Taexalia

wild.life

Earthship Fife

Earthship Fife Troll

We visited the Earthship Fife today for an informative and thought-provoking tour. If you get a chance to visit and take a tour, I highly recommend it.

Sustainable living is something I aspire to and, since we acquired our 1950s built hoose, we have been trying to come up with a plan (and dosh!) to turn it into as eco-friendly a pad as possible... Visiting the earthship did inspire the odd ideafest that had us imagining knocking down the hoose and digging an earthship hobbithole into our hilly site - but I rather suspect the ethos of the earthship idea revolves around inspiring people to make the best of old builds as well as inspiring people to build new homes in a greener way.

There were two things that really excited me:

Blackwater Reed Bed

I knew there was a blackwater reed bed at the earthship and I have seen them on Grand Designs and whatnot, but when we walked into the actual greenhouse I was happily surprised by how lovely, comfortable and fragrant this one was. It didn't look like a poo recycling system, it looked just like a happy and prolific greenhouse.

Unfortunately legislation demands that any blackwater reed bed system must be sited 50 metres from the hoose, and since I doubt any of our neighbours would agree to us taking over part of their garden, I won't be building one here.

Some legislation is just silly.

Old Car Tyres

These were recycled not just to build the walls and create the biomass which stores heat and regulates temperatures within the earthship hoose, but also used as steps and landscaping around the site.

Since I can't build my own earthsip on the current T@exalialand, I started seeing ways that old car tyres could be useful in solving some of the problems in our garden which has lots of different levels and slopes.

I've also got a great idea for potato planters...

I need old car tyres!