are not cheap. Perhaps cheaper than many other filler/insulation materials though. |
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What about straw bail house? Looks like the labor in setting the bails would be much faster that the Ram'd earth and tires. It would be really good for Colorado. Bales could probably had for next to nothing. I don't know about Colorado, but here in Texas hay bales are not cheap. Perhaps cheaper than many other filler/insulation materials though. We're talking about straw bales, not hay bales. There is definitely a big price difference. The advantage of straw bales is that they are both the insulation and the structural load bearing wall in one. You only need long steel rebar running through them vertically into the footing to hold it together. I went looking into these today and was surprised to find out that people have built them in AZ. Termites are a huge problem out here. I had figured the termites would have destroyed them faster than wood houses, but apparently termites don't like straw very much. |
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i have been to taos and visited with michael reynolds a few years ago. i am in colorado and have pondered ideas for self sustainable designs. of course right now i am living in a stick framed house in a denver suburb but i have property in the mountains that i will build on at some point.
site orientation should be one thing you should pay the most attention to when using a passive solar design. make sure you can use the sun to it's maximum potential in the winter. also plan for larger overhangs for summer shade as well as window shades. here in colorado it's very sunny year round but hot as hell in the summer and cold in the winter. straw bale seems great. pretty much post and beam with bale infill. use a humidity sensor to monitor your bales and ensure they are dry. earthships and rammed earth structures are great but VERY labor intensive. the key is using passive solar and air vents. the use of water is great as the first use is consumption, the second use is for flushing, the third is for watering indoor plants with greywater and the fourth is for feeding outdoor planting beds with blackwater. the route i believe i will go with is pumicecrete. using pumice in a lightweight concrete mixture, you will get an R1.5 of insulation for every inch of wall thickness. set up your forms, pour your walls, plaster the interior and stucco the exterior. yes you will have a 14 inch wall to get an R21 value but that's less than a bale i think. pour a concrete slab and run radiant in floor heat. perhaps a passive solar setup with a trombe wall for conduction and radiation ? water can still be used like the earthship with a catchment system and cistern. the only thing about pumice is the availability of it locally. they are using pumice in new mexico so i know i can get it pretty close but not sure about where you are from. from a security stand point, a 14" lightweight concrete wall would offer more protection from most rounds. with the exception of the rammed tire wall set into a hill. hope this rant helps even a little bit. |
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We're talking about straw bales, not hay bales.
There is definitely a big price difference. Hay has the nutritious part of the plant still attached. Straw is the stalk that they attach to. Hay is upwards of $10.00 PER BALE currently (in my part of New Mehico); I don't know what straw is going for, but it is widely considered a waste material. You can put straw in a muddy field and it'll still be visible 2 years later; it doesn't break down easily. Farmers frequently put it down atop certain crops (strawberries for example) to protect them against frost. One of the problems with straw bales is that (like the tires used in an earthship) you must be careful to select bales of the same size. Density is important, too. And they must be DRY, DRY, DRY in the core when you build with them. Finally, many states have strict building codes preventing straw bale construction. NM for example forbids using straw bale as a load bearing wall, unless you get an architect or engineer to sign off on the plans. By the time you include the additional engineering fees and the "normal" frame building techniques, you save little or nothing. Straw bale has an old history in the US. There's a building in Nebraska that dates back to 1896. Link to article. I did some study on this before I moved to NM. Adobe is by and large the preferred "back-to-earth" method here, although in Taos there's a SB community, mostly built by and for wealthy hippies. eta One method they used ot make adobe blocks is (or was) to cut blocks from a river bank! The clay there had lots of roots and plantlife growing in it and you didn't need to mix straw with the adobe, then form the blocks; they came premixed and preformed. |
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What about straw bail house? Looks like the labor in setting the bails would be much faster that the Ram'd earth and tires. Good luck getting homeowners insurance on a straw baled home, let alone financing. It is difficult. Non weight bearing/non structural straw baled homes are easier to finiance IIRC. THe difference is that there is a definate frame built first on a non weight bearing straw baled home, then the bales are stacked and sealed within the frame. There is a better way to explain that, but I cannot recall it. the Green Building Finance consortium is a good resource for finding financing on super efficient non standard building styles. Financing is out there, it is just uncommon. The premise behind green financing is the efficiency and associated energy savings actually increase borrowing power due to the lack of energy bills or reduction of energy bills, thus improving your cost to income ratio. As the green trend increases, so will the availability of financing, but we are still in the infancy of the movement of such homes into the mainstream. National Residential energy services network (RESNET) may be a better resource for finding a lender than the GBFC. Not sure what the best resource is. Oikos for materials and possibly builders. Green building Council may also help find builders and idea. Energy efficiency & renewable energy netowrk (EREN) should be another good information source. |
| Thanks for all the input and suggestions. I will be buying my first home in the near future and going green/self sufficient is one of the things I was looking at. I've been thinking about moving backing to FL but in reality I am able to move any where I want in the country. Again it's something I've been thinking about and depending on where I end up might be an option. Again thanks for all the input. |
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I am in the process of buying land to start a build. Blueprints for these are annoyingly expensive. The 3 volume book series shows everything you need, but if you're building in an area that requires drawings get ready to fork out some cash. $8,000 for the 3 bedroom 1500 sq global model.
TN does not have a mandatory building code, nor does FL if you're building a non living structure on agricultural land. The idea is great, but making it happen with permits, inspections, and hoops is a pain. |