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Greenhead Moss Community Nature Park |
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Greenhead Moss Earthship - a visitor, volunteer and community centre for our park
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What is an earthship? Earthships were invented by architect Michael Reynolds in New Mexico, USA. (See links page
for his website with lots of inspiring earthship designs and opportunities around the world). Our earthship is based on Michael's
original earthship concept. Earthships are built using recylced and re-used materials, mainly used car tyres, cans and bottles. The construction utilises the tyres, walls and a large earth mound or berm to act as a 'heat store' . They have large glass fronts and are always south facing to catch the maximum energy from the sun to provide light, heat as well as solar energy for the building. Power: They are powered by
renewable energy - wind and solar in our case. They are completely 'off grid' generating it's own power,
collecting it's own water and dealing with it's own waste. The power generated from solar and wind is stored in large
battery banks and used when needed. Water
and waste: Water is collected from the large sloping roof, filtered
and stored in tanks and used to flush the toilet, wash dishes and once, filtered several times, for drinking. Waste water
from the sinks are used to water plant beds within the earthship. The plants then prodvide oxygen inside the building.
Waste water from this area then goes towards the toilets and is used for flushing the toilets. Waste from the toilets goes
into another bed outside the earthship and is 'processed' by plants there. Earthships are therefore 'zero carbon' buildings, no public services are
utilised on the site. (For financial reasons, we are having mains water into our earthship but will be monitoring and using
a minimal amount of this). Working
or living in an earthship is not very different from other buildings but it does make you more aware of your energy consumption
and the great power of the sun and earth to provide a comfortable home or workplace. Find out for yourself by visiting the completed earthship in Kinghorn,
Fife or volunteering to help us build ours! You're also welcome to drop in and watch us work. Ours will be completed by
autumn 2009.
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How are they built? Earthships
are simple designs and the skills required to build them can be learnt very quickly. Some specialist contractors will be used
for the installation of electrical, power and plumbing but earthships can largely be built with volunteer labour. The build process in 10 easy steps!...
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Earthbuilds Europe Consultancy
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