Rachel Preston Prinz's Blog

This is the first part of the book, which outlines our earthship research. We are giving this away free. The book gets into a lot of the details of HOW to do earthship type buildings, but better. But we want EVERYONE to know WHY!

And please note: THIS PROJECT IS NO LONGER BEING UPDATED.

THIS PROJECT IS NO LONGER BEING UPDATED.
WE HAVE MOVED PAST THE EARTHSHIP CONCEPT.

by Rachel Preston Prinz and Carrie Christopher
Designing a truly sustainable home is an art, and when it is done well, it is an art that is based on science. Many people like to think that “going green” can be achieved via a checklist like LEED and trusting things that are labeled “green”. In reality though, that is not enough because a lot of what is considered “green” today is really just “greener”. Many modern “green” products use the same old technologies with a few less chemicals. That is not truly sustainable. Whereas some traditional techniques are thousands of years old and do not need chemicals at all, last longer, and support traditional craftwork. Because of the challenges in finding the right balance, in our office we developed a sustainability philosophy to guide our projects. These criteria will guide us as we talk through all of the aspects of design in this book.
We choose materials based on criteria that give our clients the most truly sustainable buildings:Many of the materials we assume and have been told are “green” are actually dangerous. For instance, many bio-based plastics are toxic. They are just assumed to be less toxic because they support the sustainable renewables industry. Coca-Cola’s PlantBottle, for instance, is PET plastic but with one ingredient from sugar cane. The rest of the bottle is made from p-xylene, a hazardous chemical linked to brain damage in newborn animal studies. So, the PlantBottle might be seen as a better option than the original bottle, but it is hardly safe or sustainable. We pay special attention to these materials.

Designing a home is an enormous undertaking. Helping to design and manage these complex projects is one of the things we do in our office. It takes many hands and many months to pull together all the information needed to craft a design and then to detail a home so that it meets the client’s quality and performance standards and makes our clients feel truly “at home”. 
We know that many people would like to design and create a space that they can build themselves or with their community. Their motivation might be being environmentally-sensitive, fulfilling the dream of designing a home of one’s own, or it might be about getting the most home value for the money you have to invest. Designing a home can prove to be frustrating without any training or guidance. For some, it might even prove impossible. There is so much to know and learning it all can take a lifetime. And, just when you think you have it figured out, you meet someone from somewhere else and they do things exactly the opposite way of what you thought was “right”. Or technology or science change and suddenly what was right is now wrong. With sixteen plus years of practice under my belt, I am only just realizing that beginner’s mind is an essential element in design. It allows me to question all of my assumptions and go back to science to look for reasons to do something… or not to. So, please, do not lose faith. You can work your way through this too. It is all about taking your gut feelings and figuring out what they are really telling you, and then turning to people who are craftsmen, like the team we have brought on for this effort, to get their expertise to help you do it well.
In this book we want to share the resources as well as the ideas, tips, tricks, and rules of thumb that we have learned along the way. We want to empower our readers to achieve their home design goals in ways that support their lifestyle and their values, whether they use the Earthship idea fully or just borrow aspects they love from it. We will walk through our process of design in the next chapters so that readers have the tools needed to make their self-designed space shine. For materials, we will offer a broad swath of what is available, not depending solely on traditional Earthship design techniques. 
Some of the biggest questions that you will need to answer in regard to how you want to build and live in your new home will require you to define your values. Sometimes there is no easy choice. There are pros and cons for every system and material. You will find reasons to use adobe and reasons for using strawbale instead. You will have to make a choice about which of those works for you. You may not want to use wood products because that may go against a deeply held environmental value that motivates you to save every bit of the earth and allow it to remain natural. So when it comes to choosing fiberglass windows versus clad-wood, you may choose fiberglass. Alternately, you may not want to use plastic products and support the oil industry that manufactures them. It is all about understanding your own values and determining what works for you. The same holds true for the aspects of design we will talk about here. 
This book is not intended to deal with the technicalities of building. There are plenty of resources available outside of this work that excel in technical building details for various systems, but lack what we are trying to offer in design. We will also not cover the Water Organizing Modules, Power Organizing Modules, or equipment and appliances typical in Earthships here. Those systems are covered in Earthship, Volumes 2 and 3. We are going to cover some of what is missing from the standard literature as well as alternate options for those for whom grid-tied means affordable. We will also try to explain the underlying principles behind the different materials and methods so that you can make more informed design decisions and choose the methods and materials that will help you to live the life you want. Which of these materials and methods you go with depends on your values, your experience level, and your budget... and whether you build grid-tied, or off-grid. Hopefully, you will find a combination of resources that works for you! 
This book is written from the point of view of New Mexico, USA. The issues that we discuss here are designed for the northern hemisphere. We try and provide guidance for southern hemisphere applications where appropriate. 
We hope that this will be just the beginning, and that we will add to the book in future editions to make it better. It is all about bringing architecture to the People. And, hopefully, doing it in a truly sustainable way that makes life better for everyone. That is our mission.

