We are also considering to build a small cabin or something cheap to live in while we build the property, so if anyone has any suggestions for this kind of cabin or home that is around 400-700 sqft that would be great.

Posted By zehboss on 14 Feb 2011 07:57 AM
No home should be cave like. Good zero energy design has high natural lighting, properly placed window, and no disadvantages. Only bennefits of smart design.

Posted By zehboss on 19 Jun 2015 03:08 PM
Great job on the earth ship. It is alot of manual labor but very satisfying, and a great personal accomplishment. 20,000 tires at 15 minutes of sledge hammer packing each. That is 5000 hours of tire pounding. Hope you had alot of free help for pizza and beer.

Congrats

Brian

No, that the beauty of "tire bale".  There is no tire pounding.  The bales went up in 2 days, using a skid steer.

Posted By zehboss on 19 Jun 2015 04:19 PM
Cool construction method. To bad it is not recognized by most code official, appraisers, building officials, mortgage entities, structural building engineers, insurance entities, etc.

Did you build outside code area or find a PE to sing off? Did you build out of pocket or get financing?

Anyway good job.

Brian


According to the Earthship folks in Taos, NM, there are Earthships in every state in the US.

That said, permitting can definitely be a concern.  I'm in El Paso County in Colorado, and they are more open to alternative building.  There are quite a few Earthships and bermed homes in the area.  At one point, one of the Inspectors questioned a section of our design.  I mentioned another person in the county who used the same technique, stating that "You approved it then".  He actually looked up that building permit, and then went on to OK mine.  Most of the concerns with Regional Building Departments revolve around fire egresses (no windows in the bedrooms).  They demanded that our bedrooms be on the ends, and then they considered the two exit doors the egresses.

A structural engineer did sign off on the design.  This wasn't as difficult.  It's fairly typical construction, once the bond beam is set over the tire bails.

We did not take out a mortgage.  And financing is often an issue.  I've heard some stories about people who got started, and had to halt construction because loans were not approved.  People tell me that this is changing, but I have not seen this.  We also had some insurers who didn't want to insure it.  Actually, State Farm came out, and gave us a nice quote, after we were turned down by others over the phone.

Posted By Beastmaster on 09 Feb 2011 07:35 PM
yes, we can get tires for free and we wil fill each by hand.  We are going to look into getting tire bales, but i am not sure if they are free or not.

Beastmaster,
Our tire bales were free from Tire Recyclers in South Denver.  The state gives them $50/bale for disposing of the tires.  We had to give them copies of the building permit, so that they could submit the refund request to the state.  We did have to pay for shipping.  Seven semi truckloads, 70 mile trip each way, and it cost about $3K.

Posted By Beastmaster on 10 Feb 2011 09:54 AM

One of the main reasons i want to build with tires is because of the constant warm temp.  What i want to know will a well constructed tire home be 65 degrees or around that in the winter with south facing glass walls and a U shaped shell?

Without any heating at all, as long as the doors and windows are closed, the Earthship won't drop below 58 deg F.  We've seen ours drop down to 60 deg F, when we were gone a few days, and the nights were near zero.

Posted By Lee Dodge on 13 Feb 2011 03:36 PM

Beastmaster-

Some friends here in Colorado built an earthship house with lots of glass on the south and then the rest built into a hillside with tires for the sides and back wall.  They were thrilled to get the tires for free.  They were less thrilled to pay $1 per tire to get rid of all the tires that they could not use once they found out that to make a wall, they could only use tires of fairly uniform size.  The completed house is an energy monster, with one reason being that there is no insulation between the tire wall and the living space.  Another reason is that they are not experienced home builders, which would have allowed them knowledge of previous failures.  If they were satisfied to live at the ground water temperature of 52 F, they would be OK, but getting the house warmer takes a lot of fuel due to losses to the ground.  Further, the top of the back wall is at ground level, and wintertime ground temperatures are much lower than the ground water temps. near the surface.  They are now trying to sell the house.   

Ground water temps. in the D.C. area are around 58 F, so plan to live at that temp., or figure out how to insulate a tire wall.  Also make sure to compute overhangs on the south side to reduce heat gains during those hot, sticky summers.  It would be nice to be able to dump heat in the summer into the cooler ground, but you would need to be able to switch off the heat transfer in the winter.  

I would advise talking to somebody in the area that has built a successful tire-wall house, to take advantage of their learning curve.  

Lee Dodge
www.Residentialenergylaboratory.com
in a net zero energy house

Much of what you say here is true - proper building techniques are mandatory!  Watching a video of a hut earthship is not going to prepare one for the task at hand.  I will comment about the tires being poor insulation - this is absolutely false.  Tire bales have been show to be somewhere between an R-45 and R-60.  El Paso County Building department looked it up and told me to use R-45 in my thermal envelope calculations.  Rammed earth tires may even be better.  Most of the designs call for 2 layers of #6 poly down the bermed side of the tire bales, which makes it even higher.  If you want to finger point at any cold intrusion, look to the windows.  Double or Triple pane low E works well, but this is still the intrusion area.  In general, we have no problem keeping the home nice and toasty.  We are usually even opening windows in the winter!  We use outdoor shades in the summer, which keeps it nice an cool.  You shouldn't knock the thermal mass aspects of these types of homes unless you've stayed in one over a few cold winter days.  I will guarantee that you will change your opinion.