Our Earthship Build - 2007/08/09

What most people don't realize is that we built two earthships on this land and our project started in 2007 with the delivery of the tires.  The problem we faced is that the drive way was narrow so the driver could not get into the yard with his big truck.  We purchased the tires from the local tire recycler.  The local company has since been purchased by the tire mafia as they rake in the money due to the $4 recycle fee that people are now charged when they buy a tire.  They are now making millions.  If you want to find tires now, the best way is to build a relationship with the local tire shop.  They would be more than happy to give you their tires as it saves them the $4 fee.

We spent the next 4-5 hours hauling 15 ton of tires back into our yard.  The driver dumped his load onto the county road.  A very stressful day that we now laugh about.  

I then hired a hoe operator to dig a dugout for us and use the earth as back fill for the earthships.   He also built our drive way which I was very grateful for.  It took a few years for it to get into shape, but with enough gravel, it all worked out.  We live on the top of the Tawatinaw Valley and there is lots of sand and gravel around here.

The very first tire I ever pounded.  It was the start of a beautiful relationship! 

You can see a couple rows of tires in this picture.  The tires are on the north, so that when we are done, the south sun will shine into the building and heat up all this thermal mass.  

The garage in the background is where we lived for the first two years of our project.  When we started we thought that we could have the buildings done in a year, but pounding this many tires takes a lot of work.  Michael Reynolds and his crew makes it look easy.  But to manage expectations, it took my wife and I over 4 months to pound 8 rows of tires for a 75 foot building.  We worked two days, took a day off as the work was demanding on our bodies.

Our cisterns went in at row 5 and you can see that I filled them 1/2 full of water.  If I was to do this again, I would put them in the center of the building along the back wall instead of in the east wall.  Reason is to ensure that during a storm, the water collection system can capture all the water.  It takes too long for the water to flow down the front of the building to get to the tanks and it overflows and causes flooding.  I'm going to redesign the roof so that all the water flows backwards so that during a storm, the water would flow down the back of the earthship instead.

Note:  We experience -40C / -40F temperatures during the winter and some winters last 7 months.  The tops of our tanks are not even covered with earth yet as we are not done our project.  We get ice in the tanks as the tops freeze, but we have never had the bottom freeze and we have always been able to draw water from the tanks.  The earthship keeps the tanks from freezing in the winter, which is a testimony to the power of thermal mass.

We were tired of pounding tires, so we dug down a couple feet and got to work on the foundation for the south wall.  The space in front of the foundation is for a 10 foot atrium that will run down the whole length of the building.  The atrium provides a second row of glass to buffer the building from the extreme cold weather in the winter and shade the building from the summer sun.

The south wall is up and our home made trusses are going up too.  The span is 20 feet and you can tell that we are getting late in the season by the length of the shadows on the floor.  On winter solstice, the sun is so low, that it will shine half way up the back wall.  On a good sunny day in the winter, it could be -35C outside and the sun will heat up the building to +25C easily.  

When the roof went up, we installed our solar system into the Earthship.  It has been in a shed for the past two years powering the shop that we lived in.  We have not moved in yet as the earthship was not ready for winter. 

This is our Earthship in the late fall of 2008.  We ran out of building season, so we only managed to get the plastic up as we were not ready for the windows.  There is no insulation in the attic either, just a sheet of plastic on the ceiling.  The building sat that way all winter and despite our harsh winters, it only got down to -4C / 25F during the night and +10C / 50F during the day.

I took pictures of our project from the end of the driveway.  You might find the progression interesting.

This is taking about April 2007.  No gravel on the drive way yet.  Our shop is being framed right now.  Clay has been piled up for the two earthship builds.

Spring in Alberta at times looks like winter.

My family has joined me now and we are all living in that small camper waiting for the garage to be built.  It was a very wet spring which made construction challenging.

We got some gravel in and the garage is now ready for us to move in.  We are using the camper as a kitchen now.  It was a great day and our infrastructure to meet our needs is starting to come together.  

We started on our partners earthship first.  It is Sept 2007 and it is coming along.  Our solar system is generating all our power now and had been for most of the summer.  We are now scrambling to prepare the shop for winter as we did not expect to be in it through a winter.  So we insulated it and got a stove setup.  Preparing for our first winter off grid.  

This picture was taking about April 2009.  Our earthship (on the right) now has windows and we are continuing the build with the intent of moving in before winter ... whether it is ready or not.  We did two winters in the shop and don't want to do another.  

I must admit, it was tough work and we endured a lot.  But we made it and I now look back and marvel at what we accomplished and laugh at a lot of the things that happened.  I lived more in the last 10 years than I did in the previous 40 and I would do it all again if I had to.  Our Earthship is still not done as we build out of pocket, no debt.  But it has kept us safe through some brutal winters.