 “In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete.”
- Buckminster Fuller
W hether your dream home ultimately ends up being an Earthship, an earth-shelter, a natural home, a tiny house… or some variation or combination of these… the path ahead is one that can sometimes be difficult and overwhelming. In the chapters that follow, we will line out each step in the process of design to help you find your way. The failure of modern design happened when we started developing future movements around the 20th century ideas of everything having to be entirely new instead of building on the past. We have seen countless homes of the future come and go since the Industrial Revolution... from Claude Ledoux’ sphere home in the nineteenth century, to Disneyland’s “House of the Tomorrow” made by Monsanto and built in 1957 (and abandoned because it was already outdated by 1967)… these interpretations of what we “needed” for the future depended on the technology and the materials of the moment to make their statement. This is a solid foundation on which to build, in principle… use what we have to work with. The problem is that technology becomes outdated more quickly with every passing year. When we build our ideas of home based on fad design techniques and trendy but untested materials and technologies, the vision for the future we just invested in is no longer relevant or useful when those ideas and materials change. 
The Earthship suffers from the same handicap. Forty years ago, there was a real need to do something… anything… with old tires, cans, and bottles. Today, those materials can all be recycled for better uses rather than be reused as building materials. And we know now that the buildings do not meet the performance ideals to which they were designed in many climates. We can move past these limitations - we can take what is good from the Earthships and tweak the rest to make our home work better for our values and location. In fact, if we want to call ourselves truly sustainable, we have a responsibility to. Several of the European Union (EU)-based Earthship organizations decided to look to science to see if the Earthships were truly viable from the standpoint of thermal performance, materials used, and liveability. When they determined that the buildings did not function adequately to meet their needs, they decided to abandon all but the line of separate rooms, the greenhouse, the south-facing wall of windows, the grey water system and rainwater harvesting systems. They then redesigned every remaining detail. We agree with this approach. We would even propose taking it a step further… we would abandon the tropical-style greenhouse as it is currently designed and add a window wall designed to passive solar guidelines and an attached production greenhouse instead.
This book is our attempt to share the best information we have learned about Earthships and other natural building ideas from projects, builders, forums, and designers around the world. We then added layers of best practices we use when designing buildings to meet or exceed the requirements of typical municipal green design ordinances, LEED, HUD, USAA, and even the Building Code... so that it is easier for your project to meet or exceed those standards from the outset. 
We will incorporate some of the best design ideas gleaned from our own experience as well as from forward-thinking designs like Frank Lloyd Wright’s timeless Usonian Houses, the “homes for tomorrow” he designed in the 1930s. The Usonian Houses used beautifully detailed natural materials and offered a living “heart” of the home in the living areas (often centered around a fireplace). They worked with and embraced nature and he incorporated people-scaled spaces in the home. We will also explore the underlying principles in the teachings of the first century Roman architect Vitruvius who called for buildings to be built on the principals of “firmness, commodity, and delight”, so we will also address structural stability, designing spaces sized and oriented for the way we live, and designing spaces that feed our souls. Because that is part of what we see is missing from the general built environment... not just Earthships.
We have built some resources for you to find inspiration from this rich history we all share. Check out our Pinterest boards titled Usonian, Magic Cottages, EcoCommunities, and Archinia’s Inspired Idea Book to find ideas from projects around the world. 
We also love our friend Sigi Koko’s website www.buildnaturally.com and her Facebook fan page https://www.facebook.com/buildnaturallyfor the best of the best in great design tips for natural building. 
As well, we love our friend Oliver Swann’s Natural Home website at http://www.NaturalHomes.org .

The flagstone will be reusable. It will just need chiseling out. The glass could be reused intact for other projects, or recycled outright if it is broken. The metal flashing of the greenhouse and the metal roof system will most likely be reusable or recyclable. 
Plumbing probably will not be recycled due to health concerns and deterioration of the PVC. The concrete filled with cans and bottles will not likely be good for anything. The bottles and cans will likely break or be too encased in the concrete for salvage or even recycling. The cabinets in all but the most sophisticated Earthship are plywood, so there is no point trying to save them. Those materials – about 10 dump truck loads worth – will most likely be taken to the landfill. Footings and buttresses, if they are present, will add another 5-10 dump truck loads. There is some possibility they can be reused in non-structural landscape walls, though the presence of exposed rebar, which rusts and causes the concrete to spall, will likely render those unusable.
Concrete cisterns will also be discarded - another dump truck load or two for the landfill… as will the raised interior planting beds – another 2-3 loads. If the cisterns are plastic, chances are no-one will want to reuse them because of deterioration, but maybe by the time they are abandoned we will have figured out how to manage recycling them. 
Maybe some of the wood that was covered with metal can be salvaged, though likely not from the greenhouse, as it will likely be rendered unusable due to moisture damage. The vigas, and the roof decking if it is solid wood, should be reusable. 
Tires have a life of 30,000 years, so the berm, while it may deteriorate, will likely be left to degrade and become a mini dumpsite of toxic materials that may threaten the water supply. Or, the tires can be returned to the landfill.Life cycle cost is a comprehensive assessment, and since that is not our purpose, we did not want to include a whole book about it here. What we did want to do was offer an overview so that our readers could focus on the parts of sustainability and life cycle cost that matter to them. If you do not care about embodied energy, skip those sections. 
What follows was the easiest way we could put the cost of the Earthship into perspective for ourselves. We hope it works for you too!
Comparing the Earthship to a traditionally built home: 
A three bedroom home of the same size as the Global Model Earthship requires approximately 13,000 board feet of lumber for framing. If laid out end to end, this would make a line of wood nearly 2.5 miles long! We would need 14 tons of concrete. Sheathing would add up to somewhere around 6,000 square feet, as would drywall. Roofing material, exterior siding, and insulation would cover an area nearly 10,000 square feet. We would need 15 windows, 12 doors, toilets, kitchen sinks, bathroom sinks, cabinets, fireplace(s) or stoves, and garage doors. We would also need food, water, electricity, fuel, and household products. 
The Global Earthship still requires thousands of board feet of lumber and vigas for framing. It needs 9 tons of concrete. The roofing material, exterior stucco, and insulation would still cover an area nearly 7,000 square feet due to extra levels of insulation required at the berm’s cisterns, thermal wrap, and tubes. We would need 40 windows and 9 doors - double that of a normal home - since there are two layers of windows and doors at the greenhouse, plus the same toilets, kitchen sinks, bathroom sinks, cabinets, fireplace(s) or stoves, garage doors, etcetera… as a regular house. We would pay a premium charge for the systems and their maintenance and require backup power and backup heat, plus we would need special soils for the greenhouse, soil amendments, and insect control. We would also still need food, water, fuel, and household products.
Does the Earthship model actually end up increasing financial and material requirements? The math suggests that the answer to this is yes.

