I would like to thank Mike Reynolds for giving me permission to transcribe, edit and reformat this work for the Steem Blockchain! If you do read or watch this and have any questions please ask in the comments. I am happy to educate and help you to understand this. Biotecture is amazing in so many ways, and even after 20 years I still have not seen a model of sustainable building that even comes close in so many important areas such as performance, carbon footprint, longevity, ease of build, etc... Now you can also come to understand what Biotecture Really Is about!

Commentary

This part is an amusing catalogue of stories of failure and lessons learned. Mike recounts several stories during earthship development where he experimented with new ideas, in particular the Solar Oven Toilet, which led to total disaster. As Mike explains, mistakes are how we learn, and how we evolve our ideas. This is a fun, tongue in cheek part of this grand Biotecture story.. but one that we can learn a lot from!

The moral of the story is don't be afraid to make mistakes, and let each mistake be a learning experience. I built my earthship without any training or experience.. and whilst I did also make some 'relatively small' mistakes.. i not only learned a heck of a lot but did achieve my goal of completing the build and have been living in it for 5 years now.

Did you know that the main reason for people failing to complete an eco-build is not because of problems or mistakes made during a build. The main reason that people fail to complete a self-build is, in fact, by not starting in the first place! Most people who are thinking, dreaming and desiring to self-build never actually get started! Relatively few people who start to build actually fail. In my experience I have found the main reason for this 'trouble starting' to be confidence, and rightly so! It is not easy to self-build. No one who has done this can honestly tell you otherwise. It is experience that gives us confidence, and yet we can't get confidence without experience. There lies the catch! Some people do a workshop or try to get some kind of experience, and that is great. However, many people don't really have the time or money to participate in these things, and so they never really get started. I learned enough to build with just the information I am presenting to you over these posts!

Earthship Seminar Transcription Session 2 - Part 5:

The Solar Toilet

So in the old days we were using compost toilets, and since people didn't like them that well, and we were trying to make these things marketable to all the people... we invented a solar toilet. I don't know if Kirsten showed you a picture of it last night, and we took it to the Himalayas because nothing breaks down there. What it does is it it takes human waste and turns it to ash... it fries it like into ash. We had it all figured out but it turned out to be less marketable than the compost toilet because we had this thing, this scraper...

It was like an oven, a solar oven is what it was. The way it worked was there was a toilet seat on it, I mean that's really all it was... but we had this device in here where it's smeared it and made it thin so that the Sun would dry it within 40 minutes or something and turn it to ash. I actually took a mayonnaise jar full of this ash and and put water in it and took it to the water testing place and they tested it, and it was benign of any bacteria.

So I had a mayonnaise jar full of 'dust' that I took down to the state authorities and dumped it on the guy's desk (Mike literally open the jar and dumped the ash on his desk!) and then told him what it was. And he screamed and jumped up out of his desk. But I was always reporting to them what I was doing, and so he said go ahead work with it, somebody's got to do it. I wasn't that stupid, I had been doing all this stuff for 40 years and I had established a rapport with all these guys down there.. these Authority guys down at the state level. The reason I got into so much trouble was, it just fate would have it, that they they all within a matter of two years retired. There was a bunch of them . One of them had a heart attack and died, one of them had a brain tumor and got cancer and died, and and they all just faded away... all within two years. And I'm used to going down down there and dumping shit dust on their desk and do nothing but scream. Well I went down there, you know I hadn't been down there for a few months, and they're all gone... and you know they said "we hear you're doing thse things and that up there"... I said yeah well Fred Nivara said I could do that.. and they said "well he's dead he doesn't work here anymore, and you are breaking every rule in the book." And so I got in a lot of trouble through what I call the changing of the guard, at state level. And that was part of what got me into a lot of the trouble I got into.

