tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-289322282024-02-19T01:04:14.903-01:00oscar and lisa's earthship buildhow we built an earthship and survived.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger100125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28932228.post-78933911731874948162017-07-28T10:37:00.000-01:002020-12-23T20:30:24.044-01:00July 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 Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28932228.post-10248427354029050372013-07-20T13:33:00.001-01:002020-12-23T20:30:31.826-01:00July 2013 Open daysWell, we have just seen our second set of visitors off and would like to thank everyone who came to take part in our first open days. It was great to meet you all and we hope you enjoyed the mornings as much as we did!
We are planning more open days for the future so if you couldn't make it this July, please let me know and I will send you details of the next dates when they come Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28932228.post-12872433713376982352013-02-23T07:46:00.000-01:002020-12-23T20:30:34.512-01:00OPEN DAYDear everyone,
We have had a lot of visitors to the earthship over the years; some people have come to help us build, others to find inspiration and some simply to get an idea of what a finished earthship looks and feels like.
We finished building three years ago and the earthship is now not just an interesting building, it is our home. Having people you have never met wandering through Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28932228.post-25929406687123827582012-09-12T14:48:00.000-01:002020-12-23T20:30:37.082-01:00CurvatureExactly how do you furnish the curvy part of a U? After much searching we are lucky enough to have found a sofa with a rounded back and so after almost 9 years of faithful service, our little futon has retired to Carla's study and been replaced by this lovely big thing.
I was also determined to get rid of the wine box/particle board bookshelves you can see in the photo behind the sofa - they Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28932228.post-40926150769955942732011-09-13T07:33:00.000-01:002020-12-23T20:30:39.698-01:00Oscar rocks the wall.Our trip to France inspired Oscar no end. When we got back he immediately tore all of the horrible lavender-choking Morning Glory - which was only ever pretty for a month or so each year, suffering from drought induced wither or frostbite the rest of the time - off the tyres here...
...and built this excellent rock wall using rocks that are still hanging around from the excavation of Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28932228.post-75510038233313679732011-06-20T06:54:00.004-01:002020-12-23T20:30:42.062-01:00Early summer 2011It's heating up here now, and thankfully the awnings seem to be doing their job. Outside temperatures are getting up into the high 30s some days while inside we have had a max of 25ºC - warm, but nowhere near as hot as outside and quite tolerable. This photo shows the planter with the awnings down outside. The plants don't seem to mind the shade too much.The changes we made to the grey water Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28932228.post-78282244990867747482011-04-09T16:38:00.005-01:002020-12-23T20:30:44.867-01:00Tweaking the ship.It's been a while since I posted, but that's mainly because we haven't been doing very much work on the house at all. Just living in it happily over the winter. Of course, that doesn't mean there weren't things to be done and the good weather has brought out the builders in us and led to a flurry of tweaking.The two main focal points have been the planter and the front face. Too much water in Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28932228.post-62948849760563695302010-09-25T18:11:00.000-01:002020-12-23T20:33:09.509-01:00the 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 Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28932228.post-47935454517520833092010-06-21T05:24:00.002-01:002020-12-23T20:30:48.289-01:00Brighton Inspired.It's Monday after an amazing weekend up in Brighton, UK. Earth Builds, Brighton Permaculture Trust and the Low Carbon Trust organized a conference celebrating 10 years of Earthships in Europe and asked me to go along and speak about our experience. I enjoyed it enourmously and was so happy to finally meet other earthshippers and actually see my first earthship (other than my own of course) out Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28932228.post-54161809293319071412010-01-20T06:10:00.007-01:002020-12-23T20:30:50.559-01:00Winter 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 Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28932228.post-20048610069890785652009-10-12T09:58:00.006-01:002020-12-23T20:30:52.761-01:00mercedes, new chickens and a broody american..We had an avocado tree that had grown from a seed and was about as tall as me. Note the past tense. The culprit is in the background there, innocently munching on grass like she was supposed to in the first place. I was fortunate enough to have picked most of the best leaves off the basil to be frozen in readiness for the coming months before Mercedes decimated it too. Lucky she is such a Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28932228.post-33015953079764327482009-10-06T13:35:00.006-01:002020-12-23T20:30:54.790-01:00Searing temperatures, torrential rains and how we coped.So! Our first summer in the earthship is coming to a close. It is still pretty warm here during the day but nights have cooled down enough to need a light cover on the bed. As you can see from the title of this post, Valencia has been subjected to some pretty extreme weather over the past few months. I was lucky enough to be in Australia for two of them and so missed most of the terrible heat, Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28932228.post-41532486210497774602009-06-09T14:02:00.007-01:002020-12-23T20:30:57.200-01:00What to do when you finish building your house...Build a chicken house and coop in the corner of the garden (chickens to come).Make much needed cupboards like you've been saying you would for months now.Doors pending.Build a bookcase to be filled with some of Carla's books.Then re-plaster and re-floor the hut so that it people can visit!And suddenly it's summer!Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28932228.post-55096704659673502332009-05-12T16:34:00.002-01:002020-12-23T20:30:59.605-01:00Oh my Goat...a Mercedes!Oscar has wanted something to keep all the grasses and weeds under control for quite a while now, and I assumed he would eventually get around to buying a whipper-snipper or some such. Imagine my surprise when on Sunday last this arrived.We have named her Mercedes and she follows us round like a little puppy, bleating when we disappear from sight. She still smells like baby goat instead of Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28932228.post-3854242152897372772009-04-23T14:12:00.004-01:002020-12-23T20:31:00.869-01:00flowering front faceall of the creepers and the valerian and lavender and sage and rosemary and thyme and...well everything is in gorgeous flower on the front face. this is good, not only because they are beautiful, but also because they are watered by the dew that we collect from our roof. it runs down into our first flush pipes and then through a tap we installed into drip irrigation all along the front face rockUnknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28932228.post-8515823875910321642009-04-14T14:17:00.007-01:002020-12-23T20:33:33.345-01:00springThis is a picture of me sitting on the berm (the big mound of earth which buries the back of the house) at the back of the house which, as you can see is all overgrown and wonderfully green, no landslides for us!We are looking into the world of curtains and blinds for privacy and a bit of respite from the amazing amount of light that the house is always flooded with. I have sourced some in the Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28932228.post-91228819554391388902009-04-02T13:27:00.002-01:002020-12-23T20:31:08.538-01:00unhitched!Well, Oscar rootled about a bit in the dirt and peat moss, and found that the moss itself was causing a build up of water, slowing the filtering process down to nought. So he dug up a strip of the stuff and replaced it with rocks and gravel. The water gushed through and I promptly did two loads of washing, no overflow. Yippee. I love it when everything actually works!Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28932228.post-66866619122545737232009-03-23T17:33:00.004-01:002020-12-23T20:31:09.752-01:00A hitch...Ah the joy of the grey water planter! You have a shower, do a load of washing or the dishes, and all that lovely dirty water swills down the drain to your indoor botanical cell, running through gravel, plant roots and peat moss until it collects, pretty much cleansed of odour and gack, in a small well to be pumped into your toilet cistern instead of using perfectly good, precious in fact, Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28932228.post-38719699463050717742009-02-22T09:23:00.004-01:002020-12-23T20:31:11.222-01:00The Uncivil GuardIn Spain there is a military-style police corps called La Guardia Civil. They are largely disliked for their association with the Franco regime of oppression and violence and for the fact that they only speak in Castilian Spanish regardless of the time they spend in any of the autonomous provinces which have their own language, such as Catalonia, or the Basque country. They are also renowned for Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28932228.post-54744461582426969022009-02-12T17:56:00.005-01:002020-12-23T20:31:13.670-01:00spring 2009The peach trees are in glorious blossom and the weather, though windy is benign. I had to slow down the other day for a horse and cart on the road home. I'm glad. It's nice to take the foot of the accelerator from time to time.We have kitchen shelves and some lamps in the house now, I must take some pictures. For now I leave you with the peach blossom and the cat in the box. Have you ever Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28932228.post-63647520422843072102009-01-08T18:56:00.002-01:002020-12-23T20:31:14.695-01:00Winter in the earthshipWell, winter has really arrived and it's a cold one here in Valencia this year. We were at minus 2 this morning and it hasn't got much above 7ºC all day. The house is holding up pretty well. We have a gas heater which we use at night in the living area. Without the heater the house is still warm. On cloudy days it stays around 16ºC but if the sun comes out it gets up into the 20s. We must Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28932228.post-25427314908810515942008-12-11T16:09:00.002-01:002020-12-23T20:31:15.818-01:00another tour of the house...Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28932228.post-7099875606818016252008-10-16T13:30:00.004-01:002020-12-23T20:33:11.987-01:00water, plants, 11 years and a new catWell, we've been enjoying our first month in the earthship and it has pretty much come up to expectations. The temperature is constantly at about 21ºC at the moment, blinds in summer will be necessary to maintain that and I think we will probably end up putting a fire place in the living for the look of it and also to take and cold edges off that may creep in during the winter.Unfortunately, theUnknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28932228.post-19319813178833597832008-09-09T15:05:00.005-01:002020-12-23T20:31:18.339-01:00WE'RE IN!!!Pop the bubbly, we did it! We have been sleeping in the house for about two weeks now and even have a front door made by me. We absolutely love it, even the smelly toilet water isn't so smelly or so brown any more and the warm mud walls and delicious floor make it cosy as cosy can be, even if there isn't very much furniture yet. Have a look!Bathroom lights on and kitchen at nightPlanter in the Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28932228.post-81460638055752166122008-08-04T07:26:00.001-01:002020-12-23T20:31:19.637-01:00Floored!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com