Earthship n. 1. passive solar home made of natural and recycled materials 2. thermal mass construction for temperature stabilization. 3. renewable energy and integrated water systems; an off-grid home with few or no utility bills.

Diane: I want to begin by asking what caused you to think about using waste products such as tires and cans for building materials?

Michael: The idea started almost thirty years ago after I watched a television special with Charles Kurault and Walter Cronkite. This was back in the times when soda and beer cans were made of steel rather than aluminum as they are today. The special showed the tremendous amount of cans and bottles that were littering our national parks and streets. Charles predicted a major garbage problem in the future. That was thirty years ago, before the word "recycle" became part of our everyday vocabulary.

In the same segment, Walter Cronkite talked about the clear-cutting of timber that was occurring in the Northwest, and predicted a serious rise in the cost of wood and housing.

I had just graduated from architectural school, and within two weeks of seeing this on television I was building blocks out of cans. Shortly after that, several buildings were created.

Some years later, when the energy crunch hit, people were trying to figure out how to store temperature in buildings by using thermal mass. Several of us were already building with garbage, so we decided to see if there was any solution to the current situation by finding some type of garbage that we could utilize to fit the problem.

We looked at tires, and found that if we beat earth into them we created thermal mass. We then added tires and solar electric to our experiments with building.

Then, the news started talking about water shortages, and rivers and streams being polluted. So we began catching water on the roof of our structures rather than drilling into the aquifers. We also began treating our sewage in contained systems, reusing the water we caught from the sky, and didn't let anything go into the aquifers, rivers and streams that would pollute them.

So what I'm saying is that thirty years ago we listened to the news and that's where it all began. Continuing to listen to the news has made what we do evolve. And any time we hear of problems, we try to incorporate solutions into our building concepts.

At this point we've been working long enough to have a fully sustainable home built from recycled materials. We call it an "Earthship."

Diane: Are there any other materials you use for building besides tires, bottles, and cans?

Michael: Yes. We've just started grinding up plastic, since we have a tremendous number of plastic jugs and bottles in our garbage.

Our sewage systems actually have to have an aggregate of gravel or pumice to make them effective. So now we've started mixing in ground-up plastics — kind of like "hamburger helper." We buy less gravel and get rid of our plastic, and it works just fine.

In our 650-acre community in northern New Mexico, we can actually get rid of all our garbage and not have to put anything into the municipal waste dump except for disposable diapers and a few other weird things. And its very successful.

Diane: Why use tires?

Michael: Well, you can certainly achieve thermal mass in a building using stone, concrete, or several other materials. But we've found tires to be the one material that is actually the best. And tires are globally available, indigenous to the entire planet. But it's not the tires in and of themselves. They are most effective when beaten with earth.

Diane: What do you mean "beaten with earth?"

Michael: Filled with earth and compacted [click on picture at left].

Diane: In terms of a waste product, aren't old tires considered one of the world's greatest garbage problems?

Michael: Exactly. By using tires to build homes you are addressing this problem.

Tires are very low tech. They take no machinery to remanufacture. You just gather them up, beat them full of earth, and use them for bricks.

If you're looking to make changes in our building criteria, nothing hits as many environmental issues as tires, and they are structurally as good as, if not better than, most materials.

I look at it this way. The planet produces trees. We like trees and need them to create oxygen. But we are using far too many of them. This planet also produces tires, and we don't have a use for them, and we don't know what to do with them. So why not stop building with trees and start building with tires?

Diane: Why do you think it's such a problem to get people enrolled in this idea? Of course there are certain types of people who do get involved, but the mass population does not.

Michael: Well, tires have a stigma. They are considered garbage, and people don't want to have anything to do with garbage.

I say time and time again, "If I were paid a million dollars to invent the best building product relative to a variety of factors, I could not come up with anything better than tires."

To me, a big mountain of tires is like a gold mine. It's a city, it's a forest, it's a fantastic thing to have at our disposal. They are a natural resource and people are slowly beginning to understand this. The idea is growing.

We just recently produced a book called Comfort in Any Climate.[1] Our main objective in this book was to get people to understand that buildings, especially homes, should be made out of thermal mass. We think that no matter how people build, they should do so out of mass, because mass holds and stores temperature. If you put a large amount of warm water in a room, it will heat up the room. It might cool down a bit, but it stays stable for a long time. Like the human body, which is about 80 percent water — when you eat, the body heats up that water a little bit and causes you to be able to maintain a constant temperature of 98.6 degrees. If you had no water in your body you couldn't maintain a temperature. You'd have to eat all the time to stay constant. You'd wear out your digestive system and eat everything in sight. It's because of this water mass that we are able to stabilize.

