Earthship Construction Techniques

We just put new tires on our "Jeep", the little Asia Rocsta that does all the hard work for the Geek Ranch. That got me thinking about building using recycled tires. In the book The Art of Natural Building there is an article about Earthships: An Ecocentric Model.

While one of the goals of the design is to maximize solar energy for heating, something that a person in Managua is not going to be very interested in, there are many other considerations that make this an interesting idea for Nicaragua. The father of the concept is Michael Reynolds. He has written books about the ideas and the practical implementation. The Earthship.org web site can explain the idea a lot better than I can. Note that they are having a workshop in July in the Netherlands Antillies if you want to check out the ideas in person.

For me, I am going to order a few books and see if this is the way to build "our house" on the Geek Ranch. Does this mean the idea of domes is out? No, not at all. Domes are quick to build, relatively nice on the environment (they are cement and steel but a lot less is used than in conventional building) and virtually maintenance-free. But, the Earthship idea just feels right for my own house. Also, like the dome, it can be an example of another alternative building technique.