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15 Feb ’12
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Came across this article on earthships on PRI
http://permaculturen.....earthship/
the first comment
I was kind of surprised by that
Geoff Lawton
I must say I would never advise anyone to build this way and I cannot see any sense to it.
6 Feb ’14
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The second comment is someone asking that he explain further. That was my first thought as well. There is no context provided, and no prevailing logic or reasoning is given. Without those, the comment has no use or value.
15 Feb ’12
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maybe he'll explain his stance on it, I'd be interested in hearing it
6 Feb ’14
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Ditto.
15 Feb ’12
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someone else commented this
Geoff then commented he agreed with that
As a self-builder with 8 years’ experience working with cob and straw bale, I must say that I agree with Geoff, I am not at all impressed with the earthship design. It’s a bit like the craze for geodesic domes: they may sound like a nice idea in theory, but for all sorts of reasons they make a terrible house.
To be honest, I think that Earthships are a bit of a cult. To say “What separates Earthships from other natural and ecological house designs is that each one of those six elements operate simultaneously.” is just to ignore deep-rooted building traditions and the enormous advances made in ecological design all over the world since the second world war.
People who are not aware of the vast range of low-cost options for housing with low-impact natural and recycled materials, are being sucked into a system of building (tyres filled with rammed earth) that is tremendously labour-intensive and not at all user-friendly.
Tyres packed with rocks or earth can make good retaining walls, but terrible interior house walls because the very irregular shape of the finished wall means you have to throw an immense amount of plaster at it… and because it’s very difficult to get natural plaster to stick to tyres, people often use concrete. Not very low-impact.
If you want to know about effective and safe greywater treatment, check out Art Ludwig’s Graywater Oasis site. If you store greywater in your toilet cistern what you will get is a smelly, dirty cistern! If you’re that short of water you should be using a “Humanure” style dry composting toilet anyway.
Sorry to be a downer, but I think it’s important to weed out the bad ideas in order to let the good ones flourish!
6 Feb ’14
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Still no help. He's still responding to an essay question like it was a multiple choice yes/no/maybe... or in this case, "me too". Me too what?? You cannot position yourself as an esteemed educator and then weigh in on a major topic without explaining yourself in your own words. Its lazy and irresponsible. Are we to assume that he agrees verbatim? Or with certain parts? And if so, which parts? Why? Etc.
That said, the commenter Robert lists many things I take issue with and have already addressed to a degree. Namely, I think the tires are a horrible idea, I think the recycled materials is a joke, and the things that I specifically value unique to earthships is the Biotecture concept. Not unique to earthships, I like passive solar with thermal mass and burying or berming, and rainwater harvesting.
Implied but not directly stated until now, I also agree that composting toilets are better than septic.
See? I got specific. Lawton needs to do the same or keep his soundbites to himself.
15 Feb ’12
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I think this high thermal mass home address a lot of those issues, we utilized some of the ideas from it for our home, mainly the roof line
https://www.thenaturalhome.com/passivesolar.html
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