by Pratik Zaveri and Rachel Preston Prinz
One of the most difficult aspects of talking about the Earthships is addressing issues around the data presented as supporting evidence for the idea. The Earthship website and publications are a bit “fuzzy” and we want to clarify what we can so our readers can have solid information when making decisions regarding a potential Earthship home.
We call some of what happens in the Earthship books, website, and philosophy a “One-Way View.” Without realizing it, the literature points to reasons to use the model… that actually point to problems with the model. We have touched on some of these already. Earthship Volume 1 and the Earthship website both talk about indigenous materials being available around the world and then go on to point out that shipping materials great distances uses a lot energy and is therefore not sustainable. This statement, while looking towards an ideal that we all really want to meet, fails to address the economic and energetic inputs required to obtain and transport the materials required to build an Earthship, as we identified in The Myth of “The Most Economical Building Design in the World” section. It forgets that Earthships require triple or quadruple the energetic inputs of a standard building. It only sees what it wants to see – the ideal. This is a perfect example of a “one-way view” and it is based on a concept called “cognitive anchoring”. From Wikipedia: 
“Anchoring or focalism is a cognitive bias that describes the common human tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information offered (the "anchor") when making decisions. During decision-making, anchoring occurs when individuals use an initial piece of information to make subsequent judgments. Once an anchor is set, other judgments are made by adjusting away from that anchor, and there is a bias toward interpreting other information around the anchor. For example, the initial price offered for a used car sets the standard for the rest of the negotiations, so that prices lower than the initial price seem more reasonable even if they are still higher than what the car is really worth.”The many issues of not depending on traditional systems that the Earthship literature attempts to address are absolutely valid, as every day we seem to get nearer to an economic and cultural collapse that renders alternates not only ideal but necessary. However, the “better world” the Earthship ideal promises cannot be delivered through ideals and wishful thinking. It has to come from actions… and those actions need to be based on good science and good design.
The Earthship website points out that the Earthship’s technology is based on the sun, the earth, and the efforts of the people themselves. That is sortof true. The passive solar aspects of the design and the photovoltaics use the sun. There is earth in the berm. People build the Earthships. Earthships also use a huge number of solar panels, batteries full of toxic acids, and countless manufactured goods, many of which have extremely high embodied energy equal to and even well beyond that of standard buildings. As well, sophisticated engineering skills are required to design, install, and maintain the Earthship so that the technologies can work. It is stated in the Earthship literature that the Earthships are specifically designed with the intent of being built by unskilled people. While the methods of construction may not necessarily require skill, they most definitely require ability. Pounding tires is not for the faint of heart and building angled walls is really only work for a master carpenter. This is one reason why you may really want to consider using Earthship Biotecture’s teams to build your home if you can afford them - they are second to none in these skills.Earthship Volume 1 talks about facing the Earthship north in Taos. How would a north-facing design even work? It would be a snow magnet and would hold ice and snow against the house when it needs to be in the sun to melt! Sure, large north windows are not unusual in Taos… when the artists arrived they wanted that pure north light so they built huge windows facing north… but these were not used in Taos until the late 1800s, because in order to pull off a completely nature-ignorant design, you needed a large wood stove to compensate for the cold north wind. The books do not address this needed heat source. The book goes on to propose a roof garden, in an area with a 140 day growing season, high winds, and tendency for drought. This is not the recipe I would follow for a house in Taos. Evidently, they figured out not to do that as well, because the Taos Earthships face south and there are no rooftop gardens that we know of.
The wind diagrams in the book show wind coming from one direction, and it looks like it is usually assumed as from the south. The problem is… the wind in Taos comes from the North in winter and West in summer. Showing it coming from a direction it rarely does suggests that the ventilation will not work effectively. The research and commentaries from users indicates that this is accurate - many Earthships have ventilation issues, especially those where predominant winds come from less than ideal directions for the design. For the greenhouse’s low awning windows to functionally draw air into the space and up through the skylight there has to be some wind pushing into and away from the building from the right directions to force enough draw. Indigenous is typically understood to refer to locally-sourced, raw materials, or local peoples. Indigenous is the epitome of simplicity. Tires, concrete, bottles, and cans are not simple, nor are they indigenous to anyone’s site that we know of. Shipping tires, concrete, cans, and bottles from wherever they are to your build site uses energy and removes these materials from the recycling stream. These misconceptions help to illustrate why Earthships are not truly sustainable.
The literature talks about wood being less than ideal as a durable material for building, as it is natural, lightweight, and porous, which will lead it to decompose quickly. The people of Bavaria, who have lived in some of their wooden houses for 400 years, may disagree with that. As would the builders of the Hōryū-ji temple pagoda in Japan, which still stands after the wood was felled in 594AD! That is nearly 1,500 years old! Wood can last a long time when it is felled at the correct time, is the right species for its use, and is well cared for over its life. And not all wood is light and porous. Generally, we use heavy and dense deciduous hardwoods on the exterior of a building and evergreen softwoods for interior framing. Plus, to be fair… Earthships use a boatload of wood. 
The literature goes on to complain that manufactured materials dictate the way buildings are built, and then goes on to suggest that the reverse should be true, implying that housing should dictate the nature of materials. And yet the primary building block of an Earthship is the tire – a highly manufactured material.The literature also states that one of the main goals of the Earthship ideal is to use materials that require little or no manufactured energy. And yet, the building blocks of Earthships… the tires, cans, bottles, concrete, wood framing and vigas, roofing, cooling tubes, insulation and thermal wrap, cisterns, interior finishes, glazing for two walls of windows, shades, glass doors, appliances, and the mechanical and plumbing systems… have manufactured or embodied energy… and lots of it.The literature makes the case that the Earthship is using such simple materials that it makes sense for large-scale production for low-impact living. Except, large scale production of the currently extremely oversized Earthships is not sustainable. Earthships have gigantic footprints, in terms of the amount of land required to build on, as well as square footage, as well as embodied energy. They are also too expensive to be viable for large scale development.The importance of not relying on modern food systems is discussed, yet the food growing system as designed most often cannot provide the quantity of food that makes self-reliance possible. What is offered is an extraordinarily expensive system that cannot provide in grocery savings what it adds in cost.


SystemsThe literature speaks to the common house using “monstrous systems” and states that the modern house cannot function without systems. Reynolds likened the standard home and its large systems to being a patient in ICU being “plugged in” at a hospital: If the lines were cut, then what? 
Yet, nothing is ever mentioned of the standard systems used in an Earthship, which deplete resources, cost a great deal at outset, are prohibitively complex to maintain and repair, and still do not work when something goes wrong. All of this costs money and resources. To compound that, backup heat and power are required in nearly every build because most Earthships do not work as intended. Systems are a reality for the vast majority of owners.The Thermal Mass section of the Earthship website states that a lightly-built house (presumably one without earth-sheltering) “obviously” takes more energy to heat and cool. Only, that is not accurate. A light house with good insulation and located in the right climate needs less heating and cooling than an Earthship.


LandscapeLandscaping is critical to great design, for important tasks like turning winds into breezes; turning sunlight into food energy and shade; and for minimizing the reflection of the sun off the ground. Yet, the only hints of how to address landscape that are provided in the literature are effectively “do not puncture the roof”, “slope the berm away from the building”, and “do not plant trees within 20 feet of the tire wall”. But this makes the building more dependent on systems to perform and offers no advice on how to make these ideas work. 
It is suggested that locating the building on a sloping site can keep water from the inside, but there is no guidance on proper site design for this. In fact, the Hut designs create major water ponding issues right at the front door. Positive drainage - the design of a site to shed water away from the building - is a challenging thing to do even for an architect or designer with lots of experience. We have spent days designing a site for positive drainage before. See our Landscape chapter for tips and tricks to resolve these issues.
There is a section about harnessing the power of natural springs, but no mention is made about how springs can become rivers with rainfall, or how water tables rise and fall though the moon’s cycles. These are all manageable with good design. EarthquakesThe Earthship website talks about the Earthships in regard to Earthquakes. This section specifically addresses horizontal movement, and suggests using “rubbery” and resilient materials for building rather than brittle materials like concrete because they crack.
So, a little Earthquake 101 here: an earthquake’s source, or epicenter, is always located along a geologic fault line. A well-known example is the San Andreas Fault in California. The fault line occurs where two tectonic plates meet. The plates are moving at different rates and different directions, basically grinding against each other along the fault line. But the fault line is not perfectly smooth, so the line ‘holds’ the plates from sliding against each other. When the forces along the fault line become greater than the ability of a part of the fault line to resist them … boom! The energy is released explosively as an earthquake. The energy is released as waves through the earth, very much like a wave in the ocean. When the waves reach the surface of the earth, where your Earthship might be perched much like a ship on the sea, your Earthship (or any structure) is tossed horizontally and vertically. We generally think of buildings as static – they don’t move about. When the earth moves beneath it, a building resists the movement. This is called inertia – put a salt shaker on a napkin and yank the napkin away – the bottom of the shaker is attached to the napkin and has to follow. But the rest of the shaker tries to stay where it was, and the shaker topples. The same thing happens to our buildings.
Earthquake-resistant buildings (anyone that tells you a building is earthquake-proof is uninformed or misleading) are generally both strong and resilient. Strong enough not to shatter under the earthquake forces, and resilient enough to “give” a little without breaking. It is a little counterintuitive, but it is that resiliency that usually helps buildings survive smaller earthquakes with little damage, and in a big earthquake, resiliency allows a building to bend rather than break, to tilt rather than topple, so people inside can get out.
The Earthship’s interior walls and the buttresses for the back tire wall are concrete. So the brittle material argument is moot. As to the insinuation of the “rubbery” quality of the tires… once they are packed with earth, the wall acts more like concrete than rubber. So this is moot too.WallsThe Earthship books cover using wood for framing, but offer no clarification on the size or types of wood to use, or when it should be harvested. 
