Hello everyone,

looking for information about earthships..
I can see there are many expèrts on this forum, but i cannot find the answer to next question.
I was wondering about the magnetic field of the tires used for building an earthship.
Is it not like living in an house full of electricity wires, a constant radiation?
Correct me if im wrong...

Thanks 
hertus 

I can help you with this but I need some back ground first. Do you hear voices in your head?

Are you talking about tires emitting EMF? Like Ghost Hunters :) Well you can buy the same meters that the Ghost Hunters use and test the tires I suppose...

http://www.theghosthunterstore.com/emfmeters.html#EMF-822A_EMF_Detector

I would be much more concerned about the tires emitting toxic gasses over time.

David Wright :

http://www.davidwrightaia.com/

... a famous environmental architect that's been doing it since the 70's (I have one of his old books) has this to say about Earthships :

(quote)

I visited the headquarters in New Mexico last year. The whole concept sucks as developed by Reynolds.
The idea is OK but needs to be updated and cleaned up, especially the use of toxic tires.

Cheers,
David Wright, AIA

(end quote)

Check out his book here :

http://www.amazon.com/Passive-Solar-Primer-Sustainable-Architecture/dp/0764330705

It's really good.

So what's a good alternative to the tires? Well the straw bale guys have designed a straw bale Earthship :

http://www.balewatch.com/990earth.html

There are other cool straw bale houses I've got my eye on here :

http://www.balewatch.com

Specifically here :

http://www.balewatch.com/strip2.html

50 plans starting with least expensive/small and working up.

I can dig Reynold's idea - take the Earth's burden and turn it into the Earthlings dwellings, but a lot of people think Earthships are toxic and until it's proved one way or another I don't think it's a good idea to build one.

Luckily there are a lot of alternatives :)

Here is an Earthship that doesn't use any tires :

http://www.thenaturalhome.com/passivesolar.html

Have fun!
Craig

Wires can't generate an magnetic field unless there's electricity running through them.

at spystyle:

Thank you for information, i know that strowbale is a very good alternative (probably better)
But maybe we can use the tires too, otherwise we have to trow them away...

at gregj:

I know that wires only produce a magnetic field when there flows electricity through.
But you can also magnetise steel, which means that the steel always has a magnetic field.

The following link says that those tires are used in cars:

https://prof.hti.bfh.ch/fileadmin/home/mik1/Magnfields_HPJ_revision.pdf

Its a smal field but many tires make a big field.
Im not sure about how trustable this link is and also dont know how strong this field can become.

There are this gauss (or emf) meters to measure this.

I have read that when you live under a hightension electricity line or have a lot of wireless devices in your house that the meters measure a strong field.

Is there already done some testing in tire earthships about this?
Or are there people who can measure this?

Hertus

I would be much more concerned about any speakers in my house than a whole bunch of tires. My jbl L-100's have three 10,000 to 16,000 gauss magnets in each them. I have 7 of those in my living room(for 7.1), so if there was going to be any damage from magnetic fields, I would already be dead. That being said, I just don't like the idea of building a house out of tires. Reinforced concrete is your friend, and with an advanced waterproofing like thoro-seal (the masonry based sealers) and proper drainage, you can ensure a house that won't be damp.


(If you are that worried about emf, just use a thin layer of iron around any emf producers.)

Good useful post Aardvarcus :)

We should all be so helpful :)

As for concern over "Electro magnetic frequency" - it is a popular theory that some people are hyper-sensitive to it, and the idea is that those people can get nauseous and hallucinate.

Here is a wiki about it that I didn't read :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_hypersensitivity

I like Earthships too, I think they look so funky and are so good at using the otherwise garbage of tires.

However, I'd like to see definitive proof that they either are or are not toxic.

There must be a way to prove that?

Hertus, if anything the steel in the tires may actually create a faraday cage of sorts and block emf.

Wiki linky

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage

A Faraday cage requires electrical conductivity between the metal sections and must form a complete enclosure around something to provide a neutral E-field on the interior of the cage.  The iron in the tires is

A: not an ideal conductor and

B: not connected in any sort of lattice work around the region to be neutralized. 

For a Faraday cage to work well against ultra-low frequencies it has to be highly conductive with at least some skin-depth to it. Plating the place with gold or silver to 0.05" thickness or more would provide significant H & E field shielding, at low frequency, as would 0.15"+ aluminum plate.

The magnetic properties of iron will distort static and AC magnetic fields near it, but doesn't behave as a very good low frequency or static magnetic shield even if completely surrounding the region to be protected. Specialized grain-oriented silicon steels can provide some, ferrous alloys called mu-metals would be far far better.

But the whole notion of  static or very low frequency low intensity magnetic fields causing health issues is bunk, sez me. The magnetic properties of biological systems are very slight, and it takes a significant intensity to create a measurable biological effect.  The ferrite cores of the power supplies in your computer & computer display are giving you many orders of magnitude higher doses than any effect a wall of tires would ever have.  If you're concerned about such things, turn the computer off go build yourself a windowless mu-metal shack to hide in, and limit your communication with the world to graphite or charcoal pencil (no eraser, mind you, that steel ferrule holding it has a residual magnetic field) on paper slipped thought the tiniest of mail slots.