HAITI!

Off to Haiti tomorrow! Very excited about the next two weeks in Haiti, helping to finish the hut module that was started in the last trip.

We will be forming another roof structure on top of the existing roof, and fill the void with plastic bags filled with collected Styrofoam from the surrounding area, effectively creating a layer of supa insulation with waste materials.
Also we will be constructing a very large cistern out of a big circular plastered can / bottle wall, which will then be attached to the roof via an aqueduct-esque structure.

There will also be a lot of digging involved in the planters, that deal with the grey and black water, and much more!

9 of us are going from Taos (including me), and there will be 25 Haitians helping too (who will be on $5/day work, and having free lunch and dinner).

All the money that has been collected from those who have very kindly supported this trip to Haiti will be going to, the materials for the build, feeding and paying the Haitian workers, vaccinations, food and tent space for the team and flight tickets.

I will be writing about my experiences in Haiti in a journal, that I will upload to this blog once I have got back on the 5th February, and will be taking loads of pics too!

Thanks again to all those who helped me realise this amazing experience!

Luke.

Taos Revisited

I'm going to be starting my travel to Taos New Mexico, back from California in a few days, and thought it would make sense to cover more of my experiences and techniques learned while I was in Taos. I'll also talk some more about what exactly makes an Earthship.

Materials Used

The materials that are used in Eathships generally are Eco friendly. Meaning that they have either already been used and are no considered waste (car tyres, glass/ plastic bottles), or have been reclaimed (e.g masonry cut offs used to mosaic a floor space). For example the wall in the picture to the right is used solely from car tyres (rammed with earth), used glass bottles, and adobe (mixed sand, earth and water).

An Earthship generally uses between 800 and 1400 car tyres, depending on the size, thousands of bottles (for the outside boundary wall, and the dividing walls in the earthship), tons and tons of earth, (for the berm, and the tyres), 12-24 vega's (stripped trees 1' in diameter), 6-12 pallets of cement (for the load bearing walls, and finishes).

Cistern access point

 Water collection

 A earthship is self supporting. there are no wires of pipes coming into the building from a conventional grid, so collecting your own water to survive is essential. The roof structure is designed to capture the water, by feeding it run off into a filter, that then guides the water into a huge tank (or cistern), this water is then used for all your daily needs. The water is fed through one of two filter systems depending of whether of not it needs to be potable (drinkable).