oscar and lisa's earthship build

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another tour of the house...

December 11, 2008

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the earthship style hut.

Over the years quite a few people have asked us for advice about the hut module that we built and lived in for five years. I will attempt to provide some answers for the most common queries: First of all, it is a great idea to tackle a smaller project before committing to a huge house. We, as non-builders, gained invaluable experience, confidence and knowledge with this little project. It also gave us a place to live on-site as we worked on the big house for five years. This was good. DIGGING IN Our hut is five metres in diameter. We dug it in to the ground as far as we could but I would most certainly not do that again on our block. You really need to have rock-free, well drained soil to dig in. Apart from the back breaking work of sledge hammering boulders, we have always had a bit of damp on our below-ground level wall surfaces, which would be a royal pain in the bum if the walls were plastered, painted and susceptible to bubbling, but as they are mud, is merely a bit of ug...

Winter good, Winter bad.

Actually I think I'll go for the bad first. Weather induced bad. Just before Christmas we had our annual freeze and the temperature dropped to minus 4 overnight (I know it's not that cold, but remember, this is sunny, warm Valencia in Spain). All the animals' water buckets froze solid and there was a hard frost which did away with the more delicate outdoor plants. Our hot water system is on the roof, it is one of those solar heaters with a tank and a panel, and at about 2pm on the day of the freeze it started gushing water out of all the wrong places. The inner tubes had burst - apparently the installers didn't remember the anti-freeze - and there ended our hot water for three weeks. The company were very good, they replaced everything under guarantee but unfortunately it hasn't been sunny since and we still don't have hot water. Our back up system is the old bathroom which means quick dashes through the garden and a return to the days of no electricity. O...

July 2017 Update

Oscar and his hammer After nine years living in the big house we have taken up our sledgehammers again! The plan is to extend an exterior retaining wall to provide support for a large porch at the southeast end of the house, something that we feel is needed in the summer months, along with a pool (hopefully soon to come). Starting work on the porch Apart from that, little has changed in the past few years. The ficus in the greywater planter has gone absolutely mad. And I have become more and more convinced that we need to change the roof, as the original does let a few very annoying drips in when we get heavy rain. I'm afraid the company that did the metal work were a little bit shoddy in their finishes, using silicon instead of doing any soldering, and cutting corners with the finishes around the skyights. Water has found them out. The monster ficus after a haircut Finally, a couple of years ago we were included in a TV program called "El Escarabajo Verde ...

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