Getting off the grid -- Earthships?

Me and the Wife are doing kind of this in Alaska right now.

80 Acres, building a post and beam (load bearing) straw bale (nonload bearing) with a lime based earthen plaster. The bales are getting shipped in all other materials are currently onsite (using our trees for the posts beams and any flooring. We can't go subterranean or even partially subterranean because of permafrost.

Totally off grid, it would cost $30k for power and likely the same for wired telecoms. Water will be drilled or pounded in the spring (which is kind of ironic) depending on whether what we found is a natural spring, or an underground aquifer.

Then clear planting and pasture areas, for goats, chickens, rabbits (not hare). Plus we have plenty of game too.

So thoughts are I think its a great idea, drawbacks for us at least is its fr**king hard work, I thought I was fit until we started, even spending an hour or so a day at the gym will not prepare you for the work ahead. Of course at this time of year, we're averaging -10F daily dropping to -20F to -30F at night, but we've had runs of -40F or less for a couple of weeks so we're not doing much but surveying, and dropping a few of the bigger tree's while the sap is down.Oh and getting firewood of course.

You should check out our blog http://www.jenninewardle.com

Seems to me that there are a number of viable low-input and/or renewable-input housing options available to us.  

In the SW US, earthships seem a good idea.  Structures built into the side of hills with south-facing windows and thermal mass in the floor are a good idea 'round my way (NE US).  Properly situated, in the Summer they are shaded by the leaves on the trees (and cooled by virtue of the back end of the house being dug into a hill), and in the winter (when the leaves have fallen) you gain heat from sun through the south side of the house (preferably hitting a floor that'll store heat:  ceramic tile, etc.).  By the same token, in the winter such houses are 'heated' by virtue of the back end being buried in earth that never falls below 50-odd degrees.  

There is no one solution (for the many microclimates).  But IME no matter where you are, there are intelligent options.  Where my wife & I are (NE US), heating with wood (living on a large chunk o'land and renewing the resource by actively planting seedlings) seems not a bad strategy.

Then there are the low-input housing options (low input in the sense of building one takes much less input than conventional housing), such as yurts, geodesic dome-homes, etc.  Certainly, heating a yurt through the winter in the NE would take a lot of wood (3-4 cords for a 700 sqft yurt, so I've heard) but the fact that, given enough land, you can renew those cords of wood, and you've spent far fewer Kcalories of energy creating the house in the first place, can make them more stingy in terms of energy requirements.

Just a few thoughts.  This is a large conversation...

Viva -- Sager

Hey FM.

So yes we already knew that about Straw bale, which is part of the reason we selected it, and the insulation properties of course. Obviously up here we don't have too many humidity problems like those around the Mexican Gulf which is much goodness, currently we're at 10% Rel Humidity, and outside it's trace, even in the summer it only gets to about 40 on a bad day. So wicking from the walls will work just fine added benefit the humidity gradient in winter will force the walls to dry even better. We will be building on a wood platform, to keep the ground from getting overwarm and possibly affecting the permafrost, either causing a sink or heave neither one is particularly good.

Outdoor wood stoves are actually a non-starter up here, when its really cold, you're wasting a lot of energy, we did investigate it and Jennine wrote a big report to Jim (JPitre) when he suggested it. Same really goes for the floors, we could run an ethyl-glycol mix but then we'd likely have to pollute our water supply or have it as a separate system entirely (with a heat exchanger), which is all overhead. So we're just gonna make do with a single high efficiency hybrid heating stove for most of our heating we're building 40' round and about 1600 sq ft on two levels main floor and "half" upper where the half is a circular landing 10' in from the outside wall so we have a central vault, and a cookstove for cooking. Most of the stove's we're looking at are the 2500 sq ft 'house" stoves the one I think we're going for is the Harmon TL300, that will be located centrally. I'll likely adapt it for hot water heating in a recirculating system so when the battery full power shunt (also known as an immersion heater) either isn't operational, or isn't getting enough power to fully heat the water we can augment with that, and of course there are no heat losses in this climate inside your home, it all just adds to the ambient temperature.

For wind deflection circular is pretty much ideal, significantly better than rectangular in most cases. We don't get that much wind up here to the point, I'm a little concerned about wind power generation. Obviously being off grid, we're using Solar in the summer, and wind such as it is in the winter, but we've had a few weeks where average wind speeds were unreadable at 8' I think I need to go stick it in a tree to get a reading for 30' off the ground but we'll get by one way or another.

I don't know about the tunnels though, since straw bales need to be imported here and they can be a little pricey in comparison to the lower 48. Either because they're bought here, or alternatively bought in the lower 48 and shipped here. Anyway it's kind of fun going out at -40 and below, just not for too long.

EASY!? Hahahahaha........ try loads of hard work. Self sufficiency, I'm afraid, is no walk in the park. It's called doing without 200 fossil fuel slaves.
Mike

So you're a Yooper, ao?  EXCELLENT!  I know a coupla fine fine Yoopers!  Although -- I don't know how it goes, or how long one has to be there before one is a 'real' Yooper.  IMO, if you survive one winter...

Viva -- Sager

Mike, I'm looking at the book Comfort in Any Climate by Michael Reynolds right now, and in a hot and humid climate (only), the layout puts the glazing (and atrium) facing the north and incorporates a thermal chimney for passive ventilation.  I know you designed and built your own house, but you don't know what the hell you are talking about when it comes to this earthtship-specific topic. I participated in building a monolithic dome home in Dallas, and humidity condensing on the interior thermal mass shot-crete shell is a "real-world" problem with the design.

