Earthship
North: Building a Home and a Community
by Jane Buchan
Thirty kilometres south of Bancroft,
Ontario, Pat and Chuck Potter, environmentalists originally hailing from Dunnville,
Ontario, Canada, made history in 1995. On 37 acres of mixed forests whose inhabitants include bear,
moose, beaver, and the Potter's five huskies, the activists adapted the building
specifications of New Mexico architect Michael Reynolds' Earthship
to meet the challenges of eastern Canada's extreme winter conditions. The Potters
used environmentally aware adventurers with a taste for the beauty of Ontario's forests to help complete the project on a working
vacation.
While still a high school student, project manager Patricia Hayes designed her own
co-op program with Michael Reynolds. After her first co-op experience as a member of an
Earthship crew in Taos, New Mexico, she enrolled in the Architectural Technologist program
at Toronto, Ontario's Humber College. Then, she completed an apprenticeship in Taos
as an Earthship builder, working on four houses with many of Reynold's other apprentices.
Once the Potter Earthship was completed and passed inspection, Hayes became licensed
by Reynolds and able to oversee Earthship projects throughout North America.
The advantages of the Earthship technology are numerous. Firstly, the use of used tires
as building components means our landfills are spared tons of hazardous waste. The
Hagersville, Ontario tire fire, the worst in Canadian history – 14 million tires
burned in 17 days – brought the advantages of Earthship technology home to the
Potters. Committed environmentalists who birthed the Now I Must Be Involved (NIMBI)
tugboat which took school children out on Lake Erie to explore its beauty and
vulnerability to industrial polluters, the Potters saw first-hand the fallout from
a tire fire near their home. Shortly afterward, they heard of Michael Reynolds' concept – a home that takes care of its
inhabitants instead of the other way around – and were intrigued by architecture
using potentially dangerous raw materials both as a means of providing shelter and of
neutralizing their risk to the environment.
When asked about the threat of fire in Earthship construction, Chuck Potter
demonstrated the process of filling the tires with earth, pounding them into place, and
then cementing them into walls that contain no oxygen. Because their high ignition
temperature (500 degrees C as compared to 300 for wood) makes spontaneous combustion or
fire from natural causes impossible, experts conclude that all tire fires are
intentionally set. Tires used in Earthship construction are rendered harmless because the
lack of oxygen renders the homes' inner cement plaster walls harmless, even faced with an
arsonist.
A second advantage to Earthship construction is the use of aluminum pop cans. Used as
filler in the curved spaces between tires, the cans act as stabilizers for the cement that
locks the tires into place and forms the inner wall. While the Potters have found numerous
local sources of tires, their pop can supply is low. Most municipalities have recycling
programs and aluminum commands a good price in the waste-for-profit business. For this
reason, visitors to the site are asked to bring pop cans to aid construction. Because they
will be spending the next hundred or so years encased in the Potter's cement walls, the
cans used for building the Earthship will not contribute to the recycling industry's air
and water pollution.
A third advantage to Earthship construction is its low maintenance cost. Intended to be
completely self-sufficient, the Potter Earthship will be powered by electricity generated
by the sun and wind, and detached from the energy grid, upon which other homes in the area
rely for power. As well, Earthship construction makes central heating unnecessary because
of the earth's natural warming and cooling properties. Designed to use mass as a heat
source, the tire walls absorb the heat of the sun during the day and radiate it at night
during the winter months. During the summer, the angle of the windows prevents direct
sunlight from overheating the home.
When the Potter house is finished, the berm, or outer earth covering, will be planted
in wildflowers. As one of the few necessary adaptations to the area's colder, wetter
climate – and to the local building code – a vapor barrier has been used
between the tire walls and the floor. Another accommodation to Ontario's colder weather
conditions and building specifications will be total outer wall insulation instead of the
four-foot-above-frost-line insulation used in the New Mexican, Californian and British
Columbian Earthships. The roof will also be insulated against heat loss during the winter
months.
As with other Earthships, the Potter home will make use of grey water recycling into
planters in order to grow a portion of the family's year 'round food supply. Black water
or toilet waste, which may also be composted or routed into a septic bed in Earthship
construction, will be reduced to ash in the Potter's solar toilet. Further energy savers
include a solar hot water tank, a cold box (an insulated, vented cupboard dug into the
earth instead of a refrigerator) and a wood stove. The Potters will practice sustainable
forest management. Besides getting most of its energy from renewable sources, Earthship
construction requires very little wood, since the roof beams are the only timber required.
In order to continue to break ground in the environmental education field, the Potters
intend to use their northern home as a place to explore and demonstrate sustainable
living. Their Earthship home, their homesteading techniques and their permaculture
gardening practices will all contribute to the educational nature of the property.
Jane Buchan is the author of Transformation in Canada's Deep South. This article was published in Natural Life Magazine in 1995.
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