Earthship lands in Myakka City

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EARTH-FRIENDLIES: Contractor Bryan Roberts stands next to architectural designers Ken Benway and Allan Neal, who are contributing to the Earthship project. The mounds of dirt behind them will be packed on top of the house's walls, protecting them from the sun's heat.

To keep our skin from fusing together at the folds, Floridians need to use air conditioning. Or at least fans. And the energy required to keep us cool forces us to make withdrawals from our natural environment. We don't want to harm the Earth, but we like these little comforts.

Consider, though, the climate-control system planned for the Earthship in Myakka City. The four domes on the roof are each topped with an open skylight. Pipes lead from several feet under the foundation, where the temperature is about 65 degrees, to the floor of the house. Warm air rises out through the skylights, creating a pressure vacuum inside the house, and cool underground air flows up to replace it.

No electricity, no utility bill. Just pipe and sky and thermodynamics.

The house's "thermal chimney" is one of the structure's many systems designed to work passively, in integration with natural processes. And it will be entirely off the grid -- house residents will grow their own food, gather their own water and store solar energy in batteries. Their lifestyle, ideally, will have zero environmental impact.

Tampa couple Denise and Michael Pfalzer learned about this building technique about 20 years ago, when they saw the eco-conscious actor Dennis Weaver on The Tonight Show. Later they visited a subdivision that consists entirely of Earthships -- the Greater World Community in Taos, N.M., founded by architect and Earthship pioneer Michael Reynolds. A few years ago, they felt they were ready to make the transition themselves.

In Myakka City, way out east on State Road 70, surrounded by wetlands and cattle ranches, they found a plot that was large enough and remote enough to suit their liking. Through an organic gardening group, they met contractor Bryan Roberts, who had never attempted an Earthship before but was up for the challenge. He's been consulting with members of a green building group in the Tampa Bay area, including sustainability expert Ken Benway. Construction will begin, Roberts says, by mid-August.

The Pfalzers have been collecting glass bottles, aluminum cans and automobile tires since 2006. Using these materials, Roberts will construct the walls of the house. Dirt will be pounded into each tire until it weighs about 350 pounds, and the tires will be arranged like bricks to form the outer walls. This rubber-soil barrier is a strong heat sink, meaning it retains heat during the day and releases it at night.

Bottles and cans will be arranged in a honeycomb structure and held together with concrete to form the inner wall. Ground-up glass will be a major component of the concrete, much as shredded tires will form a springy surface for outdoor walkways.

The use of these materials embodies a key tenet of Reynolds' Earthship project: redirecting the waste stream for a productive purpose.

"We're taking what is normally a landfill issue and turning it into a building," says Benway.

The other primary building material? Dirt.

Solar energy is unable to penetrate several feet of dense earth, as evidenced by underground caverns and by the Earthship's own passive cooling pipes. In order to ensure comfortable temperatures in the house, the tire walls will be "bermed" 6 feet deep by packed soil.

From the outside, the house will look like a large mound whose slopes are covered with vegetation (grass, pineapple, legumes) and whose peak is topped with a four-domed roof.

Hoop jumping

The overall budget for the house is about $300,000, close to the price per square foot of a traditional home. That cost is being mitigated by do-gooder companies who are providing Roberts with free labor, but it's also compounded by added expenses imposed by the Manatee County Building Department, which is unaccustomed to such radical home design.

"There is no permit process for a tire wall," Roberts says.

Hurricane regulations require him to connect the foundation of the house to the roof, for example, even though the house will be half-buried in the ground. This process will cost about $25,000, Roberts said.

He's also compelled to dig a well and a septic tank for the house, racking up another $7,000. This requirement puzzles Roberts, since the Pfalzers plan to collect all their water through cisterns on the roof and leave the aquifer alone. Those cisterns are designed to gather about 2,000 gallons of water during a 1-inch rainfall.

Roberts isn't bitter. He says the county is just trying to cover all its bases because it really doesn't know how to deal with a project like his.

"Part of what we're doing is educating the building department," he says.

Because the county's inspector isn't qualified to assess an Earthship, Roberts says, he has to hire an engineer to perform the routine inspections, at the Pfalzers' expense.

"[The codes] are designed to make houses like the one I'm in now," says Michael Pfalzer, "which are a dime a dozen. But you come in with this great new idea, and they're making us run through obstacles that no one else has to."

