Earthship New Zealand

Welcome to something new, something now…

“Earthship New Zealand” is about focussing on the realisation of Earthships as a viable form of Environmentally Sustainable Design (ESD) in New Zealand.  Here you will hopefully find an emphasis on the HOW of Earthships – how to make it happen.  Earthship New Zealand is independent and seeks to be a meeting place for suppliers and consumers and a forum for debate and ideas, as well as practical information.

One of the key benefits this website hopes to provide is a central respository of NZ Earthship information and data.  You can also register you own personal interest in Earthships – it’s all important and it all helps.  A key facet of the Earthship building process is the community that is created alongside every rammed-earth tyre and bottle structure.

So haere mai, welcome and roll up your sleeves…

Although Earthships focus on harnessing natural sources of passive energy for heating and electricity, they still utilise other energy sources for cooking, so I like to keep an eye out for suitable companion stoves for an Earthship from time to time.

I’ve got to say I love watching this video about the utility value of a wood-fired/biomass cast-iron stove.  I love their “cleverness”.  They are pieces of art and engineering, evolved over time (and not just in a R&D lab).  I also love watching a craftsman talk about their work in a way only they can.  One stove; one local & renewable source of energy; so many benefits.

http://www.homewoodstoves.co.nz/

Mike Reynolds has often suggested that the cost per square foot for an Earthship is about the same as the local cost for a conventional home of similar size.  Where Earthships have reduced costs for most of the main building materials, by using waste products, they typically invest more upfront in the services for the home (Rainwater harvesting and PV solar generation capabilities etc) hence the costs balance out. 

HOWEVER you need to look at the total cost of ownership for an Earthship and remember that once it is up and running there are arguably no utility bills and an anecdotal US$100 per year on gas for cooking fuel (and even that can be reduced to zero!).  Of course it goes without saying that just looking at the bottom line costs of housing and things like GDP, got us here in the first place.  With an Earthship the cradle to cradle view of understanding the ‘costs’ of this home is better known and better off in the short and long term.

BRANZ (Building Research Association of New Zealand) recently published some “Average Build Costs” for New Zealand.

In this presentation Steve Bright will be outlining the basic principles of Earthship buildings, their pros and cons, and answering any questions that he can. Depending on interest, practical workshops may be held later.

Earthship buildings were developed over the last thirty years or so by American architect Mike Reynolds to reduce the costs of building new houses, the running costs and the ongoing environmental costs. He coined the phrase ‛biotecture’ for his ideas and designs for buildings that work in harmony with the Earth’s natural systems and used what he describes as ‛the new natural resource’ ‒ old car tires ‒ as the basic building block.

Steve Bright is an engineer by trade. In 2003 he built an Earthship with the Low Carbon Network (Brighton) and Mike and his team. At present he is helping a local person design, and hopefully later build, their own ‛Earthship-style’ building.

Thursday 12 August, 7 – 9pm 

This is an excellent walk through of an Earthship built by Earthship Biotecture in Miles City, Montana.  It is very representative of the standard Earthship layout that has evolved over recent years (almost identical to the Earthship in Ger, France).  It is also valuable in showing you what kind of noise the WOM (Water Organising Module) produces.  It’s encased in a box and some Earthships have also used insultation to limit the noise. 

The cool thing is that here in New Zealand I have seen a very affordable, waterproof (IP56) filtering system that can be sited outside of the house, reducing the noice pollution in house.  I hope to include a review of the product sometime soon (along with a review of a NZ made rainwater harvesting system).

This is a cool short video by Second Year AUT students interviewing Brian and Karen Gubb.  Although its design is a unique interpretation of Michael Reynolds original and its still being finished off on the inside; its a great testament to the fact that “it can be done!”

Well done the Gubbs!

Composting Loo

The more things change the more they stay the same – never a truer word spoken.  I interviewed my father before he died and we discussed some of the ways people coped during the Great Depression.  I looked at photographs of front gardens coverted to grow vegetables (Permaculturists take note); saw a  truck converted to run off a hot water cyclinder strapped to its deck, full of pig manure methane (Biofuellers take note); and heard stories of the Night Cart Man doing the rounds in the middle of the night, taking away the ‘nightsoil’ from the outside toilets (Humanure fans take note).

Here is an excellent Time Magazine article – leave your pre-conceived ideas at the toilet door – on the modern capture and use of “Humanure”.  Its no surpirse that Mike Reynolds, the Biotect behind Earthships, has long been a fan of Humanure.  The ‘movement’ (excuse the pun) sets out to address the ‘Problem’ of utility wastewater treatment and the ‘Opportunity’ of a great source of nutrients that gets flushed away every day.

