This is part 6 of a transcribed and edited biotecture lecture by Michael Reynolds. 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! I would like to thank Mike Reynolds for giving me permission to transcribe and re-publish this work for Steem!

Commentary

This is a question and answer session that deals with some of the most common and important questions that people ask. We cover more on planning, and how to reduce your build cost by a good 35%. Why an earthship can run on $100 utility bills per year, bearing strength of tyre walls, How are can and plastic bottle walls strong, staying warm at 40F/-40 Celsius, how to melt roof snow to provide water .. and more!

 

Earthship Seminar Transcription Part 6

Well... I'm gonna take a few questions, and the people that asked me questions some asked and asked them again, in front everybody, so that everybody gets the answer, but... We're talking here briefly about... The permitting in... in New-mexico for instance. In New-mexico is where we developed is, so... In New-Mexico, you pretty much can get a permit as quick as any other building. In Colorado, some counties don't even require permit. Some counties are harder, and some are like New-mexico... I have an architects license still in Colorado, they haven't taken it yet. So... *Laughter* That helps sometimes. But... We had, I mean, we had people... This is again, many stories like this. We had people that... we were in one county in Colorado where the plan checker was new, she was engineer, educated and she just made it really difficult for these people. And they have been working for 2,5 years to get a permit and finally they couldn't wait any longer, and... they went ahead and got a permit for... They just decided to buy a manufactured home, that they bring in and set on concrete blocks, and... That they could live in while they continued to fight for their... permit for the ES. And they did it. And they went in... The only... stumbling block on their permit, for the manufactured home, was they had to sign it off a day with, that said they would not let any infants or elderly people go in the building for 6 months 'cause of the offgasing and all the weird materials in it. And, but they got the permit. They got the permit in couple of weeks. Where the... been working on trying to get a permit for a carbon-zero home for 2,5 years. They ended up finally getting the permit building a building and getting a divorce. *Laughter* So... somebody, you had a question!

(Question:) Does your company accomodate, do they do the package plans like shell and... power... for people ...

Yeah, we go all over the world and we... do turnkey, or, what we call, shelling systems. And there is a packaged plan book, but now, it's just simply out of date because... What... when people choose something out of the package plan book, we try to move them into the new, global application of that. Which we don't have put into a packaged plan book yet, but it's still similar. And so... So a lot of people get us to do, what we call shell and systems. And that's the structure. And the power, water, sewage systems installed. And sometimes no doors... No floors, no ceilings. We define what you want us to leave out, and it keeps the price, you know... Cuts the price by 30-35-40%. These buildings are labor intensive, so we keep this pies going... Usually it's like a ballpark... it's like, something like.... 35% materials, 35% labor and then, And then... You got subcontractors like your excavator, your electrician and your plummer. They end up being in the neighborhood of 15%. And... Subs. And then... The rest of it is systems, you know... If you're hiring a contractor like us to do it, there's profit, and then their systems.

But the thing, that consider is that labor and materials are pretty close to the same. So if you're gonna build a house and there the neighborhood of 35%. So if you're gonna build the building yourself or seriously participate in it, there's where you can cut. You can't really cut on materials they cost what they cost. It can't cut on systems, they cost what they cost. If you know some subcontractors may you'd get a break, but if you're building... or contracting the building yourself, you can cut profit out. And greatly reduce labor. To the point where you can cut, you know... 35% out of the building. Now then if you... If you do that AND do shelling systems, you can, you know... the $205 of ft²(~0,09 m²), that I say these cause can probably be cut in half, depending on your approach. I say $205 of ft² because... some people, It just shows you what these cost if you absolutely out right buy it. I've had... these seminars going on for... I don't know... 15 years probably or more, And... in the first book, I said... Beavers and wasps can build their own homes and people can't. And I made a big thing of that. Well... and my head up my ass on that one, because... people, some people should not build their own house. *Laughter* They, you know... they... I mean, I had...

I had two... In one seminar I had these two couples they looked much very the same. I couldn't even... you know, I got them mixed up. The guy was tall and skinny, They were... you know, they were elderly... Fifty'ish may be or late forties or something. My heart bleeds for them. But... The guy was tall and thin, the woman was short and heavy. Two couples almost looked identical. One of them... They both got inspired and bought a land around Taos and started building their Earthship. And they both... I always advise people if you're gonna do it yourself start off with just one module. This was back in the days when we did U's more than these packaged and global designs. So I talked them both and they just doing one U's[shape] first to see how it went. And One couple did a U... was successful and did another one, did another one, did another one I think they did another one and they got a giant building full of food and everything. The other couple got one U not even done and got a divorce and hated me. You know, so... *Laughter* These people couldn't even operate a shovel. Whereas these people could... And they looked just the same. So you can never tell. But what I'm saying is... *Laughter* Some people... *Laughter* ...should, you know, some people should do it. But when you make a blanket statement like beavers and wasps, you know, you're just... shallow thinking, I guess.

