Recycling to the Max

By Kristen Pope

Driving into Taos, New Mexico, the "Earthship" community along State Highway 64 is hard to miss. The futuristic structures there look like spaceships, castles, and other galactic and hippie creations, some of them adorned with glass fragments from old bottles. Their walls are made from old automobile tires packed with earth and covered in plaster.

These structures are the brainchild of architect Michael Reynolds, who has been creating these Earthships for over 35 years. His firm, Earthship Biotecture, is more than a builder of self-sustaining homes. The company sells materials, books, plans, expertise, internships, workshops, and even builds structures for eager buyers. It offers nightly Earthship rentals near Taos. And it spreads the gospel of the Earthship not just in the high deserts of New Mexico but on humanitarian projects around the world.

Earthships typically have six characteristics: They use recycled materials (such as tires, bottles, and cans), incorporate passive solar energy, use cisterns to gather rainwater, treat sewage on-site, have a greenhouse to grow food, and generate electricity and are off-grid.

Thermal mass construction — i.e., using building materials that absorb and store heat energy — is a key feature. The company claims that this design provides a comfortable year-round 70 degree interior temperature without the need for air conditioning or heating. However, the temperature regulation didn't always work quite so seamlessly. In the 2007 Garbage Warrior documentary, which profiles Reynolds and his work, Reynolds recalled how an antique typewriter in one of the earlier Earthship models once melted in the summer heat.

Upgrades

The typewriter incident was many generations of Earthship ago, and the design has been substantially reworked since then. Reynolds, who earned a degree in architecture from the University of Cincinnati, first began designing alternative structures in the 1970s.

One source of inspiration came from his childhood. As a young man, his father saved everything from mayonnaise jars to milk cartons. Reynolds drew upon this recycling creed, transforming it into his own waste-not philosophy of repurposing materials in Earthships.

Reynolds, who has written several books, is now an eccentric figurehead in the green building movement.

His flagship settlement, Greater World Earthship Community, is located near Taos. At nearly 7,000 feet above sea level, with an extreme climate that can reach 100 degrees in the summer and plunge to 30 degrees below zero in winter, it was an ideal location to test the thermal properties of the designs. "I live in a 20-year-old Earthship and it stays between 64 and 74 degrees through both of those temperature swings," says Tom Duke, Earthship Biotecture spokesman and Earthship Academy instructor.

There are over 500 Earthships located in the Taos area, according to Duke, and many more elsewhere. "There are more Earthships around the world than we can even know," Duke says.

Not every Earthship uses the same design, as adaptations are made for each location. "We build them differently according to different environments," says Duke. "In a very cold, top-of-the-Earth place, we could add another greenhouse to the front and give it another interaction zone or change the slope of the glass. We adapt these houses to the climate."

Owners in colder, northern climates with little winter sunlight — such as Alaska — sometimes add back-up heating systems, as the south-facing windows do not always soak up enough daytime energy to keep the house warm. In wetter climates, some owners add a barrier between planters and living space to combat excessive humidity.

Earthships have thick walls to help regulate temperature. Exterior walls typically are built from tires filled with rammed earth. Workers pound earth into the tires with sledgehammers, constructing 350-pound rammed-earth bricks by hand. The tire walls are then covered in a mud or clay plaster.

Recycled, not cheap

While used tires are often available free of charge from tire shops (whose owners would otherwise have to pay a disposal fee), and the cans and bottles used on interior walls and for decoration are often available for free, Earthships aren't low cost.

Costs for many other design elements, such as wooden beams for roof supports and window framing, window glass, roofing, insulation, plumbing systems, and appliances, can quickly add up. Earthships can end up costing as much as a conventional home.

"To get our top-of-the-line Earthship, which we call the BMW Earthship, which does everything a normal house does, really, it's approximately $200 a square foot," Duke says. A simpler model costs under $100 a square foot. Earthships can vary in size, though Duke says 1,500- to 2,400-square-foot models are most common.

The systems that run an Earthship are often quite different from those in a conventional house. For electricity, many use alternative power sources such as wind turbines, solar panels, and micro hydro where running water is available. Some owners use a backup generator, and most haul in propane for their ovens.

Other companies in the business of alternative homes include Dream Green Homes, based in Crestone, Colorado.

Local concerns

Whatever name they go under, these Earthship-style homes can cause headaches for some planning departments. Reynolds's Earthship community outside of Taos caused a years-long dispute with the Taos County Planning Department.

In 1996, the development was deemed an illegal subdivision and in 1997, an injunction halted further construction. People were forced to stop building their homes. It took Reynolds seven years to bring the community into compliance as a legal subdivision. He hired archaeologists to walk the land looking for arrowheads, hired engineers to provide assessments, worked on improving roads, and performed upgrades in order to develop each phase and obtain required approvals from county inspectors.