It's Crisis That Brings Great Change

But anyway we had the solar toilet, and the compost toilets.. and this is an example of how crisis .. and I think this is gonna happen with humanity as well... i've been in this situation a lot.. crisis puts you into a different mode of, you know panic. And you you end up either failing... or inventing something. So it was crisis that actually took us to this Botanical cell thing... flushing with used water. And the crisis was, I was doing a really custom house... there's a picture of the inside of it over there, that little fireplace thing... it's called the Nautilus ... it's up at the top... - it doesn't exist anymore it, was engulfed in another whole building. But it was a beautiful house, a piece of sculpture funded by a guy with a suitcase full of cash. I didn't ask any questions. But I wanted it to be a success... and we were getting ready we had it all designed to put one of these solar toilets in there. And we had been refining them, and that was when we had just built the studios that you're staying in... and they had two Solar toilets in them. And it turns out that the solar toilet oven was all made out of metal, and it costed like $1,500 dollars to make these things... and it cost $600 to ship them. So we we got all you know.. rained out on it... and decided to make the oven itself as part of the building and then just ship the components.

The Nautilus Earthship

IMAGE SOURCE

So what we did is made the ovens over here at these rental units out of masonry. Well if you if you've ever put a concrete block out in the Sun, and a piece of metal out in the Sun... you know you come out a couple hours later, you pick up the concrete block it's warm... you can't even pick up the piece of metal its so hot. So that was the phenomena that we didn't count on. The masonry ovens didn't get as hot the metal oven which got hot enough to fry shit! So we had the Masonary ovens over here... not knowing that we were making a dreadful mistake... and got it all done and tenants moved in... and they came over after being there for about two weeks kind of embarrassed and said, "we don't think our solar toilet is working." So you know I go over there, and lift the lid... and it's totally full of some kind of primordial soup. Nothing being fried at all. It was disgusting. And the reason was... that I didn't snap onto until later was... the masonry oven just gets warm... the metal oven gets screaming hot and it causes the frying to take place. All I was doing was making warm soup here, and it was disgusting.... I've been in this position a lot over the years... and I had to buy time. I knew I didn't have a solution... and you know... these people were starting to lose faith. And so I just went into 'buy some time' mode.

And what I did was I went to Walmart and got a couple of bags of charcoal and charcoal lighter, and I lifted up the toilet seat and dumped that all in... and filled it full of charcoal lighter and lit it... and the people were gone for the day... and I came back at five o'clock, and it did it it! The charcoal burnt all the way down and fried everything, and I almost I had thoughts there for a minute of creating a charcoal toilet, you know, all you need is a bag of charcoal every week or something like that... and it's made like a stove so it vented and everything. And so I went back at five o'clock and there was nothing but white coals glowing down there, and all the primordial soup was gone. It did have a, you know, it wasn't that thrilling... but still it was it was gone so I'm like all happy I've bought myself some time I go out with the crew we drink some margaritas.

I get home from drinking margaritas and there was a phone call from my maintenance guy, and he said "Mike, the fire engines had to come out... the building caught on fire." because it turns out that the charcoal is the hottest when it's white coals, and actually there's that scraper in there and it has a metal arm that comes up and goes through the woodwork. Well the heat traveled up and caught the wood on the front face on fire... and the building caught on fire. Fire trucks had to come out. There was a silver lining to that cloud...Whch was that the front face is burning... and of course all the Plumbing is on the front face... and it melted the plastic pipes, and the water started spewing on the fire. And the firemen said in the newspaper that if it wasn't an Earthship it would have burnt to the ground... because the way the earthship is designed... the fire burnt the pipes and opened up the water.

So anyway, there I am, I bought time but it didn't work out that well, and plus the buildings were brand new. And if you're if you've ever cooked a turkey in the oven on Thanksgiving... your whole house smells like Turkey. Well when you cook shit... your whole house smells like shit. And you know there was just this pasty smell in the whole house. So I had to... I mean... I was out of the time buying mode at that point. I just went and put in a conventional septic tank over there, put in two flush toilets, repainted the whole building... spent two weeks and another few grand, abandoned the solar toilet idea. And of course I was right in the middle of this new custom home, and during that whole drama is when I decided to make the first planter. We were doing planters in the buildings anyway that used grey water to flush the toilet, so I could give people a flush toilet... and it and it was because of the many hours of trying to deal with that situation, that I got my brain to the high end temperature that it fell into this mode here.

So this was really thanks to the shit cooking incident. But I got the whole building I got the whole building all cleaned up and painted spent a bunch of money put in a septic tank. New people are coming from candidates were in it. They came in at night, and the next morning they come over and they're all pissed off. And ... I'm like "what in the world is wrong"... and they said we came all the way from Canada to stay in an Earthship, and this is not a true earthship because it doesn't have a solar toilet. And that's after I had just abandoned the whole thing. So I just gave them their money back and told them to go get a mobile home or something.