(Comment:) So the $205 is basically a squarefoot figure?. - Yeah, but I mean that's... turnkey to say have you built it all the way out through finish.

Yeah, that's basically what it costs and... When we've done it all over the world and... That is a figure that is... You know, in the US You know, you can, you can get a... What do you call it? The same kind of home that Habitat for Humanity bills, (??) probably a $150 of ft². You know, you'll get a junky little frame home for less. But the price of a good, you know, brick veneered, well insulated, thermal home, that's not really a carbon-zero home, but just a good home, is in that ball park all over the US. And like I say, in Santa Fe there even a lot more.

(Comment:) But they not on any utilities?

Right, and that's the point! Like say, you take... Say, they cost the same. Say, you compare it and an Earthship cost $205 of ft², which may be acquits to... Say, it costs 300 grand to get a size of a home you want. And... and it cost the same to get a conventional home. And then, your mortgage payment on 300 grand if your lucky could be a... You know, a couple of grand to month, maybe. And it would be the same here. Then, on the conventional home, you'd have to add... between $500-$1000 a month on utilities. To your living expenses which would make them in the neighborhood of $3000 a month. Whereas the Earthship... these buildings like the corner cottage, the only thing they use... is cooking. And if I were living there I would be cooking with the solar oven and a... even, I'd rather even use a microwave that runs off the solar power system, than... than a propane oven. So, but in the worst scenario, I'm saying... The utility bill on one of these homes, in this community, that we're doing all over the world, is a... $100 a year.

(Comment:) And that's for gas?

$100 a year, for your utility bill. So that's not bad. That doesn't even... that's not even worth putting in here. Whereas your 500-1000 a month does effect your living expenses. So... That's the... that's... The overall living expenses of a carbon-zero home can actually be less. Does somebody else have a question on...?

(Comment:) There was one question you wanted to have come back to which was the structural integrity of the can only or bottle only wall... Somebody had a bearing strength question too.

How are can and plastic bottle walls strong?

So the... On the can walls which, you'll probably be doing some of here a little bit. Cans, bottles... they're all laid into cement or... dirt, mud, and... A can wall, for instance, is laid like this on a paddy of cement. And then you put another paddy of cement and the cans are there. The point is here that... The cement is sort of like a matrix that the cans are in, and the truth is the cans could just... they won't 'cause they are aluminium. But they could erode a way and just be gone. And you had a... You had a wall that was cement matrix. With voids in it. So, the point here is that the structure of a can wall is really the cement matrix. And so, by virtue of that cans are simply a... method of forming cement or mud wall. So there, they're really, there's no structure on aluminium, flimsy little can. It's just a way of forming this matrix that is the structure. And so that's the case with bottles or cans on... And we use them, see... I think, Kirsten may be showed you in the slideshow, we started off doing can buildings just as a contrived effort to recycle. That's what... that thinking is what led us to use tires, which now is... beyond, I mean, I don't care if it's recycling or not on tires because there's such a bomber way to build. In terms of mass, in terms of structure, and indigenous to the entire planet and so on...

And which brings me to this question, the bearing strength of tires. Of Course, Kirsten showed you the cement truck driving up on a tyre wall that sort of... That's the way I got approved in the old days 25-30 years ago. I took that picture down to the state authorities. And I said, you know, I wanna build some buildings this way, and I showed them that picture, and... Everybody in New-mexico drives a pickup truck. And so, this old guy, on the staff down there, got up and said: 'Well... 'cause they're all wondering a little: 'Should we let this guy do this or not... Or is he an idiot?' Whatever, so... This guy got up and said: 'Well... If you drive your pickup truck through a frame wall, you go through it and out on the other side may be you break out your windshield. If you drive your truck through one of these tyre walls, you will die.' So they all laughed and approved it. That was the approval in those days. *Laughter* And... so it's definitely a... one thing a didn't mention in terms of it is...

Why are tyre walls so strong?

