Missouri couple builds self-sustainable home from used tires, cans


Wednesday, October 14, 2009 | 12:01 a.m. CDT



Vendoni Colvin, Karen Spicer and Kenny Colvin consider the possibilities of what will eventually become the kitchen of the "Earthship" house the Colvins are building in Brumley. The Colvins have been building the house, largely composed of repurposed materials, since April 2003 after visiting some other Earthships in Taos, N.M. ¦ David Kennedy
BY Han Cheung

BRUMLEY — Kenny and Vendoni Colvin didn't expect stuffing dirt into tires to be so time-consuming.

It takes two people three or four hours to put 300 pounds of dirt into a big tire, one shoveling and the other packing with a sledgehammer.

It took the Colvins four years to finish packing all the tires they need to build their house. They stopped counting after tire No. 550.

"Both wrists were blown up, and you develop tennis elbow after the tenth tire," Kenny Colvin said.

Stacked tires have become the load-bearing walls for an Earthship, the Colvins' self-sustaining home built almost entirely from natural and recycled materials. Still a work in progress, it is located in a quiet and isolated forest in Brumley, near Osage Beach. When finished, it will have solar and thermal mass heating, a cistern for water and composting toilets.

After about five years of labor, the Colvins may be among the few Earthship builders in Missouri to have made any significant progress toward completion, according to the Department of Natural Resources, which administers the approval of beneficial use of scrap tires.

They will share their building experiences during the Sustainable Living Fair on Saturday at Columbia College Student Commons. Sponsored by Mid-Missouri Peaceworks, it runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The Earthship concept was developed by New Mexico-based architect and builder Michael Reynolds about 20 years ago.

According to Kirsten Jacobsen, education director of Reynold's company Earthship Biotecture, it's called a "ship" because it is disconnected from the world's main utility lines, like a boat.

The Colvins began their project in 2001, armed only with experience in landscaping and Reynold's Earthship instruction manuals. Prior to building, they visited the 633-acre Greater World Earthship community in Taos, N.M., which provides nightly rentals.

Their Earthship looks like an ordinary house partially built underground. Inside, the raw framework of the house is clearly visible.

The packed tires are piled like bricks in a checkerboard pattern with cement filling the gaps. Wooden frames and windows connect the tire wall with the ceiling. An interior wall made of evenly spaced aluminum cans has been cemented together to serve as shelves.

None of this will be seen after the tires are stuccoed and the cans are tiled. The roof will be metal, keeping the structure fire resistant.

The land around the Earthship is paved with irregular rock tiles. A layered watershed drainage system made of cans keeps the rain from rolling down the hill and flooding the house.

A glass wall faces south to maximize sunlight. The earth-filled tires absorb heat from the sun and release it slowly at night, keeping the temperature stable.

Windows are arranged so that the sun shines directly onto the tires during the winter, providing extra heat. There is also a ventilation system to shuffle heat in and out as the climate changes.

"In the summertime, you don't have to have A/C, and in the winter you don't have to have heat," Kenny Colvin said.

Because their cistern is still under construction, the Colvins haul all their water from a well nearby and rain buckets collect extra water.

By using a compost toilet, the need for a sewage system is eliminated. The shower is a flash-on-demand process — when turned on, a paddle wheel ignites the burner.

Dirty shower water will flow outside to a tub that waters the planting beds. Used kitchen water will flow indoors into a hydroponic system with a fish pond.

Almost all of the materials are recycled. They are collected from homes, factories, construction sites, rock quarries and tire dealers.

The Colvins first became environmentally active when Vendoni Colvin founded Waste Watchers in 1994, a drop-off recycling organization for Lake Ozark, which at that time had no recycling at all.

"Getting into household recycling was our first earth-conscious thinking and that led to wanting to live more sustainably," said Vendoni.

In 2000, Kenny wrote on the family Christmas wish list that he wanted 250 acres of unspoiled land in Montana or Wyoming.

Not wanting her son to move far away, his mother typed it out as "Kenny wants 50 acres of land in Brumley, Missouri." By March 2001, they had purchased the land.

After doing much Internet research on alternative living, the Colvins decided on an Earthship because it seemed the most durable.

They spent two months constructing an off-the-grid, two-story temporary home from recycled material. The Colvins moved in on Memorial Day 2001.

They didn't expect to live in it for the next eight years.

Another couple moved in with them to help build the Earthship. Unaccustomed to the hard labor, they left after six months.

Since then, the Colvins have tried hiring laborers to pack tires, invited a few families to stay and help out and asked carpenter friends to share their expertise.

Yet, they have done most of the work on their own.

The Colvins quit their jobs when they started their project, hoping to speed up the process.

When it became apparent that it would take years, Vendoni went to a school for massage therapists and set up a studio in Osage Beach. Kenny is on call 24/7 as a wastewater technician.

"When you're in the rat race of everyday life, it takes a lot more to do this," Vendoni said.

They no longer try to estimate how long it will take. "For years, it was next year," Kenny Colvin said.

Yet, they keep moving forward, determined to take it one step at a time. The next objective is to have the floors insulated and paved by this winter.

When it is finally done, however, it will just be the beginning.

"We intend to make this into a small eco-village," Vendoni said.



