The idea of the modern earth ship has been around for decades, and it seems like the perfect idea: building your own house with sustainably sourced and recycled materials to make a completely environmentally friendly home at the fraction of the cost of a normal project.
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The focus of most earth ship designs is that they are built partially into the ground. Ideally, a plot of land with a slight slope is best. The foundations of the home are excavated from the hillside and the house is literally built into the side of the slope. This provides you with unbelievably good insulation and heat retention at the back of your home.
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It’s not uncommon for hundreds of recycled car tires to be packed full of dirt with a sledge hammer and then stacked tightly to form the walls in these projects, with cans, bottles, wood beams and scrap metal also being used for certain components.
Other designers incorporate crazy shipping container extensions to their homes, as you can pick up an old container for a few thousand pounds these days, and kit it out amazingly inside to add more room to your eco home.
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The front of the house is usually a sequence of huge glass windows, perfect for growing a variety of vegetables indoors. You can live completely self sufficiently by recycling rainwater inside your home and using electricity produced by solar panels and wind turbines on the roof. It’s completely possible to live off-grid.
I don’t know about you, but I’m well up for making an earth ship. Much better than paying £500 per month to sleep in a tent in someone’s living room.
