Earthship Hidden Costs
Vložit
- čas přidán 13. 04. 2021
- In this video Matt and Pete talk about some of the hidden cost associated with building an Earthship style home as an owner builder. We talk about a few things that might help you before you start your build and things to consider. Let us know if you have any questions!
Can you guys do a "Smarter not Harder" series on making it easier to get started with loads of encouragement?? I need that for sure. Tips, tricks, cost saving measures, neighborly build parties etc/etc
We certainly can! We will put that on the list of videos to do. Thanks!
yes yes yes !
@@OwnerBuildersUnite have y’all posted the video?
@@fendifacts6496 Sorry! Thanks for the reminder... we will see about covering that ASAP
An easier way to do physical labour? It’s called ‘hiring people.’
I really appreciate this video. Often with a lot of this owner builders whether it be tiny homes or skoolies, people never take into account the smaller costs. ive been slowly building a toolkit and just the cost of nails and screws like you said has been a huge hassle. Its really great to hear about people who didn't have previous know how or some family member land to borrow off of to do this, because as someone who is working towards even trying to be ready to build this kind of life i currently have no resources myself. its very misleading when a lot of people paint it as "yeah i bought this land and just went at it with no knowledge and miraculously built a 100,000 tiny home in a year with no loans"
i would definitely love to hear your guys stories on how you financed your builds, or interviews with other people on their "build-ups" to building their home.
Thanks for the comment! Glad the video resonated with you... yeah the little things add up! A lot of videos online certainly glamorize certain life styles of off-grid/alternative life styles. Will try and do a video breaking down our certain paths that got us to where we are at now. Thanks again for the feedback!
New Sub. Jumping in next week building off grid. Just grabbed 12k in windows off craigers for 1800 bucks.
Thanks guys!
Hell Yeah! That's a good deal!
You give me such inspiration I want my earthship in the blue ridge mountains
Do it! Earthship mountain life!
Thank you for putting out this information so people will know how to count the cost before the build.
We would love to partner with you to get the Earthship as an alternative building solution to be more widely accepted.
You're welcome! Yeah that'd be cool! Excited to see your guys build unfold. If you're ever in Colorado hit us up!
@@OwnerBuildersUnite We will definitely do that!
Thanks for the cool honesty. Love it guys. Good luck with your builds.
Thanks for this. It's good to have your eyes open when going into any build.
Thanks for sharing. I am considering building an earth ship and have done traditional renovations over the years. i will share that the hidden costs you are describing are similar to any build or even home ownership. If you do the work you end up needing all the tools the plumbers and electricians and carpenters need and it’s a lot. It’s also a worthy cause because you save so much over a lifetime when you can fix and alter your own home when you need to. It will be nice when this goes more mainstream and there are businesses invested in building and driving down costs through economies of scale.
Thank you for sharing
This was/is very useful. I am very early on in my planning and accumulation phase of things so hearing this now rather than later is awesome. Thank you.
You're welcome and glad it helps! Good luck on your future build and we will have more videos coming so stay posted for more!
Thank you for the information
You're welcome!
This is all really great information
Thank you for this. Very helpful.
You're welcome! Glad it helped!
Great point about the roof.
Hey Guys, been watching a couple of videos and love the videos. I want to build a Earthship here where I live near Mexico City, cant wait for more videos!
Thanks! We will keep them coming!
I think this video is awesome a lot of this information is brushed over by people in the community. The cost of time is rarely ever considered with many different alternative building practices.
Thanks! Glad you liked it! Your time is worth a lot
Lots to think about! I think I would do a small studio sized ship first that would be more affordable and to practice on then make a larger ship down the road 😊
Yes, your time is worth a lot too. We built our 1200 square foot house in 1.5 years for around $60,000. It's a somewhat traditional build, but we tried to reuse and repurpose materials whenever we could. It is a south facing, passive design home. We hand poured our own concrete pad and earthen floors, used metal beams for the rafters and metal siding, and added some thermal mass walls. We considered rammed earth or aircrete, but this turned out so much better. Best wishes!
Checked out and subscribed to your guys channel! Good looking house! Thanks for the comment.
Nice, good looks boys.
Thanks!
Cool info. I love earthships.
Thanks Pam!
A lot of the challenge with making Earthships scaleable is that it’s really labor intensive.
It’s like could you actual spend more on materials and have materials that go up faster with less labor?
Very true... Earthships are very labor intensive with pounding tires especially as they get bigger. It's certainly not the fastest way to build but performs pretty awesome and if you're into reuse/repurposing materials it's great!
