Earthships are all about people and people have the right to be heard. In getting the EarthshipNZ movement up and running there are a few fundamental questions arising, questions that I don’t feel we can answer without consultation. So having finally found out how to put a survey up on the website, lets launch some online democracy! We promise to publish the results at the end of the month, or failing to get 100 replies by then, when we have 100 completed surveys.
Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world’s leading questionnaire tool.
I have serious concerns about some aspects of the Michael Reynolds Earthship technologies being applied to a tectonic plate boundary nation, like New Zealand. I have to say that I’m in awe of Michael Reynolds and very grateful for the knowledge that he has shared. However, geographically, New Zealand is very different from the New Mexico Desert. We have lots of plantation timber, they have lots of soil to be converted to mud-bricks. We have just had an earthquake in Christchurch, in which seismically resistant, steel reinforced, concrete buildings killed many people. Mud-brick with can and bottle walls are far less seismically tolerant that steel reinforced concrete, and they would still crush, maim and kill people if it fell upon them in an earthquake. Similarly, mud-filled tyre stacks would collapse and crush people in a sizeable earthquake, without having them being suitably reinforced with steel and bracing top and bottom. It is imperative that we in NZ have the right to take the best ideas from Michael Reynolds, even paying for it if needed, but to have the legal right to make adaptations as our engineers, architects and citizens see fit, for use in our own country, making the most sensible use of our own natural resources and labour. Nuff said. Cheers, Rick Swan.
Cheers Rick – you make a lot of good points. In addition, the nature of the New Mexico soil is different to NZ soil from a mositure and ground temperature point of view – which impact thermal capacitance differently. Also the power of the NZ sun is quite different. Those who have designed solar passive homes in NZ already all say that heating is not the issue, cooling is – even in winter. A number of local designers have tried and discarded angled front windows as their solar gain is too efficient. And finally I agree that NZ has developed some of the technical components to an arguably higher standard than currently used overseas.
Hey
I am a built environment student at Wintec, Hamilton and i am currently writting a report on earthship homes. Though i am having trouble finding information on the foundations for earthship homes. Would you plaese be able to tell me what foundations are normally used and any requirements. Also if you know of somewhere that i would be able to find futher information that would be much appreciated.
Thanks
I’m struggling to imagine the amount of force that it would take to move what is essentially a 200mmx1200mm brick that weighs approximately 150kg, and given each new layer of tyre’s is slightly offset so the wall leans away from the center of the building. if an earthquake stuck the earthship the walls would want to fall away from center of the building but the back fill or berm would stop this from occurring, the tyre’s have in built reinforcing (the steel belt) which should stop the wall from collapsing. Just some thoughts happy to be corrected if I’m wrong cheers Rangi.
I agree in principle and in fact the tyres weight more like 230kg when packed. However… never underestimate the forces of an earthquake. But I think its seismic survivability is pretty up there compared to other solid mass technologies (brick, breeze block etc).
The mass of the tyre stack, nor the mass of any other part of the Earthship, is not the issue when dealing with seismic resistance. The critical variable is the ground accelerations during the Earthquake. The acceleration due to the Earth’s gravitational field at the Earth’s surface is 9.81 m/s^2, also called 1.0 g . The vertical accelerations ( upwards ) during major earthquakes can be much more than 1.0 g. This was the case for the peak upwards accelerations in some locations for the Christchurch earthquake, which is enough to throw objects up into the air, regardless of their mass, if they are not forcibly tied down with some serious ground fixtures. For two of the major Christchurch earthquakes, there were ground accelerations of 2.13 g and 2.2 g , classified as extreme, as shown in this link : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_ground_acceleration
Just one quick note : Other factors come into play as well, such as the natural frequency of the Earthship / tyre stack etc, which, if they are the same as the those of the ground waves of the Earthquake, it would cause resonance effects ( large amplitude oscillations of the building ). The Earthship may seriously dampen these seismic effects when the design is such that critical damping of any seismic waves occurs , but I’ll leave all those types of considerations for another day…..it is complex to work all these things out. I can talk about the Physics principles, but it takes engineers and Earthship designers to develop any practical design solutions, which is much more complicated.
Just want to point out a few things.
It gets just as hot at Earthship HQ as it does in NZ, and it also gets a lot colder, so the angled glass being discarded as an idea in NZ must surely only be if there is no greenhouse corridor as there is in most earthships, which buffers any living space from temperature extremes. And also allows you to grow tropical plants.
Also as I pointed out on FB, they’ve built an earthship in Japan, and also a circular style one in Haiti, both earthquake prone areas. The Japan ES was supposedly over engineered for earthquake resistance with concrete & steel rebar.
I haven’t seen or heard of any data from an ES surviving an earthquake, just pointing out that they’ve taken the issue seriously & have implemented design to address it before.
I would like to express my thanks for the excellent feedback to my comments from Nathan Rushton, about ES designs for Japan and Haiti. This is information unknown to me before I posted it. Any comments I post are meant to be constructive, and Nathan’s contributions are part of that process also. Thanks again, Nathan.
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