Earthships, off grid sustainable homes made from repurposed “junk”, and turned into amazing homes in the New Mexico desert. These are off grid homes made from natural and recycled, upcycled, repurposed materials that would have been thrown in a landfill to pollute the earth. Instead, Mike Reynolds, a visionary architect and life -long off grid eco-home-building-activist, has changed the face of earth-friendly building by inventing a new kind of 100% self sufficient building called an Earthship.
EarthShip – Wikipedia definition:
“An Earthship is a style of architecture developed in the late 20th century to early 21st century by architect Michael Reynolds. Earthships are designed to behave as passive solarearth shelters made of both natural and upcycled materials such as earth-packed tires. Earthships may feature a variety of amenities and aesthetics, and are designed to withstand the extreme temperatures of a desert, managing to stay close to 70 °F (21 °C) regardless of outside weather conditions. Earthship communities were originally built in the desert of northern New Mexico, near the Rio Grande, and the style has spread to small pockets of communities around the globe, in some cases in spite of legal opposition to its construction and adoption.
Reynolds developed the Earthship design after moving to New Mexico and completing his degree in architecture, intending them to be “off-the-grid-ready” homes, with minimal reliance on public utilities and fossil fuels. They are constructed to use available natural resources, especially energy from the sun and rain water. They are designed with thermal mass construction and natural cross-ventilation to regulate indoor temperature, and the designs are intentionally uncomplicated and mainly single-story, so that people with little building knowledge can construct them.”
Earthships make great off grid homes!
Earthships are the epitomes of recycling and sustainable living off grid. Made from old used tires, bottles, cans, and other repurposed materials, along with natural clay dirt, sand rock and wood, Earthships combine all these elements into one cohesive dwelling for living off grid.
It produces it’s water, food, the thick sand/dirt packed tire walls create a large thermal mass which stores heat/cold energy for later use. Earthships are built to be completely sustainable homes.
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