This House in Adelaide Was Built With $170K and a Lot of Used Tyres
Night is close to falling across the Adelaide Hills as a permaculture group talks about what Martin Freney should be planting around his earthship when it’s finally done. Down the hill is Marty’s earthship, which is an ideal home for anyone who fears the coming environmental apocalypse and is looking for a cushy place to ride it out.
An earthship is an off-the-grid, entirely self-sustaining house that’s able to provide all life’s essentials. It grows its own food, balances its temperature, collects its own water, produces its own power, recycles its wastewater and is built using materials like dirt, used tyres, and beer cans all stuff that absorbs heat during the day and pushes it back out at night.
Excusing himself from the group, Marty shows me around his nearly-complete home. He’s not nearly that hardcore when it comes to the self-sufficiency side of it, although he keeps bee hives and chickens nearby.
“It’s a good answer to lots of the problems coming at us with climate change and resource scarcity and expensive electricity, expensive water, expensive food,” Marty said when I asked why he decided to build this thing.
What is an Earthship Home?
An Earthship is a type of passive solar house that is made of both natural and upcycled materials (such as earth-packed tires). Earthships can be completely off-grid or partially off-grid.
Earthships can be built in any part of the world, in any climate (with a permit) and still provide electricity, potable water, contained sewage treatment and sustainable food production.
Earthships are thermal mass homes first, passive solar homes second.
Whatever temperature goes into an Earthship, it will hold… and since it is also a Passive Solar House, it is also very tight and interacts only with the sun and the earth for heating and cooling, providing stable comfort year round in any climate. This results in being able to provide a sustainable home on property that may not be situated to the ideal of 13.5 degrees east of south.
Construction and Permit Drawings
Earthship Floor Plans. Pangea Builders are experts at acquiring permits for passive house, earthships and any other type of green building. Included in our services are production of construction and permit set drawings to build your beautiful green building. This includes Earthships and any other type of floor plan layout for off-grid living.
Off-grid floor plans and Custom drawings for Earthships and all other types of floor plans, layouts and custom designs.
Pangea Design | Build can get your permit and build for you anywhere in the USA.
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