permaculture

["scrooge McDuck" <declan@planetmail.net>]

Great to Have those insights. Dampness in straw bale; I suppose the walls don't breathe. I also heard of one with 4 walls of tyres in an earthquake prone location. This survived earthquakes because the walls had flexibility and provided protection for the roof structure by flexing in an earthquake.

Have you seen walls of beer cans or wine bottles?
--
Declan Moriarty
Sent from my Android tablet with mail.com Mail. Location Dublin Ireland..

On 27/07/2016, 01:43 Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com> wrote:

I’ve been in a couple of old Earthships. The original idea (which gets modified often) was to have a north facing (away from the sun) wall, and sometimes other walls, that were made of tires full of rammed earth, hundreds (up to 1500) of them. I spent 20 minutes with a sledgehammer packing earth into one-half of one tire and decided that wasn’t for me, but I know people who like that sort of thing. The feared toxic effects of living in a house with a tire wall are supposedly mitigated by a thick layer of plaster. The sunward wall has a greenhouse and graywater wetland. The inventor, Michael Reynolds, thought of them partly as a way to use up some of the millions of old tires lying around. They are only suitable for certain climates unless you insulate them as well.

There are straw bale houses in Nebraska that are 150 years old, so they do last when built right (more than a lot of wood houses). But interior moisture is definitely your enemy there. Paul Stamets has sent me photos of mushrooms growing out of bathroom walls in bale houses. Exterior moisture is not such a problem, as that dries out when the weather clears.

Toby
tobyhemenway.com

Just out: my new book on urban permaculture, The Permaculture City. Order it at your favorite bookseller or get a signed copy from me at http://tobyhemenway.com/book/the-permaculture-city/





> On Jul 26, 2016, at 12:44 PM, Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Jul 26, 2016 at 3:31 PM, scrooge McDuck <declan@planetmail.net>
> wrote:
>
>> So nobody on this list has one? I thought there would be several. Surely
>> Earthships dovetail with Permaculture?
>
>
> Its straw bale, wattle and daub, cob, etc. I would live in a tent before
> wasting my time and money on any of this tech-NO-logy.
> The Earthships have been around for a long time and are very neat, very
> stylized, some of them, at the expense of real functionality, cost and
> maintenence; they lack attention to detail, especially merging surfaces and
> contours and overall year round temperature moderation and many of them are
> way too big.
>
> My take on this is:
>
> build small, exactly what space you must have
> use extremely durable materials
> use easy or no maintenance materials
> use super insulation for year round comfort
> use thermal heat storage in winter (the floor and walls (interior) that
> serve to keep living space cool in summer combined with appropriate roof
> overhangs
>
> this really works
> I can provide details on materials and building techniques if anyone is
> interested; will post to the list.
>



permaculture mailing list
permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
subscribe/unsubscribe|user config|list info:
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture