Quote:
Originally Posted by redyaris
jtbo
You need to do more research before coming to the conclusion that they would not work in your location.
The underlying philosophy of earth ships is that they be adapted to the location that they are built on. When the build site has colder temps with less sun then the building has to have more insulation and a very small backup heating system for the times without solar heating...
If you go to earthships web site you can learn more, you may be able to get some books or the dvd from a local library.
There are some earth ships being built in England and other places in Europe... as well as other places on planet earth.
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England is warm, very warm, sure there can bit bit of cold, but Alaska level of cold is something such should be prepared for and thing is that sun is rather useless for 9 months, it is sure shining in the summer, but then heating is not needed, only for hot water such is needed.
Our building regulations already are demanding a lot of insulation, I think it was more than 200mm of rock wool at walls, over 400mm at ceiling and floor, that is minimum from my memory, around double and you get passive heated house, which is not requiring active heating most of the time.
Windows are here very small and contain 2 glasses with argon gas between them + 1 glass outside, also we use two doors to outside, outer one has 3 sealing surface, inner has 1 or 2, varies a bit.
Some are using already solar water heaters with vacuum pipes, which help to get hot water, but still useless at heating, that is our problem here, we get lot of sun hours at summer, 23 hours sunshine if not cloudy, but as then heating is not needed and hardly any electricity, it becomes bit much at totally wrong time and in practice is pretty much useless.
AC is not really needed here, this month here has been 3 days with temp over +20C.
It would require big modifications to design to it to work here and I don't think it would be earth ship any longer. It is not earth-ship's fault that it will not be good design here, it is this stupid climate and latitude that really require one to burn something to heat house. 5 square meters of wood and 4400kWh electricity was last years numbers, where in similar type of house typical number is well over 20 000kWh, nearly 30 000kWh and over 2000 litres of oil as many have oil heating.
I really wish that I would live near equator, living costs would be a fraction from what they are here, no snow to plow either, no need to buy electricity either.
Oh great, it is again below +5C at this early in the morning, there is usually one month in a year when temperature stays above freezing whole time and it is next month, but currently it might be that there is chance of get below freezing temps next month too, this place is just too cold for human beings, 35M years ago all oceans were nearly +20C and even here was warm around the year, now that would be nice to have back.