Attention dumpster divers – we ran out of cardboard again. We’ve drained the Harbor Freight dumpster three times now along with the VFW in Laporte. Anyway – this time we put the sawmill on sliver mode and got it done.
Adapt and Overcome
Aug 13
Adapt & Prevail
Aug 03
Free Lifetime A/C – $40
We’ve just they french-drain & vent/cooling tubes. These tubes bring geo-thermally cooled fresh air to the back of the house. Continue reading
Jul 30
Swingin’ in the Rain !
Tanner & the Sledge
Over the past couple of weeks – we’ve got awesome progress. This video segment shows extreme Technologies – Watch a 7 year old swing a sledge hammer while a 27 year old resorts to power tools.
Both are AWESOME !
Many thanks to the volunteers for helping us turn a pile of tires and dirt into our new home.
TirePounding-v1
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Jun 18
The 5 Minute Tire
Rob Berkman pounds a tire in about 5 min with a backfill tamper.
This video shows us packing out our very first tire in about 5 minutes with a pneumatic backfill tamper:
- It is fast as you can shovel dirt;
- Not as tiring as the sledge hammer method.
- Sides were a little softer than hand pounding. Two sledge laps pound the tire to totally firm – about 20 hits – under 2 minutes of hand pounding.
In the background there is a 9 hp air compressor. The compressor is big enough to drive about any air tool – concrete sprayer, jack hammer, insulation sprayer etc. It was $1K at Harbor Freight, the tamper was $250 on ebay.
If you’ve never pounded a tire with a sledge hammer. The sledges are about 8 lbs and it takes about 150-200 hits to properly firm a tire. For most humans this many hits take about 10-30 minutes – and each tire is quite tiring. Two strong people can pound 20-40 tires per day. Most Earthships use 800+ tires. This method brings that number to 150+ tires/day for a 2 person team.
May 20
Get organized or …
Lots going on!
It’s a simple choice – get project organization system or book a room at Happy Dale’s sanitarium.
It’s 4:00 a.m. – and after glancing briefly at the liquor cabinet – I thought – I’ve got way too much rambling around my head.
Yesterday ended with a review of facebook messages and wonderful volunteers – and experience made it VERY clear that there was just too much going on… Continue reading
May 19
Knocking $27K off my roof
Wanna see how I hope to knock $27K off my Earthship’s roof?
Can you glue straw to anything?
Regular Earthships use 2 layers of 4 inch Poly Iso Insulation, tongue and groove decking and metal roofing. This method costs well over $8 per square foot in materials.
If my experiment works – this straw bale roof will perform about as well and cost about $3.50. I built sample to evaluate if the model would sturdy enough to pass engineering muster, FYI – Crown Jade Engineering, really understands advanced building and my quest for economy.
This experiment started with a trip to Home Depot and the old feed store to see if I could bond planks to straw to metal roofing.
May 18
3D Model – Goes to work
Who would have thought a 3D model could save money?
I’ve noticed the model is helping me to:
- Catch mistakes
- Calculate Materials
- Communicate with the team about design issues.
I’m starting to think it may have been well worth the effort. This video illustraties how I think the evolving model will help to communicate the design and issues.
May 10
Rebuild Logic
Looking at the raw family budget started us on a road where we’re making a LOT of different kinds of decisions – even departing from the traditional way of thinking about Earthships.
Here’s the origin of the story of why our decisions & designs look may look strange…
Continue reading
May 10
Our Manatee Visitor
We’re in Key Largo FL – and we had a BIG manatee come to hang out with us. She hung around for about an hour and seemed to enjoy or dinky little boat – or perhaps our family energy. It was great!
Video not working?
The-KeyLargo-Manatee-v1
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