Earthships: The homes of the future

The first of 3 parts I want to deal with in this body of thought is the concept of Earthship biotecture. It is fundamentally for me the most important of the 3, although not taking anything away from permeculture and food forests. They are pretty damn close and certainly in my mind interrelated but being human starts with having a home, a shelter. The quality of which is going to determine the quality of that human or human family's life. So if you live in tin shell that cooks in summer and freezes in winter your quality of life will be low and this will permeate to your output in this world. If your basic needs are met by your home then a burden is lifted from your shoulders and have the freedom to finally live and not just fight to survive. So what is Earthship biotecture? It is the brain child of architect Mike Reynolds who over 40 odd years has been developing to my mind the only sound way of becoming carbon zero. He rejects the term architecture and calls it biotecture, I think because of the connotations those words have. Architecture suggests an architect, a person that designs a building in accordance with his own will and aesthetic. Design choices are made to suit that of a client and to impress the traditional establishment, to seem innovative and cool. I don't look down upon that. In fact I am still a great fan of modern architecture. I want to make the point though that this is not how biotecture functions. There is an element of aesthetics which I do find fresh and exciting but mainly biotecture is driven by how the available resources provided by our surroundings (i.e. rain, solar light, solar heat, gravity, earth, plants and animals) can be harnessed to suit our basic human needs. Thus biotecture could be seen to be something like a carriage, a tool of our own making that makes use of an available draft animal to transport us somewhere into the future. Most importantly it does so without the use of carbon, that is use of fossil fuel, being tied into a grid, no water pumped to the house, no human waste pumped away to be treated, to electricity supplied to the house so no need for coal or nuclear power, no need to go to a mall to buy food. An earthship is 100% environmentally sustainable and independent of outside assistance. This is the ideal. I think the only true way to be 100% sustainable and independent of the outside would be to live in a tepee in the desert somewhere but earthships are as close as it gets without having to sacrifice modern comforts. So what are our basic human needs? We need a clean source of water. We need food. We need security. We need community. Earthships as a philosophy can provide it all. First let me deal with specific issues of the earthship design. As I have said, the earthship are shaped the way they are not to be aesthetically pleasing but to harness resources. The first one I will deal with is temperature. So the earthship is made up of about 800 or so old tires that are rammed with earth and stacked on top of each other to build a thick outside shell of the home. The use of recycled materials are important in earthship design because they are low cost and available. These rammed earth tire walls provide excellent thermal mass to keep in the winter sun's heat and keep out the summer sun's heat thus the temperature in earthships usually range about 21 degrees Celsius year round which is the perfect room temperature for humans. Modern buildings for the most part have failed to address temperature fluctuations adequately for the most part I think because there was this assumption that you can burn fossil fuels when its too cold and you can use electricity (in the form of fans and air conditioners) which is in abundant supply when it is to warm. So that meant builders could get away with building ever decreasingly dense walls. These days I'm surprised how thin our walls have become, and how little regard is given to keeping in heat. homes are drafty and very poorly designed. Old homes that did not rely on electricity were still built with thick thermal mass walls but these days profit comes into the picture at the cost of your comfort. This however does not matter much if you are rich enough to fit the bills but the damage is still done on a universal level. 