But anyway those are learning experiences... everything that we're doing has been from failure... you know miserable failure... but out of miserable failure comes, you know, some good things. The only problem is you usually get sued for miserable miserable failure.

Earthship Seminar Video 2009 - Session 2 -Part 5

 

READ PREVIOUS TRANSCRIPTS

SESSION 1

Part 1: The Global Model
https://steemit.com/ecotrain/@eco-alex/earthship-biotecture-101-learn-with-michael-reynolds-part-1

Part 2: Staying Cool: The Convection Engine
https://steempeak.com/ecotrain/@eco-alex/earthship-biotecture-transcribed-seminar-with-michael-reynolds-transcribed-part-2

Part 3: The Evolution of the Global Model Earthship:
https://steempeak.com/ecotrain/@eco-alex/earthship-biotecture-transcribed-seminar-with-michael-reynolds-part-3

Part 4: Heating your home with body heat in Norway, about permits in USA and Europe... How to get them fast
https://steempeak.com/ecotrain/@eco-alex/earthship-biotecture-transcribed-pt4-heating-your-home-with-body-heat-in-norway-about-permits-in-usa-and-europe-how-to-get-them

Part 5: How to Retrofit, Getting Permits, Tire Toxicity?
https://steempeak.com/ecotrain/@eco-alex/earthship-biotecture-transcribed-pt-5-how-to-retrofit-getting-permits-tire-toxicity

Part 6: Bottle / Can Walls, Tyre Foundations / Snow Water
https://steempeak.com/ecotrain/@eco-alex/earthship-biotecture-transcribed-pt-6-q-and-a-bottle-can-walls-tyre-foundations-snow-water

Part 7:&: Can you insure an earthship?, the double/triple greenhouse, the global model evolution + more
https://steempeak.com/ecotrain/@eco-alex/earthship-biotecture-transcribed-pt-7-q-and-a-can-you-insure-an-earthship-the-double-triple-greenhouse-the-global-model

Part 8: Final: Year round fruiting trees, sizing greenhouses + more
https://steempeak.com/ecotrain/@eco-alex/earthship-biotecture-transcribed-pt-8-final-q-and-a-year-round-fruiting-trees-sizing-greenhouses-more

SESSION 2

Part 1: Water, how to size your roof, choosing the right materials for water catchment.
https://steempeak.com/ecotrain/@eco-alex/earthship-biotecture-transcribed-session-2-part-1-water-how-to-size-your-roof-choosing-the-right-materials-for-water-catchment

Part 2: Cisterns, Filtering Water, Designing Down & Layered Thinking.
https://steempeak.com/ecotrain/@eco-alex/earthship-biotecture-transcribed-session-2-part-2-cisterns-filtering-water-designing-down-and-layered-thinking

Part 3: Water! Be Self Sufficient Secure & Sustainable.
https://steempeak.com/ecotrain/@eco-alex/earthship-biotecture-transcribed-session-2-part-3-water-be-self-sufficient-secure-and-sustainable

Part 4: Botanical Cells, Using Water 4 Times, Food Production.
https://steempeak.com/ecotrain/@eco-alex/earthship-biotecture-transcribed-session-2-part-4-botanical-cells-using-water-4-times-food-production

 

Did you know, I built four Earthships in India as well as being instrumental the creation of the first Earthship in the UK, Earthship Brighton. If you are also on this path and would like to read my story, I have recently published a book. It is not only a great story, but a valuable resource for you to learn from. I had no experience or training when I embarked on my mission, but managed to successfully build a gorgeous home called Earthship Karuna.

You can buy this book with Steem on the homesteaders co-op. Whilst you are there please do have a look at some of the other products as there are all kinds of great things there!

https://homesteaderscoop.com/product/earthship-chronicles-ebook/

If you don't have any Steem you can also buy the ebook and paperback on amazon.
http://mybook.to/Earthship-Chronicles
or
https://www.amazon.com/Earthship-Chronicles-sufficient-luxurious-experience-ebook/dp/B07MYCBXYB

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