We battered the walls, we do what's called battering the walls. This... You can see the slope on this wall, if we're burying up against the building, we sloped the wall each course a little bit into the burial, that's called battering. That leans the weight of the wall into the way to the burial and kinda balances it off. And there's a coefficient of friction from the weight of a 400 lb(~180 kg) earth filled tyre on an other one... 'cause there's no mortar. It's just weight and mass that hold these things together. The bearing strength secret is... or truth... In a normal frame house they make like an 18 inch, 16 or 18 in (~40-46 cm) wide footing. With steel in it. And they put a 2x6 or 2x8 wall on it. And there's a force going down of the bearing that wall with the roof. And the way the engineers calculated is they take different soils, and they figure out the bearing capacity of the soil, and then they figure out the weight coming down... and... that footing, the purpose of that footing is to spread the force coming down out to being something that will cause that to float on the bearing capacity of the soil. So if it's a real cheesy soil, the footing has to be a little bigger, and if it's a real hard soil, the footing can be a little smaller.

Why don't tyre walls need any concrete or other additional foundation?

The average rule of thumb situation is on a frame home you end up with a 16-18 in (~40-46 cm) footing. While a tyre wall is already significantly wider than that. So, when the engineers do the take off on the tyre wall, they find out that the tyre wall is already wider than it's required footing. So the tyre wall becomes a monolith that is it's own foundation. So tyre walls do not need a concrete foundation when you do the weight coming down and the bearing capacity of the soil, the tyre wall is essentially floating, on the... on the bearing capacity of average soils.

(Question:) Didn't a conventional footing also go below the frostline?

Then, yeah. Then you take... Lot of times conventional footing, if it's in an area where you got a frost line, they dig down, they put that 18 in(~46 cm) wide footing in, then they come up with 8 inch block, or something, and then they go up their frame wall. So you have to go down to below the frostline 'cause, say an area line this, it freezes, to 3 ft(~92 cm) down. But in a tyre building you don't have to do that because the tires go up, the earth comes up against them, here's the roof, the 3 ft(~92 cm) down can't get through the thermal wrap and the bearing is occurring 8 ft(~244 cm) down. So we, in a buried earthship we recreate the frostline to the point where... it's not a... it's... it has no effect on the building.

(Question:) How about the green house?

Then the green house out-front has usually a couple of tires, and... sometimes three, and we put the leaning face on the green house, and then we insulate that and out a little, and bury that, and it's the insulation again that keeps us from letting the frostline get into the bearing of the tires. And another point there, a concrete footing is brittle. It's rigid. And any heaving will crack it. If you did get heaving on a tyre wall. There's no way it can crack. It's resilient. It's hard, but it's resilient. So... 'cause the... it's all, it's earth. Earth is more... when over time earth is more liquid than it is rigid. And so, there any heaving that would happen it's not gonna have much an effect of any. And we still block it with rigid insulation. Yeah!

(Question:) On the vertical bearing strength on... do you calculate the how many lbs/ft²? We had an engineer report, they've got into that. ?? I read that you could ?? I don't think they have come up with a max of what it would take. Other than the concrete truck on the tires pretty much. - That's gonna 2000 ft²(~185 m²) - Yeah!

What other considerations ?? Oh, so we've done them. The old days we would... we would do that. It's nice, it's a soft situation. You know, I'm into the aesthetic effect of these things being as soft as possible. Burial, roof structure, insulation. And in a case like you're talking about to get... you bury the roof. Now the reason, we used to do that, the reason we steered away from that was: One, we started observing that a person standing in a room, the ambient temperature that they're gonna feel is coming off up to their head height. And that's it. 'Cause this is all about ambient temperature not like a four stair furnace or anything. And so having a mass above your head doesn't really achieve anything. What it does do is make your structure have to be a whole lot heavier to... ... to support it. And... when you have grass on your roof you don't catch any years much water. And in an area like this we need, that's why we've gone to metal roofs. Is because the metal roofs are so sensitive... that we have seen the gutter dripping into the cistern from morning dew. And you won't see that on the grass roof 'cause it just gets absorbed.

Due to water catchment, weight, expense, and lack of effect, we don't do grass roofs anymore.

