Earthships - Live Free

[snowdog2012]

The free energy home the "Utility Industrial complex" doesnt want you to build....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkbHR16FGpE

Seminar 2009 DVD1

[snowdog2012]

Wyoming Earthship Build - April, 2010 [tire work]

[Dalebert]

Those look like fun projects/science experiments/etc. But I'm really skeptical about them actually being cost-effective. I have a friend who's off the grid and they live a pauper's lifestyle. Is it worth it to save $150/month on utility bills?

I think stuph like this is mostly head games. It makes people feel better but it's mostly ritualistic. It's possible it will become more meaningful in a SHTF scenario but that's really a different problem. We're not getting gouged over energy costs, not right now anyway. It's incredibly convenient and relatively inexpensive.

Same goes for food. Food is really cheap. Raise your own food if you have a hobby of being self-sufficient but for the effort, it's probably more economical to go to the grocery store and buy food that was grown on fields and scooped up by giant tractors or picked by immigrants. I realize there are better methods of raising food in modern times, like aquaponics (the fish tanks mixed with farming), but we still benefit more by doing them on a larger scale and distributing them in the free market than every house having it's own aquaponics.

There has to be a bullshit episode about this.

[Cognitive Dissident]

There are some really convincing blogs with "so-called perpetual motion machines." I really want someone I know (preferably with electronics interests and knowledge I don't have) to make one so I can hear everything about it from him. It seems possible that there is energy in the form of electrical potential in the air, but it seems intuitive to me that it's a very small amount of energy. Still, it's interesting that such machines have been built.

All that said, I'm also interested in growing, because I've always thought we're one good EMP or something stupid away from a new dark age, and diverse knowledge beyond my manufacturing background would be nice (I also have a slide rule in my safe, but would have to learn how to use it.)

[Dalebert]

It seems possible that there is energy in the form of electrical potential in the air, but it seems intuitive to me that it's a very small amount of energy. Still, it's interesting that such machines have been built.

There is up in the sky during a thunder storm. No one's figured out a way to get much useful energy from it yet.

[snowdog2012]

Those look like fun projects/science experiments/etc. But I'm really skeptical about them actually being cost-effective. I have a friend who's off the grid and they live a pauper's lifestyle. Is it worth it to save $150/month on utility bills?

I think the savings may be upwards of $300 a month including food, water, gas/oil, electric, sewer. Over 10 years as inflation rises and you invest these dollars, it could be above $50,000 savings?

At the same time you are "Living Free" ending your Oil slavery, your slavery to the local bureaucrats Sewer and Water, slavery to the utility companies that can raise prices any time....

Theres also a great quote in this video at 6:16 of how revolutionary these homes are having the potential to end wars on the planet.....

"If all of the soldiers, in all of the armies, in all of the world were to put down their weapons and pick up tools and start making sustainable housing for all of the people in the world....life would just begin on this planet." - Michael Reynolds

People would have everything they need within their home, fighting over global resources would come to an end.

"Earthship Biotecture": Renegade New Mexico Architect's Radical Approach to Sustainable Living

*changed topic to 'Free House Project'

[snowdog2012]

These things are perfect for New Hampshire and the FSP.

....if enough free staters and native NH'ers started building off grid, the independence created would seriously harm statists and corporatists ability to enslave as earthships fatally encroach on whatever sinister grid schemes they were planning to plunder communities.

Fishing in the Phoenix Earthship

[Dalebert]

It's been tried. Russell and Kat tried to build a house on a minimal budget and managed to coax a LOT of people to help without pay and put many many people-hours into it and got as far as a mis-shapen couple of feet of outside wall of one corner of the house.

New construction is incredibly expensive, particularly at a time when the housing bubble just popped and lots of existing homes are out there cheap. Go to a bank and try to get a loan to build that house in the video and let us know how that goes.

It's just not as simple as it seems. It's definitely not as cheap as it seems. This is a great project for someone to take up who has a lot of money and a lot of time and is willing to make a job out of building their home and then maybe helping others to do it.