7 billion people tied into that grid of dependency. Earthships don't need air conditioners, or fans for that matter or heaters or even fireplaces even if they are in the tropics or in cold temperate climates like Norway. They capture the heat from the sun through passive solar gain and retain the heat from the sun though use of thermal mass and thick insulation. Another need, water is supplied by rain. If you live in an area that gets about 7 inches of rain per year or more then it turns out you can capture your own water. This is nothing new, but the earthship are designed to capture every last drop that falls on the roof and feed it into build in cisterns. This water is then filtered for different uses. Filtered 4 times for drinking. Filtered 3 times for showering and washing dishes, normal household use. To get hot water the water is pumped to copper pipes on the sunny face of the house and stored and then it is then pumped to a on demand propane heater that regulates the temperature before its ready to use. The propane gas is only used in the event of rainy days where the water does not warm in the copper pipes No chemicals in the drinking water, no chlorine, no fluoride. The shower and washing water is then sent as grey water to a grey water holding cell in the greenhouse area of the building where it is filtered by your edible plants and then sent back to the toilet to be flushed as black water. When you flush your toilet this black water goes outside to a septic tank and then is released into another external garden to be filtered. Thus the same water is used for 4 different purposes. This cuts down on water usage and means you can use the water not only to drink or shower and wash but also to grow your own food in your own home. Electricity is supplied by solar panels on the sunny side of the house. These panels are connected to storage batteries so you would have power even when the sun is not shining and can be further connected to wind or hydro power if you have it available. The power is converted from DC to AC so that you can run any modern appliance you would choose to, including TV entertainment centers and computers with internet. As I mentioned you will have a greenhouse which sits within the home itself. In fact it faces the sun to capture all the solar gain and then feeds into the house during winter where thermal mass stores that heat and acts as a buffer during the summer cutting off the sun's rays from the interior section of the house. This is due to the difference in the sun's angles during winter and summer and the positioning of the windows for the green house. The green house then has the other function of being the place where food is grown year round. Due to the warm humid condition of the green house one is able to grow tropical fruit and have fish ponds even in places where the temperature drops well below zero in winter. Additionally it has ventilation pipes going though the back of building where the thermal mass sits that can send cool air into the house and warm air out via ducts in the greenhouse during summer. This acts like an air conditioner because that air is drawn though meters of cold earth before it enters the home, unlike how we draw warm air in though windows in modern buildings. these can be shut during winter. If it still gets hot during summer which I doubt I would think it possible to play around with that air and having it flow across a body of water before it enters the building given that the cistern sit at the back of the building. You could have a system similar to Persian wind catchers which rely on a tower drawing out warm air (in this case the ducts of the greenhouse) and a qanat, a passage of water under a building over which air will pass into the building cooling the building by up to 15 degrees Celsius. This system has been used in the arid climates of the middle east and Persia for thousands of years. No need for electricity. I think it would be possible to have the overflow from the cisterns enter in a small passage at the back of the building before it exits into an exterior reservoir. The passage would hold water and allow warm air from the back of the building to pass over it cooling that air before it enters the building. Not sure if this cooling would be so drastic as to render the home uncomfortably cool during summers so a way to divert the air to this passage might be an idea. It can be used those times when the home really needs more cooling. So there you have it. A home that can provide all your basic needs without any need for paying utilities.

