New Mexico - Enchantment and Adventure: Earthship Housing

As predicted, the earth is heating up, and the weather is weirding. It is very scary. However, one forward thinking architect, Michael Reynolds, foresaw the crises and created the Earthship home made of recycled materials such as tires, cans, and bottles. These houses are not only surreally beautiful, they can be entirely self-sufficient and need no outside power or water. People live in them 'off the grid' meaning they have zero utility bills.

Just north of Taos is a community of Earthship homes, and a Taos real estate agent has gathered together 2 videos that explain how earthships are built and how they function. You can watch the videos on his website. They explain how one home can survive on only 10 inches of rain per year by reusing the same water 4 times! (See the end of this post of photos of the 'systems package' mentioned in the video.) http://taosearthships.com/about.htm This website also lists several earthships for sale. They are quite affordable and most run from $150,000 - $350,000, with several listed under $200,000. For me, the down side is that most all the Earthships listed are in a hot desert in the middle of nowhere! However, the Earthship Center we visited claimed that earthhips can be adapted for and built in any climate or landscape.

You can also enter 'Earthship' on youtube.com and get the same videos on the website above ("Earthships 101 parts 1 and 2") and watch them on a bigger screen. There are also many other entries about Earthships on youtube that pop up with a search.

A few years ago, Lee and I viewed the feature length documentary made in 2007 called 'Garbage Warrior.' You can order the film on Netflix or watch it online for free at http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/garbage-warrior/
This website has the following description of the film. It's well worth watching!

Shot over three years in the USA, India, and Mexico, "Garbage Warrior" is a feature-length documentary film telling the epic story of maverick architect Michael Reynolds, his crew of renegade house builders from New Mexico, and their fight to introduce radically different ways of living.

The day we came to the Visitor Center outside of Taos it was blazing hot, nearly 100 degrees!! And, yes, when you walked inside the building, the temperature was quite comfortable, and the plants in the greenhouse corridor that is part of the building were thriving!!

Here are some photos I took of the Earthship Visitor Center and also of a building on the same site that is under construction, which offered great views of how and Earthship building is put together. Unfortunately we were not allowed inside any domiciles, but you can find photos on the real estate agent's website mentioned above.

I hope the sheer beauty of these structures inspires you to dig deeper. They are relatively cheap to build and free to live in.

Outside view of the visitor center. These windows open into the greenhouse that is part of the building.

These are photos of the roof of the Visitor Center. Solar panels face the sun and you can turn around to see the gutter structure on the roof to send rain water into a catchment cistern.

This is a close up of the wall around the Visitor's Center. It is composed of blue bottles in cement over brown bottles in adobe with tires as the bottom layer.

Below is a close up of a 'bottle splice' with the bottom half of the blue bottle butting up against the bottom half of a clear bottle.

This is a new building being constructed. Next will be a close up of those striking pilars. They are made of cement (for structural strength) and aluminum cans (used as filler).

These pillars and facings sparkle like rhinestones in the sun!!

Apparently some wood is also used in the construction. I don't know if these will be left bare or they are only structural and will be covered in some way.