Cob: Sustainable Natural Built Homes - Earthships, straw bale, earthen cob, etc.

[David KNAPP]

Dear Sigrid,

Please look for my answers below, thanks.  I find the concept of Earthship living to be very similar to other forms of sustainable natural built homes including straw bale, earthen cob, and earth sheltered homes.  In many cases, when I say the word Earthship, I "could" be referring to any of the above sustainable homes as far as talking about a passive solar dwelling that is independent from utility mains.

David M. Knapp
Senior Test Engineer
Factory Test Equipment / GenRad ATE
Hamilton Sundstrand
4747 Harrison Ave. M/S 376-10
PO Box 7002
Rockford, Illinois 61125-7002
815-394-3010 Desk
815-226-5811 Fax



>>> "David Knapp" <renewables at earthlink.net> 09/09 11:28 AM >>>
----- Original Message -----
From: <sstamkot at freemail.nl>
To: <renewables at earthlink.net>
Sent: Thursday, September 09, 1999 9:12 AM
Subject: Re: Re:

> Hello,
>
> You donït live in an Earthship yet, but you do have lived in one, I
suppose? In that case, Iïve framed some questions fot you.

> At first: Could you tell me your full name, age, job and place of living?

David M. Knapp, 
Age 37, 
Senior Electronics Test Engineer in Aerospace, 
Winnebago, Illinois, USA

> Here are the questions about living in an Earthship:

> * For how long you have lived in an Earthship

We rented an Earthship in Taos, New Mexico for a week in September 1997.
In June 1999 we stayed overnight in a friends Earthship in the mountains of Colorado.
We have visited perhaps thirty different Earthships in various regions of the USA.

> * What are your personal experiences with living in an Earthship

An Earthship is a home that feels very safe and secure to live in.  It is built from heavy thermal mass materials and is not subject to the vibrations and noise of ordinary wood framed homes.  In an Earthship, you ride with the cycles of Mother Nature instead of against them like traditional homes.  You can collect fresh rain water, filter it, use it, recycle and reuse it in the gray water planter and flush toilet.  You collect energy from the sun to provide electricity.  You only use what is renewable and you do not pollute the ground water with discharging of wastes.  You can grow your own food  and flowers in the indoor/outdoor gray water planters which makes it feel like you live in harmony with your environment.

> * Can you mention some pros and cons of living in such a building

A home like this contains materials that are basically free, but are very labor intensive to assemble into a home.  You either pay a construction contractor to build your house about 30% more than a traditional home or you spend several years building it yourself.  This can be a very spiritual experience to shape your home with your own two hands or a very expensive one to have someone do it for you.  Folks that choose to build themselves generally have to be in a position to take a leave of absence from their employment, which means being financially debt free and able to manage and conserve your money expenses appropriately.  The Earthship concept best fits those folks which make their whole lifestyle fit into a sustainable way of life.  If you do not understand the forces of Mother Nature or are willing to work with limited water and electricity, you will have problems making an Earthship work well for you.  The good thing is that a properly built Earthship will require less maintenance in the long run and will incur very few reoccurring expenses like utility bills. This actually will cost less money to live in than a traditional home.

> * Is it true that the request for Earthships is higher, now the millenium
is coming near

I would say that most folks in general have taken the warning of Y2K as a precursor to allowing our technical civilization to rely too much upon its fragile computer systems.  Earthships, straw bale, earthen cob, earth sheltered, etc., homes have been on a ten year increase in building popularity as folks are realizing that the world has finite non-renewable resources and we are all in danger of running out of these extremely limited resources in our lifetime. The world is quickly fouling its nest and there is a small core of us that want to live a better life.  This small group of people is growing rapidly each year as more people experience the benefits of Natural Sustainable housing technology.

> * How do you personally think about the millenium, do you think there will
be problems

I think that the world will experience a few minor headaches from the millennium bug, but I do not give credence to the paranoia that some folks are spewing.  I believe that complete disaster has been avoided thanks to the alarms that many organizations sounded several years ago.  Most of the problems won't be life critical and will fall into the annoying category (E.G. - when is my Government tax refund going to arrive???)

Again, the millennium bug is a blessing in disguise as there are many more potential holes in our world computer networks just waiting for some scenario to trip a world crisis and from now on hopefully better planning will be given to such potential disasters.

