TOO LEGIT TO QUIT- Earthship Building Permit (Check!)
April 14, 2015: This day will forever be etched in my mind as one year and two days ago we began building our earthship home and today, we were finally granted our BUILDING PERMIT!!! We've been waiting on this "okay" for longer than we've waited on our second son to get here... which, by the way is also taking longer than expected as we are a week overdue with laid-back Eivin Nikolai.
Anyhow, as I've mentioned in past posts, we jumped on board with building an earthship home after only just hearing about what was entailed in June 2013 and had purchased land for our future home by September that same year. We pushed forward despite not having all the kinks worked out with hope that with enough determination and vigor, we'd get it all worked out. Driven by a happy-go-lucky, naive haze, we vastly underestimated the amount of time it would take to obtain a building permit. So a word to others out there hoping to build an earthship home: If you choose to design your own home as we did, be sure to turn everything over to an architect to fine-tune and adjust as necessary and then have sealed as your county will likely require this... preferably before you begin building the home.
All of this may seem like a no-brainer but we were so dead-set on making a lifestyle change ASAP for our collective sanity that waiting on this vital "okay" was just not an option. We were lucky that our county still allowed us to begin the tire foundation portion of our home with periodic checks so that we could get going while we ironed out the details of our future home. In moving forward, we will need to have further density testing performed on several tires of each of the remaining layers of the tire foundation but that's a small price to pay for being granted formal permission to build our dream home! For more information on density testing, check out our past blog post here.
Obtaining a permit is such a HUGE relief to both of us and was something we had high hopes to have granted before our second guy arrived so that we could spend some time nesting together as a family before diving headfirst into building for the year. Now we can do so with peace of mind knowing that we are finally LEGIT!
We couldn't have gotten to this point without the help of our friend and architect, Matthew Stanfield, owner of FiELD9 Archtecture based out of Mansfield, OH. He was so easy to work with and specializes in creating sustainable, modern structures. We couldn't be happier with his services and it doesn't hurt that he's just a really genuinely good person to boot! Be sure to get in touch with him if you desire to build a similar style home as sustainable architecture is his passion!
Now, our energy will be directed toward welcoming our second son into the family and after the "babymoon", building will be in full swing! We still have open slots for our first Earthship Build Workshop of 2015 and would love to have you out to build skills, a sense of community and help kick off the 2015 building of our earthship home! Here are all the details:
We will be hosting the first of several more "formal" workshop weekends on Saturday, May 2, 2015 and Sunday, May 3, 2015 from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM each day. The cost will be $25 per person for the WHOLE weekend and mainly covers the cost of food and making copies of any material handed out. We will provide breakfast and lunch both days (meat and veggie friendly) and camping is available upon request. While we will host more informal, FREE work and skill building weekends every other weekend throughout the building season (April 2015- October 2015), the workshop weekends will be more informative, will include much more time for question asking and answering and we will be providing some handouts outlining the information we plan on covering.
The first workshop weekend (May 2-3, 2015) will cover the "Tire Foundation" portion of building an earthship. We've refined our process throughout the past year and would like to pass on our tips and tricks of making progress swifter and less physically taxing. Thus, this first workshop will cover the following topics:
- Site preparation
- Obtaining building materials and obtaining special permits through the EPA
- Overall costs of building an earthship
- "Pounding" a tire by hand
- "Pounding" a tire with a pneumatic tamper
- Installing drainage
- Building the berm
- Compaction tests via geotechnical engineers
- Constructing a half-tire, etc.
While there will be portions that will be discussion and Q&A, a great deal of the weekend will be physical in nature as we've learned best by doing and feel this is the best way to obtain a realistic view of what it is like to build an earthship home.
We ask that all participants are over the age of 16 and that those between 16 and 18 years of age attend with a parent or guardian. Be dressed to get dirty and if you have any of the following items, please bring them with you (marked with your name):
- Gloves
- Protective eyewear
- Boots
- Shovels
- Sledgehammers
- Hand-tampers
- Buckets
- Wheelbarrows
- Water Bottle- We will have drinking water available on-site but please bring a water bottle with you if you have one handy to save on having to use plastic cups.
You can secure your spot for the workshop via PayPal (see below) or you can send a $25 check to: Lauren & Zachary Craig, 2687 S. River Rd., Cedarville, OH 45314. Once we receive payment, we will send you a confirmation email with any updated information. PLEASE NOTE: If the weather doesn't cooperate (i.e. too much rain), we will plan on holding the workshop the next weekend (May 9-10, 2015). We will contact you via email and/or telephone to confirm date change should inclement weather arise.
| Do you plan on camping on-site? |
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