I can hold my hand up and say that I was one of thousands of festival goers that used the composting toilets at Camp Bestival in the UK this year.  The beauty was, as always, in their simplicity; they were nothing more than 44 gallon drums under a set of stalls made out of hessian-draped scaffolding.  There was a large box of sawdust and scoops out front and you just took a scoop of pine sawdust (very arromatic) and added it after you’d finished.  The whole thing – when contrasted to conventional festival portaloos – smelt great.  I’m sure hardstanding loos with good ventilation piping would perform flawlessly.

The whole thing – when contrasted to conventional festival portaloos – smelt great.

But please read the Time magazine article, it makes a great case for including a composting toilet in your next design.  The article points out that within a year the human waste-based compost is fully degraded and ready to go as a cheap, clean & natural fertiliser.  Nancy Klehm as fan of composting toilets, mobilised 22 households in her neighbourhood to not flush their humanure. She collected 1,500 gallons (3,700 litres) of waste in just three months, which she will give back to the participants in spring as a rich bag of fertiliser.

“I’ve sent a sample in for a coliform test,” Klehm says. “There is zero detectable fecal bacteria.”

Whilst a number of us probably have ingrained phobias of ‘long drop’ toilets from the wilderness adventures of our childhood – composting toilets really are different.  First of all, they are regularly emptied and not left to stew.  They also combine a reasonable amount of sawdust that masks the inevitable smell and aids the rapid breakdown of the waste.  The details of the aerobic/anerobic composting process I’m not so hot on, but the Humanure Handbook contains all the answers and more.

When contemplating your feelings on waste and especially Human waste, it probably helps to remember one thing:

“There is no waste in nature”

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1945764,00.html#ixzz0Yxj3tMJK

Bridgestone Tyre company announced on Friday the closure of their Tyre Manufacturing plant in Christchurch with the loss of 275 jobs (and Adelaide with the loss of 600 jobs).  The former Firestone plant has been a landmark in the Christchurch suburb of Papanui since its construction in 1947.

In a surprise move, the Australian Board of Bridgestone announced their intention to

“work with local government authorities in Adelaide and Christchurch to gift some land currently owned by the Company to recognise the enormous contributions of the communities”.

This is a fantastic opportunity to gift to the local community a sustainable site for a nest of residential rammed-earth-tyre Earthships or an Earthship community centre.

Will Bridgestone be the first tyre manufacturer in the world to get behind Earthships as the most sustainable solution for post-consumer tyre waste? The development of an Earthship building on a brown field site, a former tyre manufacturing plant no less, would demonstrate a positive commitment to the Waste Minimisation Act and show New Zealand and the rest of the world what corporate social responsibility is really all about.

Potential uses for a Community Centre could include a Centre for Alternate Technology, modelled on CAT in Wales or a showcase of Environmentally Sustainable buildings like the BRE Innovation Park in England.

Earthship NZ intends to canvas stakeholders to gauge support for an Earthship submission.  Any interested parties should make contact via the website info@earthship.co.nz

Developed by U.K.-based Lhoist Group, Tradical® Hemcrete® is a bio-composite, thermal walling material made from hemp, lime and water. What makes it carbon negative? There is more CO2 locked-up in the process of growing and harvesting of the hemp than is released in the production of the lime binder. Of course the equation is more complicated than that, but Hemcrete® is still an amazing new technology that could change the building industry.

Good looking, environmentally friendly and 100% recyclable, Hemcrete® is as versatile as it is sustainable. It can be used in a mind-boggling array of applications from roof insulation to wall construction to flooring.Hemcrete® is waterproof, fireproof, insulates well, does not rot [when used above ground] and is completely recyclable. In fact, the manufacturers say that demolished Hemcrete® walls can actually be used as fertilizer!

Inhabitat » Hemcrete®: Carbon Negative Hemp Walls.

In Providence there are two artists attemtping to build an off grid floating home, called “The Landlord Independent”.

Of course and why not?  An independent building has very little connecting it to one place.  Their sewage management might be interesting though.

“Through with rent and utility payments — through with land-bound living itself — the pair is building a 25-by-40 foot experimental boat out of reused materials taken from old barns and a demolished World War II watch tower.”

Check out the full story at: The Phoenix > This Just In > On the water and off the grid .

Harnessing the concept of reusing waste materials, this ocean going yacht built from plastic bottles, will utilise all manner of Environmentally Sustainable Technology to navigate its way from San Francisco to Sydney.

The website itself is very impressive and well worth checking out.

Just a pity its not coming to New Zealand…

Check out the website: The Plastiki Expedition.