Building our earthship

Growing tropical fruit

We decided to build our own earthship after being inspired by success stories from "earthship biotecture" builds in New Mexico and other places and set enthusiastically about the project. Unlike 'domestic' earthships, ours is a large greenhouse that will enable us to grow tropical fruit amongst other things.

Recycling old tyres

The Irish weather has been considerably less enthusiastic about our earthship than us, however. To successfully construct the walls of the earthship, earth must be packed tightly into old car tyres - but to do that, the earth must be dry. The often wet Cork climate means that construction has been painfully slow at times, and the project has taken us considerably more time than we would have liked.

Sustainable living

One of our aims is not just to live sustainably ourselves, but to be able to experiment and advise others of viable ways in which they can change their lives, and it would certainly seem from our experiences that earthships would not make viable homes in the Irish climate due to the weather and man-hours required to construct them.

Solar showers

We still have grand plans for our earthship though - as well as providing a home for us to grow fruits such as avacados and bananas, we are also planning to use the structure as a home for solar showers and a composting toilet, and the finished building will be powered by photo-voltaic power and solar thermal water heating - as well as a system for harvesting rainwater.

It will be supported by curved timber struts made from forestry "thinnings" (luckily we can build those in the workshop whatever the weather) supporting the glass, and we hope to have the project finished by next year.