Earthship Kansas
(Page 3 of 3)
May/June 2004
By Nancy Nachman-Hunt
Tires and cement
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The main house took about two years to build—most of the tire-pounding labor coming from David, friend Chris Robinson, and members of their son Josh’s high school cross-country running team. Its design incorporates only one freestanding tire wall, on the north side, which isn’t susceptible to the Kansas moisture. The wall contains 586 tires, while the outbuilding contains another 614 tires for a total of 1,200. Each was hand picked and cost nothing, if you don’t add in the cost of the labor to find them and fill each with 350 pounds of Kansas clay. “We had a route from Lawrence to Ottawa to Topeka to Kansas City. We sorted through piles of tires,” David recalls.
The endeavor may sound daunting, but the tire wall is crucial to the interior temperature of an earthship house. “The wall acts as a temperature-moderating influence,” David says. “The rooms that have the highest ratio of tire-wall area to room area are the easiest to heat and cool.”
The rest of the house was built using stick construction and Ferro cement. The Ferro cement allows for the home’s graceful curves and also made it possible to build a waterproof roof without having to use the water-repelling membrane typically required to keep water from leaking into a relatively flat-roofed structure.
In winter, however, the roof has a minor drawback. Ferro cement is semi-permeable, which means while water won’t pass through it, vapors do. “In continuous below freezing weather—which we don’t get much of—vapor freezes on the underside of the Ferro, and we get a little condensation, which watermarks the ceiling in the high areas where the vapors collect,” he says. If he were to do it over again, David would put vents in the roof’s highest sections to allow vapors to move more freely. Susan adds that because sound resonates so well off the plaster walls, she might have opted for some softer surfaces.
When it was completed in 1995, the Millsteins’ earthship cost between $60 and $65 per square foot. That’s about half of what traditional home construction cost at the time. But, David is quick to note, “that’s not including my labor.”
All in all, however, the Millsteins declare their modified earthship a resounding success. “I feel good about the house. It’s holding up great,” David says. “It provides us with a really nice environment.”
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