> * What are the differences between living in an ïnormalïbuilding and
living in an Earthship

A normal home requires a huge infrastructure of mechanical systems just to keep it alive.  It needs electric power, water, and sewage pipes brought in at great tax payer expense.  Without these huge expensive centralized systems, the traditional home is helpless during a regional disaster similar to the millennium bug or a major storm.  An Earthship is a self contained dwelling that is not dependent on the delivery of power or water from these huge centralized systems, or the competence and lack thereof from mismanagement, or even from the severe taxation of these systems by the government.  A major storm several hundred Kilometers away will not remove power from an Earthship.  Without a constant supply of utility power, a traditional home could freeze in the winter and bake in the summer.  An Earthship is designed to passively buffer the summer heat and winter cold.  Although backup heat is sometimes adding to the comfort zone of the humans that live there, an Earthship will not experience sub-zero temperatures in the winter like a traditional home due to its inherit design.

> * Do you think most of the people who are living in an Earthship will move
after a few years back to a normal house again or is living in an Earthship
for a lifetime

No, I do not think they will ever go back to a traditional home.  Many folks invest several years and most of their life savings into building a sustainable home.  Properly built, they will never want to leave the environment that takes care of them and provides a very peaceful place to live.  A Generic Earthship as defined by Michael Reynolds, uses recycled components like used Automobile tires and aluminum cans/glass bottles in its core construction, and also uses non-toxic finishes such as adobe plaster and flagstone flooring.  Traditional housing is suffering from the leaching of toxic glues and volatile organic compounds (voc's) that cause many folks to develop severe health related problems over many years.  Earthship dwellers seek to live a more natural and healthy lifestyle.  No one will want to go back to a traditional house once they have experienced a properly built Earthship.  This also is true of a properly built Straw bale, earthen cob, and other natural built sustainable home too.

> * Is living in and building an Earthship only possible in hot countries
like Mexico and America

The basic Earthship concept has been adapted to a multitude of climates from cold mountain climates to severely hot climates.  Earthships have even been built at 14,000 feet above sea level in Bolivia.  We stayed overnight in an Earthship in Colorado at 8,700 feet above sea level.  We were very comfortable and felt well taken care of.  In cold climates, steps are taken to insulate from the cold ground and retain more heat.  In very hot climates, extra steps are taken to limit sun intake and to bury the structure further into the ground to take advantage of the cooler below grade temperatures.

> * How does the technology works in winter, because the water will be
frozen etc.

The roof of the Earthship is angled slightly towards the winter sun.  It is a darker color (varies slightly depending on the construction technique) and will allow the sun's energy to absorb into the darker material, thus allowing the snow to melt at slightly below freezing temperatures.  Each Earthship contains storage for 3,000 - 10,000 gallons of rain catch water, so normally there is enough water stored in a protected earth bermed cistern to carry the needs of the occupants until a temporary rise in temperature melts a larger quantity of water.  This works very well and very few Earthships run out of water in the winter.  The occupants monitor their water storage amounts and adjust their water use according to what is sustainable on the local level.

> * In The Netherlands, Earthships arenït populair. Have you any reason why,
do you think we are to down-to-earth for something like this

Earthships have been under development for about thirty years, straw bale in the US for over 100 years, and earthen cob for thousands of years.  A home that takes care of itself is a radical concept that doesn't not fit into the paradigm of the traditional home owner.  Earthships have traditionally only been built by those folks wishing for a better life and are willing to risk ridicule and criticism to move Earthships from the experimental stage into the common every day stage some day.  The same is true for straw bale, earthen cob, and other earth sheltered housing.  The last ten years has seen a long trend toward a universal emerging consciousness toward sustainable natural built housing.  Consumers have to realize that the shape a sustainable house takes sometimes will not please their taste for a romantic looking home based on their traditional favorite housing concept.  It is something that may take a generation or two for the world to get used too before it is accepted as an acceptable building concept in everyday neighborhoods.  Right now, most local building codes make building a sustainable natural built home like Earthhips, straw bale, and earthen cob homes extremely expensive or impossible to build due to the inability of the owner-builder to assume sole responsibility for building and living in these homes.  The building code officials generally take the position that they have to shield themselves from potential liability should someone get sick from a poorly maintained composting or gray water recycling system.  This is very unfortunate, but is being attacked on many levels.  Slowly, as straw bale, earthen cob, and Earthships start to appear in many areas of the world, the code officials are examining the many benefits as they outweigh the few risks that are present.  Once code officials are confirming that these homes are actually self contained vessels sailing the seas of sustainable living and don't pollute, but protect the fresh water supply, they open up the concept to many others.  The code officials also like the fact that they don't have to pipe in huge infrastructures of power lines, water pipes, and sewage lines.  There are potentially billions of dollars in tax payer money savings that could be invested in feeding and housing the homeless and the poor.  Some corporations see sustainable natural built housing as a threat to their empire of forcing billions of people to hook up to their expensive infrastructure of power and water.  Each Earthship, straw bale, and earthen cob home potentially represents income not available to the large corporations providing the utilities. The sustainable natural building concept takes the power away from the huge mega corporations and puts it back into the hands of the common everyday people.  Governments haven't yet figured out how to tax the sunshine or the rainfall when it falls onto your own roof, but I imagine that they will figure out a way once enough folks discover the secret that many, many folks are now enjoying while living in an utility independent sustainable natural built home!

