Earthship

I have always been interested in sustainable off the grid designs, and whilst researching the Straw Bale Design I came across what is called Rammed Earth, essentially it is just a dirt wall compacted tightly and thick 18-24", which in turn creates what is called thermal mass. Thermal Mass allows the building to regulate its temperature by absorbing the heat during the day and releasing it when the ambient temperature of the home drops.

Now there are different methods for building these Rammed Earth homes and one that caught my eye is a design called an earthship which uses the idea of thermal mass and rammed earth a bit differently. They use old tires, dirt, and a sledge hammer to really compact the dirt into each tire, then stagger these tires up about 9-10 high depending on the height desired of your wall.
You create large U shaped rooms with the opening of the U facing South. On the large south opening you create a greenhouse effect with Large windows to allow the sun in during the day. The reason this appealed to me so much was because no matter the climate, whether Ontario or New Mexico they claim to retain a comfortable ambient temperature of 15 - 20 C with absolutely no other source of heat but the Sun, and no matter what the outside temperature is. One site claimed to have a 10C temp inside during construction without the windows on yet and -25C outside (also some cool graphs on that site). That said most people will still add a secondary heat source for the home to help raise the temperature on Cold days and because most building codes require it.

Now add on your Solar panels, Wind generator for electricity, a Solar hot water heater, your rain collection and waste water treatment system your ready to go all on your own.

I think the ideas suggested for water use and treatment are very ingenious but there are simpler more effective methods that I would probably use. and of course depend alot on the build location, I'll save some of these for another post.

Some other cool points of the earthship design are the soundproofing aspect, bulletproof, earthquake and hurricane resistant, even said to withstand a tsunami impact, the main walls cannot burn as there is no air inside the wall, made with local materials, and if it for some reason has to be taken down (depending on other materials used) very little harmful waste is present, and when you take into effect that the majority of rammed earth homes are and have been standing for 1000's of years in europe and abroad the chance of this thing standing for a long time is very high.

Some Websites I've looked at, earthship.org , earthpower1 which has a detailed journal of their building process, earthship.net has some good pictures, and if I didn't make much sense then check out this video, and if that doesnt satisfy you, google it