What a great video, thank you for taking the time to give your perspective. We're currently volunteering on a build so we get to see a lot of what happens behind the scenes and it has really raised so many questions about what it actually entails. I know now that there are a lot of hidden costs you need to be aware of. One of my main concerns was not being able to use some recycled materials and only earthship specified ones. Did you also come across this?
i've seen alot of these built and i can see a pretty easy way to electrify the tire pounding process and you could use solar panels and batteries to power the tools so its still green
Thanks guys! I love your channel and it motivates me to build my E.S. What about the "woofers" for labor?
Glad you like it! And yeah WOOFERS are a great idea for pounding tires! We've had some here and there before... not a bad work trade!
nice save with the caulk at 6:35 lol
I think most problems amount to false expectations. You have to go into it knowing exactly what you are doing. IF you do that, its a great project, and is actually quite cost effective.
Very true... a lot of details and things to think about
Great video! Thanks for the information. You answered a question I had about real world labor costs versus labor that pays to be there. Thanks. That said what would estimate the total labor hours were for your builds and what would say are the biggest cost drivers in building an earthship?
Man great question Eric... Not sure how many total hours invested... that would've been good to track. Things like cement and metal are for sure some of the bigger cost.
Thank u nobody would even touch thus topic when it comes to earth homes ughhh...their plans are ridiculously high ughh i wish i could get help with this
You're welcome! Sometimes they can get expensive if you aren't watching your cost for sure!
I think it would be cool to do a video that goes through a pros and cons of things you've done on your builds, what you did wrong and what would be better to do! Just a though. I'm thinking about getting some property and building my own Earthship. Really want to do a CZcams build of it.
Good idea... we will put that on the list of requested videos/topics. If you do buy land look for a county with no building codes! That really helps when building an Earthship. Thanks for watching and the comment.
Thanks guys
You're very welcome!
@@OwnerBuildersUnite Been scavenging more to help lower costs since watching this video. Today I got a bunch of tiles super cheap.
@@T0MME0 Hell yeah! Doing some tile myself this weekend! Gotta love good finds!
@@OwnerBuildersUnite Cool! would love to see a video on it if you guys ever get around to it. I did some tiling too in the ES Academy. So great to see what you all are up to.
@@T0MME0 Thanks and will do!
I could set, fill, and compact 17 tires in one day. I used the course pour method I developed, back in 1998, and slip forming for garden walls and floor. You need a lot of tools and a place to live on site. Now Colorado wants you to pay for tires instead of being able to get them free and save the tire dealers $1.75 per tire (1998). I did it while working full time, so you need gumption and good credit. I gathered materials and knowledge over a period of two years. Other intelligence and knowledge I already had. I did it in pain from a busted back getting shot down flying Dustoff in Vietnam.
I’m gonna be building one in Colorado myself
Great video. I have a question about the tires. Did you do any research about the effects of off gasing from the tires? Did you do any measurements? Thanks.
Thanks! We did! According to Michael Reynolds from Earthship Biotecture there is virtually no off gassing when the tires are covered/burred in your finish plaster. If there exposed and uncovered is when I'd be concerned... great question!
Theres probably alternatives to tire walls which could be done in days although they wont be so eco friendly. I feel that step could totally be skipped to save a ton of labour and time.
Actually there is an alternative to tire walls and it's earthbags. So many earthship enthusiasts consider this to be a better alternative than tire walls for quite a few reasons.
You can use earth to insulate many already existing building designs, if you are not limited to some one else's design techniques.For instance passive solar ,water collection and greenhouse tech exist in many forms
Google cob houses too
Whats the mininum verses max ?? thanks for heads up!
I'd love to see a table of your expenses to make the build. Especially showing projected cost versus actual cost.
As a solo female who is looking to move out of the U.S. and find a piece of land that i can afford to call home and build, any insights into time and financial commitment would be greatly appreciated :)
A table of expenses would be hard for me to figure out, I more or less have a rough number of what it cost for my personal build (Matt & Goldie).
As for insight on time and financial commitment: I personally don’t know how much money you have but if you expect your build to cost 100,000 expect to spend almost double. As for time, I hope you have help from other people and I mean a lot of other people if you’re pounding tires, I thought we’d build our house in 2 years and it took us 5 and had soooo much help from our friends, im talking work party’s for 3 days with 30 people at a time, we did that multiple times, a lot of food (way worth it)
And with all that being said, that’s just my case. I dont want to sway you away from your build I want you to be prepared.
In other circumstances, people build them with a lot less help and a lot less money.
