Lisa's Chaos: house

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Earthship homes

After a yummy organic breakfast at the Taos Cafe we headed off to the Earthship community.

This is the main house, the one you can tour inside and out. They are very neat! You recycle a lot of things in the building of one, like tires in the walls act as filler so you use less concrete but also act as insulation.

Using wind and sun for power and gathering rain for your water, you end up spending less than $100 a year on utilities. Basically a berm home you don't have heat nor air, you use the windows and vents to maintain the temperature you want.

This is the roof that catches all the rain water and funnels it to a holding tank. The openings you see there are how you vent the house. Did I mention you grow your own food inside too? Very cool!

The water goes through this screen to catch any ickies before they get in your tank. You use the filtered, treated water for bathing, cooking, etc. Then the grey water (the water used for bathing, cooking, etc) is used to water the planters and flush the toilet. The black water (toilet flushes and such) goes to a standard septic.

Little discs cut from the trunk of a tree are being used as stepping stones in the "garden".

They leave the front wall exposed so visitor can see how it all goes together. The film we watched says the bottles don't actually add any insulating value. But the bathroom of the house had several in the wall and it looked pretty neat being able to see light through the circles.