Back to the earth

This rather random picture of a housing development on the outskirts of Cape town illustrates by point about the problem facing humanity, why this is not a solution to our futures. Although I do commend the government of South Africa for trying to deal with the housing shortage in South Africa, there are several troubling aspects about the way we go about providing housing these days. These homes are all tied into the grid of dependency. They are consciously or unconsciously designed to be slaves to a system that can and will at some point fail to provide us with our needs. Water is pumped to these homes. Human waste is washed away. Electricity sent and bought They provide very little warmth during winter which means they must be supplemented by warmth from fossil fuel, they provide very little cooling in summer which means they provide an uncomfortable existence. They don't produce any food. They have destroyed the natural environmental. These homes are all tied into commerce by supplying a mall where things can be bought, whether they can afford it or not. What they don't provide is any freedom, they tie you into that way of life, good or bad the moment you gratefully move into your that new home, you become a slave. This applies not only to the homes of the poor in Cape Town but pretty much every home in the city of every country. The point of my blog from now on will be the attempt to emancipate us from that slavery of dependency. So it has been ages since I last posted something here... but it has been rather uneventful up to now. Stuff have happened of course but nothing I really felt inspired to write about. It has been a rather intellectually lost time for me but I'm back. I got inspired to write again: North Korea wanting to usher in the nuclear winter upon my home in Seoul and upon the rest of the world, global financial crisis persisting and the threat of peak oil hitting us, global water resources depleting, environmental destruction running amok and nuclear disaster in japan. I am human after all, if you prick us do we not bleed? I'm beginning to feel like shouting out: "Hey this is not what I signed up for!". Crisis seems to be looming ahead of us. There is a pronounced mood of doom laden cataclysm in the media, in the fiction we consume and in the reality we witness. But i am not one of those doomsayers who think world destruction is inevitable and there is nothing we can do: that we should all be repenting and praying to skygods for mercy in the heavens. It is evident that the world is in crisis but it can be averted, and it can be averted pretty easily within one generation should we choose this path. Alternatively we could just carry on the way we are, the way we think is the only way forward, the un-cerebral viral oozing forward of our specie into darkness, like Carl Sagan proposed advanced species might suddenly sprout up in the universe and then destroy themselves due to their advanced technology but un-evolved ability to deal with that technology in a sustainable manner. This would though lead us to that point of no return, the point where it is too late to make generational changes to the way humanity functions, where we simply have no other option to wait for our own demise. Either way, humanity as we know it today will be restructured. To what outcome, i'm not sure but i'm sure the outcome of the way I am to propose will afford humanity an existence superior in terms of delivering us our basic needs to the inevitable downturn in civilization we would face if we are to do nothing and continue on the path of the 'way we are'. I apologize for sounding doom laden and negative but i don't think i'm being unreasonable, just pretty realistic. You see, seven billion people have slowly become dependent on government to supply basic needs, food, water, sanitation, electricity, gas. Our houses and lives are build around the presumption that these resources will flow to us without fracture. We assume we will always have food, yet food prices soar in times of crisis. Fresh water is a limited commodity that could become the new gold in the future as it becomes more scarce. Electricity today means coal, burning of fossil fuel, also a limited resource that contributes to global warming or nuclear power, the source of what might still be our demise. Most notable our lifestyle and existence as it is today relies on fossil fuels. It drives out transport means, means of production, food and otherwise, it provides out warmth in the cold. So what happens when these run out. How do we survive. Well I have the proposal based on some pioneers in different fields addressing these problems. This blog will provide me with my own forum to wrap my brain around those ideas and to consider other problems and solutions. My proposal for my own lifestyle is the based on the combination of 3 technologies (as I see them, but they are probably better described as philosophies). First being Earthship biotechture, second Permaculture design and lastly Food Forrest horticultural gardening. From these 3 concept I think everything we need to survive in a sustainable way will flow. None of these require external government. In fact currently external government is one of the largest obstacles to living sustainable. This will have to change if we as specie intend to change. Ill address each concept in separate post and lastly conclude why these combine into the perfect trio of sustainable living. Ill address why I think it is inevitable that humans get back to the earth and re-root themselves in a manner akin to prior the advent of agriculture.

What a wild weekend!

So start of my holiday here in Korea, right. Spent Friday playing online games at a PC bang, followed by a night of heavy drinking at an all you can drink club in my neighborhood. Met this totally drunk girl that started to call me her boyfriend all night. Next day, woke up at about 6pm and then went out to really cool reggae bar with a huge big mushroom in the middle of the bar, very trippy. Smoked some hookah and drank copious amounts of strawberry makoli, a very uniquely Korean drink. Followed that up with some live rap performances at a live hip hop club. This was really authentic shit, not Korean rap but all brothers from the hood, freestyling it. Was introduced to a cute Korean girl and we went to another huge hip hop club together, danced all night and got even more drunk. Got back at about 7am and slept until 12, cleaned my room. Went to gym only to find it already closed for the day. Went to get some food at Burger King instead. This cute Korean cashier kept smiling at me and was super friendly. When I got home i noticed she drew two hearts and a smile on one of the napkins she gave me, hehe. Only in Korea!

When in Seoul...