Homes are the same way. You constantly have to feed them fuel for them to stay warm enough for people to live in. If a home is made of mass, you don't have to keep feeding it fuel. If the house has enough mass you can feed it fuel every time the sun is out and that's enough.

Here in New Mexico, it drops considerably below zero at night. However, the homes we are building now don't even have backup heat. We put in fireplaces just for fun and we can plumb them for gas so the owners have backup heat if they want it, but we don't even have to put them in. We are not using any energy for heating or cooling, and this is because of thermal mass construction.

Diane: Could we liken it to a cave where the temperature remains constant?

Michael: Deep in the earth it's always a constant temperature. A cave will most generally stay about 58 degrees, and that's because of mass. Now, this is not comfortable for a human, but you won't freeze to death, and your pipes won't freeze. So with no sun, mass will keep you alive. Add sun, which we all have some of, and you have comfort.

Of course sun alone just goes away at night, and your house gets cold. But sun with mass, to store what the sun did during the day, makes it. And its equal/equal. You can't do solar housing without mass. Building a house like your body is built is a very good analogy.

Diane: I notice one of your homes on your website is built above the ground — the one call the Nautilus (earthship.org/bld/Nautilus_details.htm).

Michael: The Nautilus is a perfect example of an out-of-the-ground Earthship, veneered with straw bales. The reason it's done that way is that the site is on lava rock, and we couldn't go into the earth. If we can go into the earth, we will. Then we are tapping into that 58-degree baseline, and we know the temperature won't go lower than that. Then we introduce the sun, and that brings us up to about 70 degrees. We can even get over 70. It depends on how you manipulate the sun.

Basically, what we say is, the building is designed to encounter the sun, to encounter the mass of the earth, to encounter the rain, to encounter the biological aspects of plants for treating sewage, to encounter the wind. We even encounter other phenomena, like condensation to collect drinking water. So we are basically "encountering" the earth rather than manipulating and recreating the earth or devastating the earth.

I was just sharing an example with someone the other day of how I see people on the earth.

I was in the mountains of Nevada a while back where a lot of Ponderosa pine grows. I saw a very healthy pine tree with a little bit of mistletoe on it. Mistletoe is a parasite, and as long as the pine tree is healthy, the mistletoe is healthy. And I looked around and saw a tree with a little more mistletoe, and it was starting to look a bit ragged. I saw another pine tree with a lot more mistletoe on it, and it was literally dying. Then I saw a dead tree with a bunch of dead mistletoe on it.

That's the way I see us humans on this planet. We are basically a parasite. If we do not completely suck the earth dry of everything it's got, then the earth can support us. But if we kill the earth it will result in death to ourselves.

What I'm saying is, we can change our method of relating to the earth, and rather than extracting from the earth, we can simply "encounter" the elements, the phenomena of the earth — especially the phenomena you don't have to worry about running out of, such as sunlight or rain.

It's amazing. People are piping water and damming rivers and making canals all over the place and totally manipulating surface water and aquifers, when almost all over the planet, water falls from the sky. Our Earthship community is in a very arid area, for instance, but we have enough water because we reuse it four times. We actually flush our toilet with water we took a bath in yesterday.

We take a bath in the water, it runs through our indoor system and gets all cleaned up, and then we flush our toilet with it. We cut our water usage in half right there.

One of the things I think is archaic and ridiculous is how we have pipes and wires going everywhere to deliver energy — not to mention the production of energy itself, which is devastating to the planet, through nuclear power plants and coal fired power plants.

With our method of encountering natural phenomenon on site, you do not have to deliver power, water, and sewage anywhere. You encounter it all right there.

Diane: What happens to the "black" water?

Michael: The black water ends up going outside to the same kind of system that we have inside. It is contained in a rubber lined planter that you landscape with.

For instance, Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico, are promoting what they call zero-scape landscaping, where they plant cactus, which uses very little water, and use gravel instead of lawns. Well, that's because we have a water shortage. Yet those same houses using zero-scape landscaping are dumping sewage into the Rio Grande River.

What we do with the Earthship concept is contain the sewage and use it for lush landscaping inside and out. Therefore we don't have to dump it into the river. We don't have to pipe it. We're not polluting anything. We're taking advantage of our own sewage.