What you will see... If you walk around and I'll go into this more tomorrow, the roof on this building was a material called brie, and it goes on with a torch, and it catches really nasty water, so we put a really coatings on it to make it catch cleaner water, and... they peeled off, So in, then we spray foamed it, which you can't get all over the world, so... this was a learning experience. The next two buildings are these EPDM, the next building is the EPDM material. It's a rubber. It catches pretty water in it, last 10 or 15 years and... It's gonna need repair over there on that one pretty soon. Then the next building is when we started moving to metal roofs, but when we got into metal roofs the detailing of a metal roof, it's much more involved than a rubber roof. So, it caused us to have to try get the roofs more simple, so then... you'll see on this global ones the roofs are super simple, they're just set up for... for sheets of metal to be laid down there and screwed down and boom, it's done. Catches super clean water, but it did require... redesigning the mechanical aspects of the buildings, so there's not a whole bunch of penetrations, we cluster them together, So the whole design of the building is aimed that making the metal roof more simple, because the metal roof is so valuable in terms of catching water. So all of these things are going together. Yeah!

(Question:) So with the metal roof, and that's facing north now, at the winter does the snow still melt?

Well, I'll go into that more thoroughly tomorrow, but since you asked I'll answer that part of it. This building was old-school. I mean... Kirsten probably showed you up at Reach the steep community in the mountains. What we observed up there, it gets... they get a lot more snow up there than down here There'll be 2 ft(~61 cm) of snow on the roof, and the roofs were north facing... Like that and the glass on the front was south facing. And... here's the building. And we get a bunch of 2 ft(~61cm) of snow on the roof. And... we just watch it evaporate, no water. And... so we had one other roof that just by chance, due to the mountain was sloped this way, and we watched that roof on a day like today, melting and water running into the cistern. Observation was a south facing roof is gonna catch water, a north facing roof is not. So we changed all of our designs to do this... kick this south facing roof, kicking back up with the green house just like here, to... south facing roof, it can be very subtle we observed, to get a... just a bit of sunrays on it to melt the snow, kicking back up with the ... wintersun angle to still get the heat, created a valley which caught water, but due to our inexperience and, and... water catching roofs you know, if you got a roof like this you can make a mistake and you may have a drip. If you got a roof like this and you make a mistake you got water on a... coffee table and the living room in a lawsuit. So... Back in court.

This is just more expensive to detail. And with metal... You know, that corrugated metal roofing that's really the most sensitive and best material, it's a lifetime material... to use for a roof with this kind of roof design is... expensive, problematic and whatever. We did it. We did it at corner cottage. We put rubber going up onto the metal and it's expensive. But it works, works great at corner cottage but... We always try to get these things to be more affordable. So, what we did was we observed, okay when the sun's out, the snow on the roof... this is... this is the case with every aspect to those six points. We've gone through trying and learning. There was no books... about this stuff. We just ha to try it and fail. Failure is a big... Failure is not allowed in the real world really, you get sewed. But, it's really, we're... what we have here is a form for failure, basically. Because failure is where we've learned everything. So we have couple feet of snow, the sun hits it, and it melts. When the sun is not out, the south facing roofing is doing no good, 'cause the snow is not melting. So, our observation is okay... when the suns out, we're melting snow. Well, why can't we take that just a step further? You got a north facing roof, The sun's out, it's not gonna melt, so we put panels, water... glycol panels up here, the pipe water in tubes through the back of the metal roof, it melts underneath the snow, and convects up the metal roof, the gutters right here, so again, whenever the sun's out, we're running a little pump, and running hot water from the panels, underneath the 2 ft of snow, and getting a tricolor water. It works when the sun's out, when the sun's not out it didn't work, but neither this is. And what we have is we did the math, this roof ends up being... 10-15 grand cheaper than this roof. With all the things considered. So, we knocked, you know... it takes 2-3 grand to do this little system, which than also doubles as a domestic hot water.

So in the... in the rest of the year, we... this give us a tank full of hot water, which I'll go into more tomorrow, so it's killing two birds with one stone, we're still melting water, and it saves us a whole lot of money on the roof. So what you'll see on the later buildings, the one that Kirsten's gonna take you to called Sutton tomorrow, is... you'll see the solar electric panels across the front, and then you'll see two big other kind of panels they're the panels that heat the hot water to melt the snow and give you domestic hot water, so on the front of the Sutton house I'm saying, I'm getting a little bit in the systems which is more tomorrow, you're gonna see the photovoltaic take panels. And then you're gonna see these two square panels that collect water to heat the roof, and in between them is another little panel that runs the pump, that pushes the water. So it doesn't ... it doesn't steal power from your... household power system, it just... whenever the suns out, you got water melting your roof. If you don't want it, you got hot water for you bath. And so... that's just a... you know, the... We consider all of these things, we keep learning, we keep evolving the building's getting more simple and easier to build and cheaper and... so on. Did you have a question?