So its summer time, about 34c outside, perfect blue skies and most importantly its the end of the semester. Next week I start with summer camp: only about 2 hours a day of teaching a small class for the next 3 weeks. Its going to be a lot of fun. Well its the end of semester so I have to celebrate right? So my co-teacher invites me to have some lunch- boshintang in fact. What is boshintang you might ask, well a rough translation is invigorating soup but what it really is is dog meat soup. Its supposed to be good for "mens health". Ill keep you posted. Tradition holds that it should be consumed in the summer months to cool down the body. Now I know some people are going to berate me for even trying it. Its not something I will try again and in fact most Koreans don't like it either but it has always been my philosophy to try new things, to be open minded and that exactly what I did. I tried Balut and deep fried crickets in the Philippines and I tried silk worm larvae and live octopus here before. If you take out of the equation the emotional argument about eating dog meat (that its a pet and not meant for eating) and you look at the historical and practical argument of eating dog meat its really not a big deal. It taste kinda like lamb. I could not finish the whole dish because I didnt like the fatty parts but the meat was not too bad, tender and tasty. Dogs have been used as a source of protein in east asia for thousands of years. Western culture associates dogs as being pets, man best friend and although this is true and I love dogs too, a special bread of dog has always been used as food here in Korea. Before you preach to me about the ethics of eating dog meat you better take a look at your own consumption of meat and the abattoirs they come from. Do yourself a favor and watch Food Inc. I'm not advocating that you should try dog meat, but lets be open minded, there is really very little difference between eating one animal bread for it meat than eating another bread for its meat. If you are a vegetarian you might have a case. If you say to me its cruel then I agree, but so is the beef, pork, lamb and chicken industry. Anyway in the end its good to try things once. Soon your life is over, you are dust and all the material things you have gathered in a lifetime turns to dust too. You have one life to make of it what you choose and I chose not to follow the other lambs to the slaughter.

One hell of a week! Philippines and Korea

Back at home after a week away. I took a short trip to Bohol, in the Philippines. While I was there I saw an old friend of mine. It was great to get away, i must say. Bohol is really a beautiful island and the people there are super friendly. I ended up traveling to the chocolate hills, strange cone shaped outcrops, the remnants of coral reefs that once belonged at the bottom of the ocean. After that I took a trip on a boat down the Loboc river, really pretty scenery. I visited a Tashier sanctuary too. A Tashier is the worlds smallest monkey. Actually its something between a monkey, a bat and a mouse. Its super cute and so tiny. Smaller than my fist. They can only be found on the island of Bohol, and even though I would love to sneak one through customs back home with me, they are an endangered specie. The rest of my time there was spent on the beach, in the pool and in cafes eating yummy Filipino food. Was a good little break. I arrived back at my place in Seoul at 12am Wednesday morning and was out again later at about 8 on a fieldtrip to central Korea, the Mungyeong and Andong area in Gyeonsangbuk-do province. The first day we did a historic hike along a trail used by ancient Korean scholars as they traveled to Seoul to take an exam that would allow them to become civil servants in the Joseon kingdom, the ancient name for Korea. The path was scattered with beautiful scenery, a river on the one side and majestic mountains on the other, temples, resting pavilions for scholars to swap stories and drink Makoli, ancient walls and gates, the set of an t.v. drama about the ancient Joseon Kingdom. It really was spectacular. The next day was relaxed, we went rail biking, which is a bicycle that used to carry coal from the nearby coalmine, now a tourist draw card. After that we went to a mildly interesting coal museum, I mean how interesting can coal be? It was good to see though how they transformed a desperate community of out of work coal miners into entrepreneurs. The last day there we went to Hahoe village. Its an authentic Korean village over 600 years old. Its actually a world heritage site and it was really interesting, its a living village in that the decedents of the original inhabitants still live there. Very beautiful town, would love to see it in autumn. After that i returned to Seoul nursing a cold which has basically ridden me to my bed for the last few days, which i dont mind because i have been very busy this past week and needed to take a little break from everything. Such a lazy Sunday today, just feel like doing absolutely nothing.

Death by Cherry blossoms!