> * How many Earthships are there in America

I don't really know for sure.  In 1996, the figure was something like 300 in the USA.  I'd imagine three years later it could be approaching 1,000, but I have no data on this.  If you consider the other sustainable building technologies like straw bale and earthen cob homes which employ rain catch water, gray water, and off-grid living, that figure could more than triple in a couple of years.

> * What made you decide to go on living in an Earthship (for a short time,
I mean)

We rented an Earthship for a week because we really wanted to experience first hand the experience of living in an Earthship before we invested more time or money into the concept.  I think that everyone interested in the subject should do the same.  I must warn you though, you can be hooked on it and it could turn into an obsession very quickly.  The same is true with a straw bale, earthen cob, or earth sheltered homes.

> * How did your family react

I was at first very afraid of how my family would react to limited electricity, fresh water, and a room full of thriving plants!  But they loved it and thrived immensely on it.  With the front sloped windows, we felt like we were a part of nature rather than being shielded from it.  At night the stars beamed in as if we had a front row seat to watch the show.  It wasn't immediately apparent, but after a week we grew very accustomed to the daily cycles of Mother nature and actually felt like a part of her biorhythm.  It was very depressing to go back home to a traditional home with square flat walls and no real view of our local environment that was hooked up to a life support infrastructure of pipes and wires as if it were a dying patient barely clinging on to life.  In contrast, our rented Earthship felt very comfortable, healthy, and something that would grow with us until we got to a very ripe old age many years from now.  It is something that is VERY difficult to put into words.  I could not possibly invent the words needed, only to suggest that everyone interested in the concept go experience it for themselves.  One day is not enough, you need to be in a properly built one for a week or more to experience to solar batteries, the cisterns filling up with fresh rain water, and to pick fresh tomatoes from the built in greenhouse in the middle of the winter.

I want to add that the Earthship concept does not fully own the sustainable housing concept, but many of the Earthship systems fit very well into the sustainable natural housing concepts of straw bale, earthen cob, earth sheltered housing, and others independent living dwellings.

We currently are in the middle of a ten year plan to downsize our dependence and wastefulness on modern society and will be building a sustainable natural built home based on many of the concepts we have discussed here.  Our idea of the ideal place to build is with others who find similar tastes in clean living and a desire for a better world someday.  A model community for others to examine, learn from, and perhaps copy, will fulfill our lifetime quest to help others find this better lifestyle so that the earth can sustain mankind for ever in a mutually healthy and Loving environment.

> These were the question. Please donït notice my bad English, I hope you
can uunderstand the question.
> Again: Iïm so gratefull you wanted to answer my questions! If you have any
question, please ask them when you are answering mine. If you know someone
who is living in an Earthship at this time, please let me know.
>
> Thanks again!!
>
> Greetings,
>
> Sigrid Stamkot
> De Telegraaf
> Holland

The above is representative of the Earthship sustainable living concepts as I've come to know and understand them.  There may be a few critical errors in them, but the errors are mine and the concepts are as I have tried to understand and further define.  I hope that some of my peers will hopefully send corrections to you if they find any large or small errors I may have missed.  I also have welcomed others to make their own comments and interpretations to the questions that you have asked me.  My views are certainly not totally unique, but they do not speak for anyone other than myself and my families experiences (as well as a few friends who live in owner-built Earthships and regularly report back to me).

I would appreciate getting an electronic copy of your article should you decide to publish it.  Some friends of our lived in Holland for several years and could interpret it for us.  Thanks.

Namaste,

Dave Knapp

David & Sheila Knapp
Winnebago, Illinois
Renewables at earthlink.net 
http://www.bigfoot.com/~renewables/