5 Things We'd Do Differently Thus Far in Our Earthship Build

For the past month or so, Zac and I have been talking about creating a blog post reviewing what we've learned thus far in our journey and what we would change if a time machine was at our disposal.  However, we firmly believe that every part of our process will have its place in our lives somehow in the future and will be pertinent as this has been our experience in the past.  The things that seem arduous now always seem to come into play in a useful way later on down the road.

We hope this post will be helpful to anyone else looking to build an earthship home in the future so without further ado, here are some of the things we'd change if we could go back in time.

• We would have secured an architect familiar with earth-rammed tire homes first and then...
• Purchased plans from an experienced earthship designer who could act as a consultant throughout our build as well as an advocate familiar with the building world's jargon which would prove helpful in working with the county building department and sharing our vision with our chosen architect.
• Note: Recently, we began consulting with Michael Shealy from Touch the Earth Ranch in Colorado.  He has had extensive experience in building, designing and consulting for earth-rammed tire home builds and is affordable, honest, incredibly knowledgeable and very straightforward.  Michael is easy to get a hold of and has provided concise answers to pressing questions we've had.  We wish we would have just purchased plans from him instead of trying to do them ourselves as this would have made our lives SO much easier!
• Ideally, we would have had a less aggressive timeline and been less pressed to begin our build; thus, being able to work through the kinks of our house plans before beginning the build and have building permits before breaking ground.
• Instead of renting a Bobcat to move dirt for the build, we would have purchased a newer tractor with a large bucket; capable of moving the amount of dirt we needed throughout our build.  We ended up shelling out nearly $3000 on renting a Bobcat (with tracks because our land is prone to being muddy) for 4 weeks; thinking this would be enough time to get us done with building the berm and building the tire walls... HA!  Just this past week, we bit the bullet and decided we needed to invest in a piece of equipment capable of moving dirt for us and ended up purchasing a more powerful, newer tractor.  Sadly, we will be selling the 1941 Farmall H as it isn't able to fulfill our needs at this time.  Our plan is to possibly sell this newer tractor as well when we're done with the build though it came with lots of useful attachments (brush hog, single plow, post hole digger and a round bale spear) that would likely come in handy in the future.
  
• Possibly purchase an Ergo-Tamp to use throughout the entirety of the build.  An Ergo-Tamp is a pneumatic tamping tool that can reduce tire pounding time to about 5 minutes/ tire once you've gotten into a groove.  We demoed one this past weekend (see video below) and it was incredibly helpful.  We're going back and forth though on whether we will end up purchasing it.  Here is our thought process... 

• PROS
• Allows us to expend less energy overall and is easier on the body (as it would be less time ramming earth with a sledge)
• Provide us with a greater amount of control over how quickly we are able to build the tire walls of the home
• In an average weekend skill building day (depending on the size of the group that day), we could feasibly ram at minimum 40-60 tires with earth
• It would be a piece of equipment that we could sell after the build to re-coop some of our investment or we could rent it out to others looking to build an earthship

• CONS
• We would be paying for a piece of equipment instead of using the traditional method of packing tires and/or paying actual people to perform the work and build sustainable building skills... paying individual people as opposed to utilizing equipment is always nice!
• It is $2000 and we also have to rent a large pull-behind, diesel air compressor with necessary attachments ($100/day) each time we use it
• If we were able to organize a large enough group of people and get into a nice rhythm, we could spend an entire week finishing out the tire walls of our home 
• Though, getting this all together, taking off of work, providing enough food, etc. would prove to be costly (in time and money) in and of itself...

Despite the things we would have done differently, we feel as though building an earthship home is a lot like choosing to have children... you can never have enough money or have prepared yourself enough for what's to come.  At some point, you just have to jump and do it!  We hope this post is helpful to anyone out there looking to build an earthship home in the future.  Our best advice: If this is your dream, do something measurable today to make it a reality!