Some others Related


Home built with mostly repurposed materials
By David Kennedy
October 14, 2009 | 12:01 a.m. CDT
Cement and aluminum cans form a wall that encircles the load-bearing, dirt-filled, rubber tires in Vendoni and Kenny Colvin's "Earthship" house on Sunday, Oct. 4, in Brumley. The Colvins have been building the house, largely composed of repurposed materials, since April 2003 after visiting some other Earthships in Taos, N.M.




Homeowners look at possibilities
By David Kennedy
October 14, 2009 | 12:01 a.m. CDT
Vendoni Colvin looks into what will eventually become the kitchen of the "Earthship" house she is building with her husband, Kenny, on Sunday, Oct. 4, in Brumley.




Link Back: www.shtfm.com/shelters-and-housin ... t5485.html

http://www.ehow.com/how_2106196_make-ho ... tires.html

A house made out of old tires is economical, both in its building and in the energy efficiency of the home. Additionally, covered in adobe, a tire house can be just as attractive as any house. Nobody knows what the walls are made of when it's finished.

Instructions

Things You'll Need:
Home site
Home design
1000 used tires
Scrap cardboard
Approximately 525 tons of dirt
Wheelbarrow
Heavy sledgehammer or earth-ramming equipment
Approximately 1 ton of aluminum cans
Concrete
Masonry tools
Materials and tools to create the roof
Adobe plaster
Step
1

Design your tire house and prepare your site. Consult an architect and contractor, or a layperson who's built her own home, if you don't have experience in home design and site preparation. Touch the Earth Construction specializes in tire homes, providing plans, assistance and answers to frequently asked questions.
Step
2

Acquire a large number of used, standard size passenger car tires. Aim for gathering at least 1000 from local junkyards, landfills and tire dealerships. If tire houses aren't popular in your area, you can get them for free.
Step
3

Lay the tires one-deep where you want your walls. Place cardboard in the bottom of each tire.
Step
4

Fill each tire with dirt, using a wheelbarrow to transport it and ramming the dirt down thoroughly. You can do this by hand with a heavy sledgehammer or you can rent earth-ramming equipment to do it more quickly and thoroughly. It takes approximately three wheelbarrows full of dirt to fill one tire.
Step
5

Stack a new layer of tires on top of the first, staggering them for stability, and repeat the filling and ramming process. Stack additional layers of tires the same way until your tire house walls are as high as you want them.
Step
6

Use aluminum cans for filler to create a relatively flush wall. Then, cover both the interior and exterior walls with concrete.
Step
7

Create the roof of your house. In a standard tire house construction, the roof can't be made of tires. Use whatever materials can achieve the design you envision.
Step
8

Apply adobe plaster to the tire walls to create a smooth finish with insulating properties for your tire house.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthship

Earthship

An Earthship is a type of passive solar home made of natural and recycled materials. Designed and marketed by Earthship Biotecture of Taos, New Mexico, the homes are primarily constructed to work autonomously and are generally made of earth-filled tires, utilising thermal mass construction to naturally regulate indoor temperature. They also usually have their own special natural ventilation system. Earthships are generally Off-the-grid homes, minimizing their reliance on public utilities and fossil fuels.

Earthships are built to utilize the available local resources, especially energy from the sun. For example, windows on the sunny side admit light and heat, and the buildings are often horseshoe-shaped to maximize natural light and solar-gain during winter months. Likewise, the thick, dense outer walls provide effective insulation against summer heat.

The wiki link also includes some history and climate considerations, very informative.

Internal, non-load-bearing walls are often made of a honeycomb of recycled cans joined by concrete and are referred to as tin can walls. These walls are usually thickly plastered with stucco.

The roof of an Earthship is heavily insulated - often with earth or adobe - for added energy efficiency.

I also like the Earthship idea. Though wish it were cheaper to make! I have been considering something along these line for a while myself. Though i have been leaning more toward Geodesic Dome house. They are earth friendly, WAYYYY cheaper to build than a conventional stick house, and you get twice as much square footage for same price. Plus, if you already own the land, they will use your land as contract to build!

http://www.domeincorporated.com/

Plus little to no maintenance involve. Just pressure wash once every 5 years or so and your good to go!

I have actually bought the book by the creator of the EarthShip Homes. My father and I are looking for some land to put a few up them up on. He's a contractor, I'm the gorilla muscle......I'll let you guys now how it turns out. There is also a documentary I watched about the architect that designed the earth ships, and all the problems he had, including getting his credentials revoked......all the while he was building homes in india and indonesia that were withstanding hurricanes and typhoons. His house designs stood up to a 15.0 earthquake simulation I believe.

These eco-activists have never lived where there are fire ants and termites...both of which love stacks of old tires, especially if you add some cardboard and wood scraps in the mix.

BTW, the planet earth has never had a 15.0 earthquake in recorded history.

What about straw bale homes? Very cheap materials/highly insulating, and they can be stuccoed to resemble adobe.WAAAAYYYY faster construction than earthships with many of the same benefits. Many structures constructed with straw bales have been standing for 100+ years.

Semper Veritas

http://www.balewatch.com/

http://www.strawbale.com/

http://www.solarhaven.org/NewStrawbale.htm