Sewage has the same stigma as tires. Sewage is considered bad. But I see sewage as gold. It gives us something to use.

Diane: I was thinking of my travels to the rainforest in Ecuador. If you relieve yourself in the rainforest, it disappears within about six hours, because all the organisms of the forest utilize it.

Michael: That's the way we should live, and it's what Earthships are trying to do — to simply be like the earth is already.

I have said many times that the earth doesn't care if we destroy ourselves. It will prevail. Once we take it down where it can't support us and we die off, the earth will come back.

It's just a matter of us killing ourselves. If we're stupid enough to do that, then we'll do it. I don't look at it as a moral thing. I just wonder if we are stupid enough to kill ourselves or smart enough to encounter the earth and survive.

Diane: What kinds of people have come to you for help in building Earthships?

Michael: Many people come wanting to build communities.

One group came to me and we talked about setting up a sustainable community. Then the conversation turned to their need to have underground caves and places to store ammo. They said they were going to have it all together when the "shit hit the fan" and when that happened people would want what they had and come and try to take it away from them. They wanted to be able to defend themselves.

I said that even if they had the stomach to shoot that many people, there was no way to store that much ammo to protect themselves from people who don't have what they have. The best way of protecting oneself is to help everyone have what you have. I think this is a very good global philosophy as well.

There wouldn't be any war if everyone had everything they needed — and by everything, I mean the means to survive. I don't mean gold and oil and wealth and all of that. I mean, if every creature, every human were provided with the knowledge and minor technology that it takes to make homes for themselves, homes that encounter the elements so they don't have utility bills, then everybody would be alive and happy. Then if you want to go be a capitalist? Go for it! But the thing is, most people on the planet don't even have "survival," even though the survival I'm speaking of is very, very available.

In our area we are trying to make the Earthship technology accessible to everyone. We have a school program. We try to illustrate that it can be done. We don't try to cram it down people's throats.

I don't think these ideas are moral or spiritual. I think they're just logical.

Diane: Let's talk about cost. It says on your website that the packaged Earthship is the most popular design (see earthship.org/bld/packaged/packaged.htm So on average, what would the cost be for a one- or two-bedroom Earthship?

Michael: The cost really depends on how you approach building it. One of the things we try to do is get owners to participate in the construction. That could bring the cost down by as much as 40 percent.

I can best explain Earthship construction cost by comparing it to conventional frame construction, which is built for the most part by contractors and then sold to consumers.

If you utilize a building contractor, the cost for building an Earthship will be about the same as for a frame home. Prices will vary from area to area. But there is a huge difference. The frame home, in addition to the mortgage payment, will have a $200-$300 monthly utility bill, including water, electricity, and sewage.

The Earthship has no utility bill.

What I see, which is even more important than the price of utilities now, is the availability of them. Not too long ago, the people of California, no matter how much money they had, couldn't get power.

It's going to be that way with water availability and sewage disposal. These problems are going to keep cropping up. We don't know everything that was occurring in California, but we know people suffered and didn't have what they needed. What I'm saying is that people don't need to be in that situation.

We are trying to weave the Earthship concepts into the "real world" marketplace. Banks are finally beginning to loan money for them. We have a company out here called Southwest Mortgage, and another bank that will provide construction money. Depending on what's going on in the world, insurance companies go back and forth about insuring them.

Diane: So what I'm hearing you say is that you can compare conventional building prices with contractor-built Earthships "apples and apples."

Michael: Exactly. But you also have the option of building it yourself.

A conventional home has so many trades and crafts needed that it is very difficult for everyday people to really build it themselves and do a good job. But the packaged Earthship is very simple, and we have a simple "how to" book that is as easy to read as a coloring book. It would probably compare to the books in the '60s on how to repair your Volkswagen Bug. We are trying to give people the opportunity to building themselves, and probably 60 percent will take advantage of that option. But if they can't, they can have one built for them.

We know that many people can do it.

We have this phrase "putting housing back into the hands of the people." We set up communities where somebody could come by with a hundred dollars in their pocket, and we would show them how to start building their home and provide the land to put it on. Part of our battles have been legal — introducing law, fighting old law, getting in trouble for breaking the law. You know, it's just constant. But we are still alive and well.

Diane: If someone were going to build an Earthship, where would they go to get tires? What would be the cost, and how many would they need?

