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Plants

Plants are primarily used to regulate the tempurature, though they often provide food and decoration well. To avoid wasting precious resources, they are usually watered with grey water.Read About Food Sustainabilty >>

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Solar Energy

Solar energy is the bread and butter of earthships, which are often located far from city grids. It's one of many reasons earthships are often built in desert-like areas, or anywhere that recieves plenty of sunlight. Read About Energy Sustainabilty >>

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Water

Earthships typically depend on a combination of well water and rainwater. When these fail, homeowners have to make a long trek to the city to haul in water in large quantities. Read About Water Sustainabilty >>

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Wind Energy

Wind energy is one of two main energy sources for earthships, which are often located far from city grids. It helps fill in where solar enrgy is not enough, and vice versa. Together, these methods can provide enough energy for a comfortable and modern life.Read About Energy Sustainabilty >>

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Terra Navis Living

Earthships are a type of self-sustainable, eco-friendly home first conceptualized by architect Michael Reynolds. These passive-solar shelters are built into the ground with a combination of upcycled and natural resources, like recycled glass bottles, tires packed with earth, and other reclaimed materials. Reynolds developed the concept to realize three goals:

  1. Utilize sustainable architecture and materials that can be recycled or naturally sourced from local environments

  2. Build an “off-the-grid” home that would rely entirely on natural energy sources

  3. Make the building process feasible for someone with no specialized construction skills

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Sustainable Living

There’s green, and then there’s green. Michael Reynolds dreamed of creating an ultra eco-friendly way of living with his Earthship designs. These principles led to an extreme minimum in waste by building with mostly recycled materials, collecting rainwater, using solar and wind energy, and implementing black and grey water systems to feed into outdoor gardens to aid in the growing of one's own food. When all of these concepts are brought together in a single design, you get one of the most eco-friendly home options available to us today.

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How is an earthship built?

Most outer walls and load-bearing interior walls are constructed by packing used tires with compacted soil, creating strong building blocks. Some walls utilize aluminum cans, plastic bottles, and especially glass bottles surrounded by concrete to create bottle-walls that allow light to flow through the structure, thus lighting up inner rooms that otherwise wouldn’t have any source of natural light. Many earthships have one section on the exterior with large glass panels to bring more light in and act as a greenhouse for growing vegetation year round, helping to create a sustainable food source. Typically, traditional plumbing and electrical systems are run throughout the earthship--albeit powered by solar and wind energy-- allowing for modern living in an ultra green home!

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