Well, went and saw three homes today. The earthship was pretty cool. I've read a lot about them but never have been in one. On the plus side, they haven't heated the thing at all since they've built it five or six years ago. Last January, it got pretty cold here. Lows below ZeroF and highs in the twenties & thirties for a week or two. He said the earthship went to 60F inside and went no lower, Usually it stays in the mid to high sixties in the winter. On the minus side, the thing was like 1800 SF and had one bedroom and one bath. That walkway-planter bed in front takes up a lot of usable space and the 18" walls between rooms don't help much either. Also, the wide open design works well for heating but there's no privacy whatsoever. A noise in the bedroom is clearly heard on the other side of the house. There's no doors to separate the rooms save the bathroom. They run the whole thing off a 600W PV array. They did it a while back so it's all 12V, DC lights and an inverter. Interesting to see how things have changed in the last 5 or 6 years.
The other places I saw were in this co-housing development. From my perspective, this is alternative building for the sake of alternative building. Saw two places with huge timber framing and strawbale or straw/clay construction. Nifty but really expensive. However, I did like the idea of co-housing. Lots of duplexes, you had to walk a hundred yards or so to your car and the houses were all neatly arranged along a walkway with a playground for kids and a community center. There were these litle hand carts everwhere to help you get the groceries from the car to the house. I guess everyone has to help out with the building of the community property and upkeep, they do community dinners once in a while etc. But we saw one of these places up for sale for a measly $370K... Not exactly in my price range. The place had grid power and common water/sewer so there's no real need to do anything alternative except to impress your neighbors.
I think it would be cool to have a little community like this but where the people were scratching by on their own PV systems and the architecture and real eatate wasn't so high dollar and uniform. I suppose this is a pipe dream and places like I'm describing end up being the "projects" but it was a neat idea to put a little community together out in the middle of nowhere. Something about the idea appealed to me.
Volvo farmer