(Question:) Do you know, a design like a custom earthship or something. What other ideas do you have?

Things are going through my head. *laughter* (Addition:) In five words ?? *laughter* Let's see bacon, margaritas... *laughter*

The... Well, that's... in a way that's a good question because... first of all, I try to talk people out of doing a custom earthship because a custom earthship is not as good as this... you know, it's like going into Dodge Motors and... there's a... you know... there's is a... a Chrysler setting on the showroom and you wanna customize, you wanna customize it if they even do it for you at cost of fortune, the thing that they build is what works. They just build more expensive ones or cheaper ones. So I... but I do... customize the buildings to a particular climate. For instance, getting back to our same old global earthship here, that I've been drawing all morning... with the battered wall, the thermal wrap... the... now north facing roof that we've explained, the... double green house... and the convection engine, and the tubes, and all of that, okay...

****

If I'm going to... then I apply that to... what I do, the first thing I do If you... when a client will tell me where they live. I'm still... this is where I start with. But then... I get the annual rainfall. If they have a lot of rain, that means I can have smaller cisterns and... probably have to have more solar panels. I also get... so get the rainfall and I get the... the... winter low and the summer high. Now, here our winter low is 30(°F~ -35 C°) below, not sustained but every once in a while in the night and in the winter it gets down there early morning, and summers are 105(°F~40,5 C°) or something like that or 104(°F~40C°)... So... if you got a winter low of 40(°F= -40 C°) below, and... so I collect data. You got a winter below of 40(°F= -40 C°) below, but... But another thing I get is the number of sunny days. We have here... 300 on average sunny days a year. Some place in main may have 35 or 40(°F~ -37, -40 C°) below similar to us, but they have 200 sunny days in a year or 190. So that information tells me how to tweak the design. So in a serious situation I would say probably add the third green house, you'll see it at the Phoenix there are places in the Phoenix that have the three glass faces. Then I... the thermal wrap that we put on the... the thermal wrap that we put on the... around the building, to insulate the mass, we would take it and put it under the floor, just in the living area. Where the people are. We don't need to put it for the plants. But you'd go down an insulate about 18 in (~45 cm) because... you're... you know, you're trying to stretch all of these aspects to give you a little bit better performance to make up for the lack of sun.

And so, there are tricks like that if you... the things that are adjustable, are a few tweaks on... insulation, green house... if you have less sun, then your power system, which I'm going into tomorrow, gets into more panels. Like we did one in Vermont. We did insulate the floor like this. We just simply doubled the power system. We've found that they have about half the amount of sunny days than us, so... we doubled the power system. We actually put two full-on power systems in. And that's interesting because these power systems are designed for earthships. You can't take our power system and hook it on to a regular house 'cause a regular house a lot more demand. The things like we encounter like with the... that we... that taught us to... point that out to people as we build one of the early buildings before they we called earthships, pit houses. Which worked similar but it was just before we... we copyrighted the name earthship and everything. And... and the people moved in it, and... they... everything was working and everything well they... called up one day and said your power system is not working. And so... I talked to them on the phone for a while... and found out that... You know, I was quizzing them. I was trying to troubleshoot and find out why the power system wasn't working. And... and they said: 'Well, we've got some guests.' And I said: 'Well, you know, gas can tack the situation.' and they said: 'Well it's not really hurrying anything 'cause over here in the Winnebago right next to us.' But the Winnebago was plugged into the house. With all of its fans and refrigerators and everything. So took me an hour phone conversation to find out that they have plugged a Winnebago (Caravan) into the building. The power system is made to run the building. It's not limitless power. So lots of things like that have happened... to... you know, so you have to point out to people, this power system is intergral to your life in your home. And... you know, if you... plug in your Winnebago it's not gonna work.

 

Earthship Seminar Video 2009 - Part 6

READ PREVIOUS TRANSCRIPTS

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

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

Part 3
https://steempeak.com/ecotrain/@eco-alex/earthship-biotecture-transcribed-seminar-with-michael-reynolds-part-3

Part 4
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
https://steempeak.com/ecotrain/@eco-alex/earthship-biotecture-transcribed-pt-5-how-to-retrofit-getting-permits-tire-toxicity

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 proudcts 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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