The climate in this part of Texas is not what you saw in a Cowboy movie on the TeeVee. I live in zone 9B, thus a high thermal mass structure is not appropriate here. For a design that is appropriate see this. Your not the only one to have designed and built your own house, I did as well, from 2000-2002.

To live without air conditioning here, serious passive ventilation, with a thermal chimney and wing walls is a must. Even with proper design, the summer and early fall are misery without AC (I know because I have done it). But I can grow a literal jungle (a food forest actually) in this climate without much effort, so I consider it a fair trade-off to be well fed but a little uncomfortable for 4 months out of the year.

I think its hilarious, since your half a world away, that you would assume that you know more about the Texas climate and appropriate home design for this climate than a lifelong resident. This makes me really question your other know-it-all assumptions .

G'day Mate.

Snow in Dallas Texas, December 29th 2010 « Lone Star Travelers Blog

Oh but I do......  I designed eco houses for a living once, and it now appears Reynolds is the one who doesn't know what he's talking about....  with N facing windows only, OF COURSE you will get mold!  A house like that would only ever see the sun in summer very early in the morning, and very late at night and only  when it's weak and glances off the glass.  I know, because that's exactly what happens  on our S (S hemisphere) facing windows.

Fact is, the classic Earthship design is totally inappropriate in a hot humid climate.  Why would you bother treating your effluents INSIDE a building when it doesn't freeze over in winter??

Domes are cool.......  but a stupid idea in anything but very cold climates.

I consider the necessity for a chimney proof of a bad design to start with.....  Clerestory windows allow you to cool by stacking along the ENTIRE LENGTH Of the house if necessary.....  a chimney is a bandaid solution.

I was taught how to design buildings for any climate by someone who teaches it all over the world and has designed some of the very best designing software known to man (Google "holger wilrath").

If you can keep the temperature of the building down to 26C when it's 40C outside, then humidity is hardly an issue.  The REAL challenge is keeping the temperature down, and THAT is done by appropriate siting (long narrow parrallel to the Equator) with appropriate window sizing (and glazing type) best calculated using good software.....  and of course heavy insulation

Now if it snows in Dallas and you build a N facing Earthship....  well you'll just freeze your tits off without loads of fossil fuel heating!

You can ignore what I'm saying, it's no skin off my nose.....

G'day to you too buddy.

G'day Mate.

Snow in Dallas Texas, December 29th 2010 « Lone Star Travelers Blog

Mike,

I agree that north facing glazing in an earthship (in a hot climate) is a very bad idea (read my initial post). I think Reynolds was trying to preserve the popular layout, while minimizing overheating in the winter. By "thermal chimney" I was referring to a cupola (with opening windows) with the inside opposite the west facing window painted black. So technically its not a true thermal chimney, and operates very much like clerestory windows.

PS: I wish we lived closer to one another so we could have this conversation over beers, LOL.

Cheers...Jeff

Small world ao!!

I'm an old Yooper too.  Naubinway, '64-'68.  About 45 miles west of "The Bridge" on US 2. 

Used to hit Tahquamenon Falls every summer.  Did get to the point where we were comfortable swimming in Lake Superior from June through August.  Usually thawed out in front of the fire around mid-October.

Oh to be young, stupid and invincible again.

ao -

I say we start planning a Chris Martenson Crash Course seminar at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island.

Maybe we'll get lucky and Jane Seymour will come to life out of a painting a la "Somewhere In Time"

Yeah, I know, it was a cheesey chick flick, but Cat and I liked it.

Not a yooper here, but from Southwest MI...almost went to Michigan Tech up there by you for college, but opted for a local community college I could afford and against the debt (and the snow!) of Houghton.  A few friends went up there though...still paying off debt, but I think they've warmed up since then!  I went up that way to hunt many years ago...never saw a thing!

I will "third" the idea of a seminar on Mackinac Island...isn't there a "ban" on automobiles there?

The island did get some recognition recently for sustainability from National Geographic.  Not sure what their level of cred. is on the subject, but maybe it's a start.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/traveler/features/islandsrated0711/islands_northamerica.html#8

Mackinac Island, Michigan
Score: 80
 
"Still spectacular with great social and cultural integrity. In summer the dock area can be frenzied with tourists, yet the remainder of the island remains relatively unchanged—scenic and appealing."
 
"The pace is purposely slow. Pleasures are simple: bike riding, touring the fort, eating fudge, savoring the view from the veranda of the Grand Hotel. With access restricted by ferry schedules, it will likely never be out of control."
 
 "Its charm, enhanced by the lack of automobiles (since 1898) and the presence of horse-drawn conveyances, is quite remarkable. For the everyday tourist it seems a perfect historic environment. Mackinac is a very fragile environment, though. The crush of summertime tourists strains the local physical plant, and lack of heritage regulations allows for substantial changes to historic fabric, especially in the downtown."
 
"A great example of conservation/preservation/education all converging in a project that the local community clearly benefits from and is proud of."

Take care.

-Brandon

EDIT: Editied subject line for relevancy.

Okay, found some of the information I was looking for here:  http://www.archinia.com/index.php/58-publications/publications/215-solving-the-earthship-enigma

The author specifies to only build an earthship in an area with a "humidity less than 60%" which I'm assuming is average annual humidity.