Building an Earthship
An earthship is a building with walls constructed from tyres filled with rammed earth, laid in a staggered formation like bricks. The rubber from the tyres and the earth packed tightly within them make for a thermal wall that retains heat brilliantly, and are strong enough to be load bearing.
Once the wall is finished, it is usually plastered over for a smooth finish that leaves the building looking pretty much like any other - but one that will cost a lot less to heat.
Our earthship greenhouse
Many previous earthships have been built as houses, but our earthship is a little different. It is our aim to use the earthship wall technology as a base, to which we will add a curved timber frame structure that will form a huge, well heated growing area where we can experiment with growing tropical fruit and vegetables, like banana palms and avacados.
In order to make this feasible, we will be building 'up' to a height of 16 feet, but we have also lowered the ground level in part of the earthship so that we can actually grow up to 24 feet high inside our gigantic greenhouse!
Solar showers
As our architectural drawings show, the finished item will look rather impressive, and will also be home to composting toilets and solar showers as part of our visitor's centre. However, the picture does not tell the full story.
The Irish climate is not especially conducive to the successful building of an earthship. The weather must be totally dry in order to successfully pack the tyres with earth and as anyone who has lived on the west coast of Ireland can confirm, dry days are few and far between out here.
Futuristic greenhouse
This does mean that building our earthship has taken us longer than we would have liked - and at around 25 minutes' hard labour to pack just a single tyre with earth, it is no easy feat even when the weather is fine. We remain undeterred though, and when the weather is not good enough to work on the tyre wall, we are able to use our workshop to construct the wooden 'ribs' that will support the glass that fill help complete our 21st century eco-greenhouse.
Growing exotic fruit
We are very hopeful that when it is finished, the earthship will prove that it is possible to grow exotic fruit in the northern hemisphere, making it financially viable for big suppliers to build them and stop the unnecessary transport of fruits like bananas and oranges halfway round the world, lowering their carbon footprint dramatically in the process.