I would love a house like that. I really would. I'm not willing to drop everything I'm doing, put my life on pause, risk a lot of money on something like that when I don't really know about all the engineering involved, etc. However, if someone took it upon himself to come out and build a house like that, invited people over to see how awesome it was, and then could give me a quote that was confidence-inspiring about how much it would cost to build it for me, I could see myself going for it. But posting videos of it on a website and saying "people should do that" is not going to make anything happen.

Is this something you're interested in? Do you have a lot of time and money to make it happen? Alternatively, do you think you can get investors interested? People who you could convince to hire you to build them a home as proof-of-concept and then perhaps make loans to people to get their houses built, etc? Because I'm not trying to discourage it. I'm just giving a reality check.

[Dalebert]

I think the savings may be upwards of $300 a month including food, water, gas/oil, electric, sewer. Over 10 years as inflation rises and you invest these dollars, it could be above $50,000 savings?

I see he's saving a lot on heat (though not in NH) but how much electricity does he produce and use? Like I said, my friends in their off-the-grid house produce a meager amount of electricity with their solar panels and have to ration it extremely carefully. If I lived like they do, I'd save most of my electric bill too but it would suck. I wouldn't be able to do my show out of my studio or ever use a desktop computer. I'd not be able to run A/C ever. I'd have to keep my fridge small. Even small kitchen appliances would have to be used sparingly, etc. It was a big deal for them to turn on a fan on a hot day. It's a big deal for a house to be off-the-grid for electric and still live a comfortable lifestyle.

[Cognitive Dissident]

It seems possible that there is energy in the form of electrical potential in the air, but it seems intuitive to me that it's a very small amount of energy. Still, it's interesting that such machines have been built.

There is up in the sky during a thunder storm. No one's figured out a way to get much useful energy from it yet.

Well of course, that's the case of a very high potential, so high that it seeks ground. There is a tremendous amount of energy, for much less than one second, in the place where it finds ground. It's simultaneously a lot of energy, and in a practical sense, not much energy, making it very inconvenient to try to store.

[jerry]

These things are perfect for New Hampshire and the FSP.

I find that hard to believe when every picture of earthship houses, with one exception, that  I see on the internet are in the southwest desert.  

The one exception is in southern VT, and after a few years they had to hook up to the grid.  
Quote from the builder: “You do need a backup during winter peak months in December, January, and February. It’s a small amount. We’re off the grid for most of the year.”

He also said the prices have risen since he built his:  "One major sticking point now would be the $300,000 price tag that comes with building a 3 bedroom Global Earthship (that cost doesn’t include the cost of the land or the well if I would need that)."

[Turd Ferguson]

Throw some solar panels and a big ass wood burning stove on this thing for winter and you're set.

How to Build a Million Dollar House Dirt Cheap!

[Cognitive Dissident]

I watched Garbage Warrior today. I found it pretty good. He's a little bit off the leftist cliff, but even leftists can have some good ideas.

[DragQueen]

the other thing the crunchies don't realize, is that building codes WON'T allow you to build some shit-shack w/ an outhouse & no running water, or legit. heat source.
 if you say your gonna heat w/ strictly a wood stove, most municipalities will MAKE you install elec. baseboard at the least, even if you never plan on using it.
you can't get a cert. of occupancy w/out:
1) toilet
1) sink (kitchen or lavatory)
1) bathtub a/or shower
hot and cold running water.
also,
solar is expensive to buy into.
even w/ the govt. 30% tax credit/handout
and, new england sucks for solar......too many sunless days, minimal daylight during winter

if you are truly off the grid, you need an enormous battery bank to store energy......big pain-in-the-ass
you need 12 or 24 volt lighting & whatever lo-volt appliances are available on the market
if its cloudy & shitty for days at a time, you'll live like some al qaeda asshole in a cave, with coleman lanterns & battery powered lights

[snowdog2012]

I watched Garbage Warrior today. I found it pretty good.

Reynolds leaving town to fight the state and what he calls its "horseshit" is entertaining.... 

http://youtu.be/FXj7antqNn4?t=44m26s