Michael: It takes about a thousand tires to build a house, and most places will be thrilled for you to take them away because they have to pay to dispose of them. So if you go to a tire store and ask if you can haul away some of their tires for the next few weeks, they would be thrilled. That's the way we do it here. We get most of our tires for free.

However, Earthship construction has become popular here in New Mexico, so there have been occasions where a bunch of people were building, and we had to buy them from a place in Colorado and pay 75 cents apiece for them, delivered.

The guy was sitting on 6 million tires in his tire dump, and now he perceives himself as a millionaire because he can sell them for housing.

Diane: Are there other communities besides yours in Taos?

Michael: There's lots of talk about intentional and sustainable communities, and many people doing solar. Others are doing "catch water," and others are playing with the concept of recycling sewage. But to my knowledge there isn't anyone that is offering an entire package of a home that heats and cools itself, that makes its own power, catches its own water, contains its own sewage, and is built from recycled materials.

Diane: I notice the designs are very whimsical. They bring out childlike feelings for me, the Nautilus especially. Do you find that people gravitate to that kind of look?

Michael: Some people are scared off by the Nautilus. It looks too fairytale and too strange. Some people want just a simple-looking house that makes no statement at all. Some want their house to look like everyone else's. And for a long time we didn't care what they looked like — we just wanted them to work.

But there are quite a few people — more than half — who are moved by the shapes of the Nautilus. It's a castle. It's a fairytale. And we have a lot of designs that are like that. It's not limited, it can go any way you want it to.

If you're trying to cross the ocean in a boat, your main concern is that it will float. You don't care about what it looks like. And that's kind of how we developed this. Now I have to say that after thirty years we know what we're doing. So now we can play with the aesthetics to a certain degree and try and make it palatable to more and more people, because looks alone will stop someone from going in this direction.

What I want to do is make the Earthship available to everyone on an emotional, physical, and financial level. Then if they don't want it, fine — pay utility bills, be lost in the shuffle when the power goes down, or whatever. It's up to you — it's just logic.

Diane: I notice there is one home that is listed for sale. Are there others in your subdivision?

Michael: Yes. We just opened the second phase of our subdivision. It's really amazing to have gotten a sustainable subdivision open, because subdivisions are about utilities, and we've got a subdivision without utilities. It was kind of Catch 22 to get the county officials to even approve it. But fortunately they were forward-thinking.

We will always have one or two houses available in different income levels, because we have about 80 or 90 still to build and we will always have one or two available to rent, to show people what it is like to live in one.

We are starting another community about the same size not far from here. It's on highway frontage — and that's a lifetime of work, right there.

Diane: Do you host on-site workshops?

Michael: Yes, we have about five seminars every year where people come from as far away as New Zealand or Japan.

We have what we call a seven-day demonstration unit. We build a room in seven days that actually shows much of what we've been talking about.

We did one of these programs in Belgium a couple of years ago. We were running around in Brussels to the tire stores and grocery stores getting tires. The TV stations ended up putting the finished room on TV, and people were amazed. It was a beautiful little room sitting in this woman's back yard.

We did a program for the Lakota Sioux in South Dakota and one in Mexicali a few months ago. We've done one in Japan, and one at fourteen thousand feet in Bolivia.

Someone from the UN contacted us a few months ago and is trying to get funding to take this kind of approach to the refugee situation. The idea was for us to teach people to build their own homes, rather than just passing out blankets and food to them, as we do now.

There are lots of different applications. There's the refugee angle, which is down-and-dirty quick survival. And there are people talking about several-million-dollar homes that illustrate the high-end market.

Think of those 10-million-dollar homes in Telluride. Their owners panic when the power or gas goes out because those homes don't work any more. With the Earthship concept you can show the wealthy that they can have their million-dollar homes with all the luxuries, and they will still work if the grid goes down.

Diane: So you think there will be a surge of interest soon?

Michael: Yes.

Many people think that just because they have money they don't need to worry about anything else. But people are starting to realize after September 11, and after California's energy crisis, that they are vulnerable no matter how much money they have. So we are getting wealthy people building what they call "safe houses." They want to build their second or third home somewhere in the mountains, all beautiful and big and fancy, and that's where they will go when everything fails in the city.

So, fine, if that's the door in, we'll take it.

Diane: Michael, thanks so much for the good work you're doing.

For more information about Michael Reynolds, see his bio at EarthShip.org.

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