So its spring and all the cherries are all out in pink all over town, oh and the cherry blossoms too. Its a good time of the year, im not wearing 5 layers of clothes anymore and the heat of summer is a distant concern. Ive been out everywhere checking out the blossoms, Yeouido, Dongjak cemetery, and today I walked the mountain near where I stay. Its also the campus of Seoul National University. Oh and I appeared in a newspaper article, my co-teacher showed me. It was for the trip i took to see Bekje cultural heritage sites. The article also features a barcode, not sure if this is possible in South Africa, but I doubt it. You use your smartphone to scan the bar-code and then it will show you a video on your phone about the article. Well, I was featured in that video too. I sound like an idiot but hey at least not too many people will see it. The barcode thing is quite nifty though, I see it everywhere here on posters etc. So if you want extra info you just take a picture of it with your phone. I like the innovation here in Korea, little things always surprise me here. For example you get energy drink flavored gum, useful for when you missed your cup of coffee in the morning. I went to a mall called Time-square, beautiful futuristic looking place. They have a 4D cinema with the biggest screen in the world. A 4d cinema makes use of 3D movies with moving seats and other effects and even smell. I cant wait to try that. I joined a boxing gym, its just round the corner from me and a great way to get fit and learn a skill. I guess thats about all I can report today, im gonna go to bed, my legs need rest.

In seach of Baekje culture

Last weekend I went to watch a soccer game at the world cup stadium in Seoul. FC Seoul beat another team 3-1. Was an entertaining game, played at high pace and lots of shots at goal. Certainly much more exciting than any soccer I have seen in South Africa. After that we went to eat at Tacobell which was pretty cool. Then we went off to a metal gig in an abandoned building in Hongdae, the club district. Was really low key affair. The place didnt even have its own bar, but since you can buy liquor at 7-11, everyone just went next door to buy and took it inside the "club". A bunch of expats were performing: a death metal outfit with a really odd sense of humor. It was good fun. After that I went to a upmarket club in Apgujejeong, the Beverly hills of Seoul. We were on the vip list so didnt have to pay but the drinks were pretty pricy. About R60 a beer. DJ Sasha was performing there, an international DJ, apparently very popular but not that I would know. I had fun. The next day I went walking around Gangnam, a business area that reminds me a bit of walking in NYC, got a little lost, I got tired of walking and went back home to prepare for the week ahead. This weekend I decided to do the cultural thing. I went with a co-teacher of mine on a tour of Ancient Bekje culture. Bekje was an empire in Korea, part of the Three Kingdoms, and had a lifespan from 18BC-935AD. Its the lesser known of the Three Kingdoms, the more understated of the three but I was interested to go and see this part of Korean history. We went to Maae to see a trinity of Buddhas carved out of granite. As a lecturer was explaining the history of Bekje culture in Korean, all I could do was to do a little people watching. I was thinking to myself, if the audience was a bunch of expats half the group would have been missing, sitting in the bus, looking for a coffee shop, taking a smoke break or scrambling up the rocks in search of more sculptures, but the Koreans were all taking notes as the lecturer was speaking, lol. The statues are famous for the subtle smile of the Buddha which is unique to Bekje culture. I loved the scenery in the mountains. Still winter, but you could see the blossoms are coming out and spring time is only about 3 days away. This is when the country side will be transformed into beautiful color. The next stop was the ruins of an old temple, destroyed by the Joseon dynasty, the empire that tried to stamp out Buddhism from Korea in favor of Confucianism. We then went for a really great lunch near the temple of the open heart, Gaesinsa, made from the freshest veggies. Then we took a tour of the Gaesinsa temple, a temple dating from about the 9th century AD. The tour was running late, probably part to me talking so many photos and arriving last on the bus to go to the next stop, and so we had a very short time at the fortress of Haemieupseong, a huge structure build in defense of Japanese invasion probably round about the 15th century. I scrambled up and down the ramparts and expected the grounds as if I was commanding my own army of humans and elves against an army of orcs outside the walls. My imagination was interrupted by a journalist and a cameraman asking me if they could have a quick interview. Before I could say yes and swallow my bubble gum they were asking me what I thought of the fortress to which I replied "Its amazing" duh. How about giving me a heads up next time! Next stop, another temple with stone carvings of Buddha. I met another foreigner from the UK there, he had hiked up the mountain. Anyway, it was a long but interesting day and I arrived back exhausted from all the scrambling up mountains and fortress walls. Good day!