Been interested to research the Earthship. Its a interesting concept and a search under Earthship is well worthwhile. It even had a construction of an Earthship home in Nicaragua in, I believe, 14 days that can be viewed in a in time delay video. They have Earthship communities in Taos, New Mexico...land of the weird. So...save yo tires, plastic, and energy.

I have heard that Earthships are a wonderful technology for dry parts of the world but it becomes difficult to control the humidity levels in wetter climes - such as Belize!

Mike Reynolds who developed the Earthship came to Belize yrs ago to look at a possible project here that never happened.

The Mennonites were 50 years ahead of him. And they didn't do it to be trendy.

Earthship Belize: http://earthship.com/belize

Earthship Biotecture is looking for ten apprentices to work alongside experienced Earthship crew members
on the retrofit of an existing post and beam structure. Help us show a community in Belize how to recycle byproducts
of modern living into sustainable buildings that have autonomous systems.

Live in paradise while you learn.

This will begin with a three week session - 12th through 30th of March - 2012

http://earthship.com/belize

Thats my old friend Mike, who has been here before, very interesting work he does.

If I'm not mistaken, the 1966 photo on the earthship website features our own Jim Scott on the left?
Fun!

We met a man who had a rammed-earth home. He was fascinated by the "green" idea of taking old tires and recycling them into a structure. I think they did it in NM and the finished home was stunning. He said he started with the idea it would not only be a good green project but also cheaper than conventional stuff.
The base of the structure is tires with dirt pounded into the cavities, then you use the tires to make a thick, well insulated wall. Anyway...... the tires are free, so how bad can this cost get? He said he had a big piece of land so the dirt was also free ..... so how bad can this cost get? Well ..... he had a line-item for wages and marajuana for the dirt-pounders that ran this construction method up about 50% over conventional construction. I think the lesson on a lot of this earth-ship stuff is that it is labour intensive. In a place where people work for pennies a day and there is lots of extra dirt and/or sand, maybe it makes tons of sense, but in other places the economics just don't work. Even the bullet-proof house project in Nigeria (plastic bottles with sand in them) began to run into source-of-sand issues.
So...... going green and recycling - YES, fantastic! But think it through all the way before you start. The devil is in the details. I like the ideas - and the end product can be tons of fun --- but the enthusiasts often overlook local circumstances and waste a lot of time.