The website suggests that the aluminum can walls are very strong. However, the strength of the walls is not achieved by the aluminum, but by the cement that holds the cans together. While aluminum itself is strong, in this application, it has a smooth surface. There is no way the bond between cement and metal is stronger than that of, say… porous bricks, to which the cement can bind at the pore level… and hence it is not as easy to build a truly strong wall by this means. Also, the way the walls are built requires you to crush the can a little, decreasing the amount of space that is taken up by the can, and requiring more cement.RoofThe roof design from Earthship Volume 1 is not well designed and uses a huge number of resources. Plus, roof framing should really follow the pitch of the roof for the best structural performance. Gutters should have a minimum slope so they work. Earth floors are recommended, but earth floors only work in some climates and they do not always work for passive solar design, which needs to be modified for the installation type and climate. Many Earthships now use flagstone or brick flooring. and Skylights at the base of the greenhouse against the ground can get buried in snow and cannot provide adequate ventilation unless they are cleared at every snowfall. That is a maintenance nightmare in cold climates, where some of our respondents noted that they had to remove snow as many as three times a day to insure adequate ventilation. There are some design issues with the standard skylight details too. They must be opened and closed by the occupant in order to regulate ventilation and solar heating. If left closed all day they can cause overheating, but if accidentally left open on cold nights they can vent too much heat. Both windows and skylights are also notorious for condensation problems. This often contributes to rot and mold issues.MaintenanceThere is just no way around it: Maintenance-wise, Earthships are on par with any naturally-built building, if not more so. Day-to-day maintenance on an Earthship can easily be double or triple that of a traditionally-built building. Earthship systems also require specialized repairmen that charge a lot for their knowledge and are sometimes difficult to locate. and KidsYour pets may not understand that the planters are not their personal litter box or entertainment center. Or that the cistern, if left open to the building, is not their swimming pool or bathtub. Sometimes, kids may be equally susceptible. (I know I would have been.) PestsIn the video From the Ground Up, there is a moment where we see someone using earth to plaster the wall and you can see bugs milling about in the plaster. That does not stop once the plaster dries. In fact, now the bugs have awesome places to build colonies - in the tires. You might as well prepare yourself early… centipedes, jerusalem crickets, moths, spiders, snakes, rats, mice… they will all be your friends in an Earthship. That is totally okay for some people. For others, it is a terrifying nightmare. The books, especially Earthship Volume 1, are woefully out of date. Some of the products offered, like the Dynasphere wind turbine, are investments in less than ideal technology (see our Wind Power section for an explanation why). There are other places to look for more up-to-date solutions, and the majority of them are free online. Check out our Resource Guide at the back of this book for books, websites, workshops, and connections.

According to Wikipedia,
“A degree is a college or university diploma… which is usually awarded in recognition of the recipient having either satisfactorily completed a prescribed course of study or having conducted a scholarly endeavor deemed worthy of his or her admission to the degree. The most common degrees awarded today are Associate, Bachelors, Masters, and Doctoral degrees.
The most basic degree, called a Bachelor’s degree, consists of a course of study of 3 to 4 years. To call oneself “architecturally trained,” one must have a 4 year degree at an accredited University and then also pursue an additional specialized course of study over an additional 2 years, towards a professional terminus degree usually known as a Master’s of Architecture. Or, alternately, one must do the 5 year Bachelor’s in Architecture that some colleges offer. At the minimum, an architecturally-trained designer will have spent 5 years of 50+ hour weeks studying their field. That is 12,500 hours of design study. To become eligible to be tested to become a licensed architect, another 5+ years of internship are required, often at 50+ hours a week for 50 weeks a year. That is another 12,500 hours of training. So the minimum for a new designer fresh out of school is 12,500 hours of experience, and the average for a well-trained architectural designer ready to take the exams and with some real experience is 25,000 experience hours. 

