Subject: Earthships

From: [email-masked] (Dave Sims)
Date: 25 Apr 1994 17:00:41 -0600

Hi, has anyone heard of the so-called "Earthships" found in Northern
New Mexico?  I visited Taos, New Mexico (a small ski/artsy town in the
mountains of Northern New Mexico) this weekend and discovered a book
in the local bookstore called, _Earthships, Volume I_ by Michael
Reynolds, Solar Survival Press, 1990.

The book describes how to build your own self-sufficient, passive
solar house (Earthship).  What intrigued me the most about the book is
that:

(1) Reynolds preaches self-sufficiency -- ideally, the Earthship
should provide all its own energy, food, water, sewage, heating, and
cooling.  In other words, the Earthship isn't connected to the local
power grid or utility company.

I thought that was neat.  At the very least, I'm interested in
building a house that has zero or almost zero heating and cooling
costs.

(2) The Earthship (house)'s foundation is built on *discarded
automobile tires*.  (I never thought someone would build a house on
old car tires! :^) I know Reynolds didn't originate the idea of
building house foundations from rubber tires, but he certainly
popularlizes it.

Anyway, I'm going to visit one that has already been built in a week
or two, but I wanted to know if anyone online had any experiences with
them.

cheers,
dave sims
-- 
Dave Sims                                       PGP encryption key available
Internet:  [email-masked]                   on my home page.
WWW:       http://cnn.acsys.com:5050/dave.html