The Pfalzers say that after their struggle, they hope the county will adjust its codes to make things easier for Earthship builders. As of press time, the county had issued a partial permit to Roberts, with a full permit pending the engineer's inspection. The building department did not respond to calls for comment.

The plant kingdom

To keep up many aspects of their homestead, the Pfalzers will rely on the actions of living plants rather than the properties of inert materials.

"This house is almost like a living organism," Roberts says. "You have to be in tune with the house. It's more like a tree, more like a system, than a box that's just plopped down on the lot."

A tunnel through the middle of their house-mound, topped with skylights, will act as a solarium. It will house a constructed wetland whose plants will not only provide the Pfalzers with fruits and vegetables but also draw nutrients and unwanted particulates out of water from the sinks and showers. This water will be used to flush toilets.

Farther out from the house, a barrier of fruit and nut trees will buffer the wind from a possible hurricane. The 6 or so arable acres surrounding the house will contain a host of carefully selected plants, many of which will feed the residents. Coops may be moved throughout the yard, so chickens can aerate the soil with their scratching. And a floating wetland in the property's pond -- supported by an island of PVC pipe and netting -- will clarify the water, absorb fertilizer runoff from surrounding farmland, and feed fish that the Pfalzers can catch.

The couple is expected to have a surplus of homegrown food, enough that they could sell what they don't eat for extra cash.

A neat trick or a new frontier?

The heaping piles of tires, cans and bottles that are being used for the Earthship, the wide tract of land it's being constructed on -- these demands beg the question: Is it feasible for everyone to live a fully integrated, zero-impact, Earthship-style life?

There's no ready answer, of course, but the Pfalzers say that if their building technique moves in from the fringe, the process may become more streamlined for the common man.

"The way it is now, most people aren't going to devote all the evenings and weekends for two years to collect materials for the house," Denise Pfalzer says, "but if you get people trailblazing and then the government and the corporations make it reachable for the majority, then you can make these things happen ... When you're the only one doing something, so many passages aren't set up."

Benway and Roberts both say that a lifestyle of low or no environmental impact can be achieved with far less space than what the Pfalzers' will have. Benway points to a book by John Jeavons, How to Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine, which argues for a vegetarian diet provided by only 1,000 to 1,500 square feet per person. Roberts is working on a project, which will incorporate many of the same principles as the Earthship, at an apartment building in Tampa's Ybor City.

And although tires aren't a renewable resource, Roberts says that for every recycled tire, 12 more go to a landfill.

"We've already made all these things," he says. "We made tons and tons of plastic. We've made tons of vulcanized rubber. Rather than make more, which is energy and time intensive, let's use what we've got."

Roberts says that hundreds have already volunteered to help with construction of the Earthship. Once it's completed, he plans to offer portions of the property for educational seminars and demonstrations, in coordination with Eckerd College and the University of South Florida in St. Petersburg. To register as a volunteer or find more information about the project, check out earthshipfloridaproject.com.

COMMENTS

RE: Earthship lands in Myakka City

Posted by brob1969 on 03.05.09 @ 11:09 PM

The construction of this house is not taking place below the water table; the building pad is elevated more than 4 feet above the surrounding grade. The earth is being bermed up to the level of the roof effectively mimicking an underground structure's properties without being underground.

The elevation of the building pad is such that no pumps are required for pumping effluent; it is all gravity fed.

RE: Earthship lands in Myakka City

Posted by robert Tornello on 02.28.09 @ 11:01 AM

While this is not a new concept, it is nice to know there are a few coconuts out there who feel they are making a difference by living underground.(post civil defense trauma)
With ground water tables high and Myakka a low flood prone area, even the wild hogs in the area seek higher ground.
Conceptually they are thinking correctly, but the location of choice will doom this project, or make living there with the purpose of exposure and the enticement of a better life, anything but.
I wish them luck, and suggest several good sump pumps for the bedroom, and common areas.
Damp, and moldy in florida wetlands, even the Seminoles built high and they did not have a consulting engineer.
Septic systems are gravity fed, are they pumping the effluent into the high soil that will perk back into the void of life. My money is on the hogs, they love the mud, but know when to get out of it.
Peace.

RE: Earthship lands in Myakka City

Posted by August M. on 02.27.09 @ 10:29 AM

Fabulous and Inspiring!

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