Why, one might ask, is this relevant? The Earthship website states that there is no time limit for interns in obtaining their degree, which they get from attending the Earthship Academy, a $2,500 on-site building education program that requires a minimum of a month-long commitment.
The major issue here is that one cannot get a “degree” in 4 weeks. Even if super-students work extra diligently in such a program and stay on for say… 3 months… those graduates are coming out with MAYBE 600 hours of experience. 

WHAT SOUNDS LIKE A BETTER INVESTMENT IN YOUR HOME DESIGN?
HIRING A DESIGNER WITH 25,000 HOURS OF EXPERIENCE OR 200 HOURS?

The internship would be more accurately called a “workshop” or “certification.” This issue is compounded by people who have completed the Earthship training and are calling themselves “degreed” in Biotecture - something that sounds a lot like Architecture. Except they are missing critical knowledge about the core components of good design: basic structures and systems, site orientation, landscape, thermal action, etcetera... Not that a degree is required to do good building, but call it a degree implies that the graduates have special knowledge, training, and/or experience - when they only have a workshop's worth. Would you let a person with one workshop worth of accounting manage your IRS audit? Probably not. So why would you let someone with one workshop’s worth of Earthship training design your house?

I do not say this lightly. I am an architecturally-trained designer and researcher with 16 years (around 40,000 hours) of experience. I am not trying to protect that tiny piece of the pie that licensed architects are keen to keep me from feeding off of - the 2% of all buildings that licensed architects design. But I am fully trained, and was certified in 2006 to take the Architects Registration Exam. I believe that you should expect from a “degreed” designer more than a Biotecture graduate can possibly get in that speck of time. Architecturally-trained designers know how to protect your health, safety, and welfare; we understand climatic impacts on design; and we know when to call in a licensed architect and/or an engineer. Working with someone who knows about design is like medicine: you want the best trained designer you can find, just like you want the best doctor you can find. 

We believe that the better solution for those who are looking to get a solid foundation in Earthships and other natural building techniques is to check out the UNM-Taos Green Technology Program, which offers University-level courses in CAD, Tiny Houses, Southwest Landscapes, Solar Design, Building Science, Wiring and Plumbing, Sustainable Systems, Solar Thermal and PV… in addition to the Earthship Design class taught by Earthship Biotecture’s own renowned expert Phil Basehart. The diversity of the UNM-Taos program will help you to be ready for many of the questions you may need to answer if you want to design yourself an Earthship-inspired home that diverges from traditional models. 
There are specialized classes on natural building that would be a great asset on this journey as well. Some of them could easily be paired with a visit to Taos to check out the Greater World site or attend the workshop or visit UNM-Taos. We will talk about several of them in more depth in later chapters, but you might want to look into studying Earth Plaster with Carole Crews, or Cob and Strawbale Building with Sigi Koko, Adobe Making with Cornerstones Partnership, or Cordwood with Richard Flatau. Our friend Oliver Swann’s Natural Homes website is the largest online natural building resource in the WORLD, and he has a list of workshops that might be a bit
closer to you. For those in or wanting to attend an accredited Architecture program, I would recommend the
sustainable design class at CU-Boulder where they come out to Lama Foundation north of Taos and design new modern style sustainable tiny-house inspired buildings. The buildings they design are extraordinary, and paired with Lama’s training in permaculture, this opportunity offers an exceptional alternative for those who would love to see natural done in modern, design-oriented, ways.


The Myth of Getting it Built by People who are Willing to Pay
Asking people to pay for the opportunity to work on your home is one common way of attempting to raise money and feed and house volunteers.  If you are really organized, then pay for the traditional Earthship training, and then pay for the insurance and food for the volunteers to come to your home and help build, this might be feasible for you. Do not get discouraged if volunteers are hard to find at the start, or if people want to help but cannot pay. Many people who have enough disposable income to pay will often go to Earthship Biotecture to get a certification. After some time, and some publicity of your project, hopefully more volunteers will come help. We will get more into planning for volunteers in the section Planning a Build: Managing Volunteers.