Reynolds's fight with Taos County was documented extensively in Garbage Warrior. Taos County's Planning Department was contacted for this article but said, "No comment."

Frustrated by his experience, Reynolds went to the New Mexico legislature in 2004 to seek permission to create experimental architecture on some land he owned. After a few failed attempts, the Sustainable Development Testing Site Act passed in March 2007, allowing him to practice experimental architecture on a two-acre plot now called the Earthship Village Ecologies, or EVE Project.

While Reynolds's battle in New Mexico established guidelines for development outside of Taos, other communities do not have such clear standards for Earthship building. Planning departments may have to develop guidelines as various situations arise. However, Earthships are typically zoned in the same manner as any other structure.

"Basically, the zoning regulates location and height of buildings on a lot and these are all treated the same way," says Rich Franz-Under, green building manager in Pima County, Arizona. "The Earthship's physical boundary has to be far enough away from the property line to meet zoning requirements. You just have to meet the general rules."

The city of Santa Fe, New Mexico, also regulates Earthships under standard zoning procedures. "The Earthship structure would be treated like any other structure from a zoning standpoint," says Dominic Gonzales, special projects coordinator in the Santa Fe Building Permit Division. "If the Earthship is located in the historic district of Santa Fe, the structure would have to comply with architectural regulations. If the Earthship is located outside the historic district, no architectural compliance would be required. The Earthship would have to meet the typical setbacks, height requirements, and other typical zoning regulations." In Santa Fe, plans would have to be designed and sealed by a state-registered engineer or architect, and they would have to comply with the city's Green Building Code for new residences.

Source: earthship plan, by Felix mueller, Wikimedia (CC NY-SA 3.0)

Codes

While zoning may be relatively straightforward, building regulations can be trickier, as this process requires working with unconventional plans and atypical building materials.

"[Earthship builders] typically come in early in their process because they understand it's alternative," says Franz-Under of Pima County. "We look [for] a standard that will allow them to proceed prescriptively. If we can't find a standard, their only alternative is to proceed with an engineer."

One construction element that is substantially different from the norm is the tires used in the rammed-earth walls. Pima County used a model code for tires with compacted earth when its first Earthship builder applied for permits six years ago.

"The code talks about the compaction of earth in and around tires and how that needs to occur and how plastering occurs," says Franz-Under. "It's a fairly detailed recipe book on how someone can put that wall together."

Pima County is home to many nonstandard buildings, including countless adobe structures, some dating back hundreds of years, as well as dozens of straw bale homes. "The population we serve is interested in alternative and innovative construction," says Franz-Under.

Pima County participated in the development of the codes for adobe and straw bales structures. "We've worked to make sure rammed earth is an alternative under the adobe code so if people want to try alternative materials, they [can] make sure they are built to safe standards," he adds.

Water's tricky

Earthship water systems have caused problems in some jurisdictions. Water is recycled four times. First, rainwater is collected from a roof cistern. It is used in sinks and showers, then diverted to the indoor graywater planter where plants receive the second use, diverting unused water to the toilet for flushing. Blackwater then goes to a containment cell and is used for exterior landscaping.

The harvesting of rainwater is an issue for some Colorado residents, as rainwater or snow that would ordinarily reach a stream was subject to Colorado's appropriation laws. However, Senate Bill 80, passed in 2009, allowed rainwater harvest for some of the state's rural residents, provided they obtained a permit for a well and could not obtain water from municipal sources. However, rainwater catchment is not required for an Earthship and the structures can use municipal water if it is available.

While some jurisdictions frown on collecting rainwater, Pima County supports it. "We encourage rainwater catchment," says Franz-Under. "We have specific zoning allowances for the location of cisterns within what would normally be considered the setback for the structure or accessory structure, so we exempt cisterns from some of those rules. Then the municipal water company also has a rebate if you install a water harvesting system."

Pima County actively tries to help people find ways to create environmentally friendly structures. "We have a green building program and encourage innovative and alternative construction," says Franz-Under.

With more Earthship homes landing in new places, including the 400-acre Earthship Village Colorado development currently in the works outside of Colorado Springs, more planning departments will likely have to look at their own regulations to see whether they would welcome or reject these somewhat alien-looking structures.

Kristen Pope is a freelance writer and editor based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Resources

Images: Top — Views of an Earthship passive solar home from the south (with glass panels) and east. Middle — The major structural components are bricks made from recycled tires filled with compacted earth, used to create virtually indestructible walls. This Earthship in Taos has a second outer greenhouse that acts as a buffer to keep the living area at a constant 70 degrees despite often extreme outside temperatures. Photos courtesy EarthShip BIOtecture.

Earthship design principles: Watch www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ozX_nt5A4o. This and other videos are on the Earthship Biotecture website, earthship.com.