Not everyone wants to, or can, pay upwards of $50,000 for the fully custom design of their home. If we had the money to spend on exactly what we wanted, we likely would. But many of us cannot afford that, so we don’t attempt to.
To offer a more affordable alternative, Earthship designers (Earthship Biotecture is not alone in this any longer) make standard plans available for sale that are essentially kits that you tweak in the same way as when buying a “custom home” in a suburban development. Maybe the plans are customized with your name and a few choices in materials or finishes, upgrades like a vestibule and that is it. These plans can cost up to $10,000 themselves.
Here is a list of available custom upgrades available as of this writing, and an explanation of what they are and do: OPEN END This essentially creates an enclosed quarter circle vestibule on one end of the greenhouse. This allows light in and expands the greenhouse capabilities, while helping to keep some of the dirt and dust and snow outside. This option adds functional square footage to the greenhouse for growing, but does not increase habitable space. GARAGE The garage in Earthships is constructed by the same means as the Earthship itself, often even utilizing vigas for the structure. This is an expensive addition due to the large vigas required to span the space, concrete for the floor, and the garage doors. Up to an additional 200 tires may be required. Additional heating may be required, and windows should be provided along the south and/or west walls if a greenhouse is not. AIRLOCK / VAULTED ENTRY In the old days, this was called a vestibule. Vestibules are used in climates where to want to offer a "buffer" between the inside and outside. Vestibules are a great design element for use on the west side of buildings in Taos. The reason being that the prominent wind direction in the summer is from the west, and that wind carries heated dust from Arizona across the desert and straight into your house. A vestibule traps some of that dust and cools the air before it gets inside. A vestibule is also a great idea when used as a mudroom in the primary entrance of the house. As designed, the vestibules available at this time are too small for that use. Make them a bit deeper, add shelves and hooks for storing tools and boots and coats, add a bench for taking off your snow or work boots, and enjoy the many benefits of this space. 
The vaulted entry adds a sheltered vault to this vestibule. It is pretty and prevents some snow and ice buildup right at the door. It can have a detrimental effect on the amount of light coming into this end of the structure, so plan for an exterior outdoor light in the vault. DUPLEX An Earthship plan is mirrored down the middle to make one Earthship into two separate functional spaces. SPLIT LEVEL Split level Earthships work better when building on a sloping site, as long as you are and remain fully able. However, there are good reasons that split level houses were abandoned years ago – they make maintenance and regular cleaning harder; they require additional structure that is harder to build and more likely to require a structural engineer’s or architect’s stamp to get past permitting; they make carrying your baby and groceries and laundry and vacuum cleaner around the house more difficult; and they lead to injuries from people falling down stairs and steps. They are also not accessible unless you are perfectly abled and remain so – no twisted ankles, surgeries, broken bones, blindness, or wheelchairs allowed.
The “custom plan” option, being largely un-customizable, has left some people we talked to wondering what they were really getting for the many thousands of dollars they are paying for these plans, especially when those plans are not guaranteed to get permitted. The permitting issue is something that takes me aback a little, from working in the design profession for nearly 20 years now. If I designed a home for someone that they could not build, I would be taken to court and have the pants sued off me. The common response to this concern is, “The Earthship is an experiment.” But if I put myself in the shoes of a potential buyer, I cannot help but to think “…but my life savings is not an experiment for someone else to make for their cause, with my money.” 
One of the issues that people have mentioned to us regarding Earthship plans is that if you already have a plan set - if you bought a copy from a previous builder or bought stock plans - to get those plans modified is going to cost quite a bit. One of our sources shared that they were quoted an upfront cost of $150 per half hour for a phone consultation. If that is indeed true, that is an astronomical price. To assume that anyone can provide great service at that price point over the phone is to presume a lot. Further, that meeting does not promise any results. All you are buying is time. In architecture firms with some of the top architects in the country, for actual face-time with the lead architect, one might pay $200 per hour. Most architects and designers will come into a meeting with both of you knowing what the expected deliverables will be after that meeting. Progress will be made. That is why you meet. A phone consult with no end result does not sound like a good investment.
A good designer will help you to get you a home that you will love. That is part of the reason why we believe a buyer is better off to contact a regional architect rather than an Earthship designer to get your plans, especially if you want to use alternate materials. An architect or established residential designer will get you to plans that will work. That is their job. It can cost more but it works the first time. The expert gets to share their recognized wealth of knowledge to persuade the permitting authority that the system they are building with works. It takes all of the pressure off the client. That is how design is supposed to work. Plus, humans have been building earth-sheltered structures for 10,000 years. It is not like an Earthship designer has the market cornered on how to do great earth-sheltering. 
We will attempt in later chapters to help you answer many of the questions a designer would and should answer, so that you can get the best design possible with or without professional help. The key is to know exactly what the designer needs to figure out in order to maximize the value of the time spent on your project. It is easy to dramatically cut a design budget just by minimizing the amount of preparation and research the designer has to do.

It seems that Earthships have been somewhat stymied in their evolution due to the assertion that because they are “experimental”, they do not need to work. We believe you should have a home that does work. We want you to know that “better” is easily achievable if you approach the design armed with good information. 
We know that there are issues from decades of documentation of problems at builds around the world, as well as from Earthship research. See “Earthship Research Overview in Plain English” in Chapter 2 for more on this.
Here is a summary of what has been documented as having gone wrong with some of the larger and more well-known builds around the world:
EARTHSHIP FIFE in Scotland had moisture issues because of using wet soil when filling the tires, which at the time was thought to improve compaction. This trapped moisture inside the building. Once it evaporated and moved out of the tires, the moisture led to rotting problems with the wood framing in the roof system.

The VALENCIA SPAIN EARTHSHIP is known to suffer from summer overheating. This was resolved by adding external block-out shades over the south-facing windows and utilizing shading over the skylights in summertime. The greywater system was modified - a typical retrofit in many Earthships. Removing the kitchen sink from the greywater system seemed to resolve smell issues. Modern Earthships use a grease trap to attempt to combat this issue, but commentary from people utilizing the new systems suggests that because of the regular and “gross” grease trap cleanouts required, removing the kitchen sink from the system is ideal.
EARTHSHIP ZWOLLE in the Netherlands was built on a concrete slab to accommodate a high water table, yet still had significant water infiltration issues. Another issue with the design was using a north entrance, which contributed to thermal performance issues, as well as unanticipated weather loading and impacts on the structure. The failure of thermal performance has led to the building being closed during winter. Due to high humidity in the Netherlands, moisture became a real issue as did mold. A lack of construction expertise in the build team has also contributed to cracking in the concrete around the tires, contributing to degradation of the building envelope, as well as moisture infiltration and thermal performance issues. There are also issues in the building’s water catchment and filtration system, so these systems have been abandoned.
The STAR COMMUNITY lies at the end of eight miles of rugged unpaved roads nearly an hour from Taos. The community is so remote that many people will not even travel out there, let alone attempt to live that far out. People who have lived there will tell you this neighborhood is only really viable for a specific kind of person with a deeply self-reliant can-do attitude. 
The Earthship built in 2007 in BRIGHTON, ENGLAND is a “cottage” of over 1300 square feet built for half a million dollars. The Brighton Earthship been studied extensively, and various remedies applied for its thermal performance issues, which include regular under-heating for extended periods, as well as periodic overheating. This Earthships’ greenhouse does not extend the full width of the south façade. It appears that a lack of thermal insulation at the floor, which is applied over a chalk soil substrate, is contributing to continued coldness during the winter. Evidently thermal bridging is a substantive issue in this building. Thermal Bridging has been documented as an issue in other Earthships at higher latitudes, including EARTHSHIP GER in Switzerland. A case study performed by EcoOpenHouses.org on the Brighton Earthship notes several improvement suggestions which might be useful for our readers, including using compact fluorescents in lieu of the undersized LEDs; replacement of the wood pellet stove in favor of a multi-fuel type stove to offer more fuel options; replacement of the less-than-ideally functioning wind turbine with additional solar PV panels (at considerable expense); using lime plasters in lieu of cement in the walls; and using adequate insulation. In 2015, Earthship Brighton began an online fundraising campaign to raise $40k Euros for new "improved" systems. Because what they designed didn't work.

One future product that we are compelled to address here is the EARTHSHIP IN THE SKY design for New York City. One of our pre-order readers sent the drawings for this Earthship to us and we promised we would talk about it, if only briefly, here. So here it is. Hoisted on a triumphantly arched concrete wedding cake topper, this fantasy Earthship requires more concrete for its base than many entire buildings. The design loses the berm, which makes it more of a concreteship than an Earthship, it will likely require OSHA compliance in the build which eliminates all those who would want to work on it unless they are certified for high-rise construction, and… it blocks out the light for neighboring buildings. This is illegal in many countries, as older buildings were designed to harness the light and heat of the sun. This Earthship raises itself above its neighbors and steals their sunlight and airspace, while also preventing the truly sustainable response to housing in a city where every square inch has value beyond measure. The sustainable thing to do here would be to house as many people and businesses as possible in the space below just as the neighboring buildings do.

The entry at the new Earthship Visitor’s Center at GREATER WORLD COMMUNITY has its own issues, not the least of which is the incredible number of wooden materials used. The design of the framing structure on this building, as with most Earthships, means thermal bridges that invite cold air into the building. The huge number of pieces of bent wood used presents challenges of building and maintenance for the less-than-expert carpenter. The vestibule wall shades the entrance area from the sun, which is great in summer, but it also allows snow and ice to remain in winter. The benches are not deep enough to sit on for most people. Each piece of glass in this door and sidelight detail is hand-cut and comes with that time, maintenance, and cost. The water-stained wood on the interior of the skylight assemblies suggests there are water intrusion issues in this Earthship as well. The last and most frustrating issue for visitors is that it seems like no-one ever bothered to plan for how the space would be used. The greenhouse is a dead-end when the movie viewing room at the end of that corridor is being used for its intended purpose. More than once, we have had to direct guests to walk back around through the greenhouse, or to gently push them through the dark space while people were using it. This made our guests uncomfortable; several noted they felt as if they were “interrupting someone”. The functional aspect of design… is exactly what we want to help you do better. 

The Earthship that everyone wants to point to, to say "Hey look, these CAN work" is THE PHOENIX. It is gorgeous! It is also for sale, and you can make it yours for $1.5Million, or $277 per square foot. It has some of the most beautifully detailed work ever done on Earthships. This palatial Earthship has 1/3 of its 5,400 SF floor area devoted to food production. An 1,800 SF greenhouse that costs $277 per square foot is an expensive greenhouse, indeed – that adds up to $498,000! We cannot help but ask - will the amount of food it produces ever add up to a half a million dollars’ worth, and thus justify the cost of this feature? Similarly to the awkward room arrangements at the visitor’s center, the Phoenix has one bedroom big enough for a king and a full bed, and then another bedroom with a built-in headboard that results in a closet/office space behind the bed that is so squished and dark that a normal person cannot even use it. There is also limited privacy in the house as nearly every room, including the baths, has an open ceiling. Would someone really pay $1.5Million for a home that does not work for the way people live? Or that isn’t comfortable? And affords no privacy? Or where half of the floor space isn’t usable? We overheard someone say that they “had probably invested around $1.4 million in making the house work.” If the Phoenix cannot achieve a high return on the huge investment that was made in it, what does that mean for yours?