My last piece of advice is to build small and finish, then do an addition.
I’m technically still not “finished” with my house and it’s been almost 7 years. We just call it finished because we are finally living in it full time.
great video and im very curious about blueprints…did you buy your blueprints? they seem really expensive
We did not buy blueprints
How much is the cost for the labor of earthship. And is there a way you could show the price layout sheet for stuff like solar power and plumbing etc
Thanks Emma! I guess the labor kinda depends on where you are... Earthships are extremely labor intensive so having friends help or neighborhood work parties for sure drives the cost down. Also alternatives like using WOOFers or work-trade situations make alot of sense for building. We will try and do a more specific break down on costs of getting started. Appreciate the comment!
Where are you guys located in crestone.im looking for land and like minded friends such as yourselves.im coming from Dallas tx and I'm finally to the point where I'm looking for land. It's either Colorado or taos NM.
Where did you live while you were building? What’s a good first structure that just gets the ball rolling but saves money for the main project?
My partner Goldie and I lived in the back of a pickup truck with a camper shell. Then we upgraded to a van then upgraded to a trailer and then it became hard and we got a super sweet deal on renting a yert. Now we live in the house while we are doing construction (not recommended due to the dust)
how have you saved enough to be able to do these things? what do you guys do for a living?
Been watching for awhile now and keep up the good stuff. Located in Toronto, Canada. My question is would you recommend to buy the plans off the earthship website or get plans drawn up from a local engineer? Trying to save a few bucks as this will be an international project with potentially multiple houses.
Hey Aaron, there are a lot of us in Ontario building this year.
@@T0MME0 Really wow! is there a way to get in contact with them?
@@BibleBeliever-hv8du Ya I am one of them lol
@@T0MME0 Are you on facebook?
Very cool! You could... we both didn't since our county has no building codes... we did have to draw up our own plans though to submit to the POA that we live in. I guess if you're doing a standard Earthship they would certainly be helpful but if you're doing something more custom perhaps not...
Planning on building one in Colorado and would like to speak with you guys if possible.
Sure thing, in contact with me.on Instagram @redwizardism
u saved my lifes
Is it necessary to use can walls? I'd prefer to use wattle and daub instead.
Can walls are 100 percent not necessary, we didn't build a single can wall in our house (Matt & goldie's Earthship)
What if I gathered the materials needed for my build, and then hired the actual crew to come build it? That would help a lot with costs right? That and my papa does concrete work for a living, he would be super involved with the build in that such could also help drive down costs?
Also, could they do a design where the water was to run under the floors as it flows as another thermo heat source? While it's doing the filteration system part? Like how it is used so many times, that is another way it could be used as well, run under the floors to help heat, or cool? Am I wrong? Just be more expensive for the tubing system under the floor correct?
Yes I'm sure that would drive down costs
As far as the radiant floor tied into your grey water system, I think it's possible, but it's a whole can of worms of a conversation
There’s hidden cost in building a Strawbale also.
How much did the whole project cost you, and how many sq feet did you build?
Mine was probably about 70k+ for around 100sqft and I have 3.25 acres
You guys should give a total price of your project.
I (Pete) am probably in around 70k+ for everything with my build including the land. It's about 1000sqft of space and I have 3.25 acres
Where can you find people to build this?
Lot's of times people use work trade to get volunteers to help them pound the tires since it's so labor intensive. Networks like WWOOF or Work Away can be good ways of organizing that. Also the official Earthship Biotecture may be a resource. They always have interns and academy students that might want more hands on experience after their program. Hope that helps and sorry for the late response!
So just rent a uhaul and stack the tires and use wear and tear on their equipment
Good idea. We did that a little here and there. The closest U-Haul is an hour away, materials don't always come at once. The cost of renting and the time it takes to pick one up and drop one off at the U-Haul store location adds up in gas money and time. Especially when building in a remote location. I've saved a lot of time and money owning my own truck and trailer. Also scored big time on craigslist free section being able to pick things up at my own convenience and being the first person there.
What materials would you scavenge for a roof?
The roof is arguably the most important part of the structure, maybe the most expensive too. If you can find some trusses that are discounted or something or some TJIs' on craigslist or some roofing metal and then build your structure to fit your roof would be a way to save costs
How do you get your permits? Permits Costs?
We have a video on that. Check our Owner Builders Unite channel
You can rent a uhaul and save wear and tear on your vehicle. And in va we can grow weed. I’d just offer some beer and bud and cookin at the site. My husband does build homes but we haven’t built an earthship before and it’s my dream home.
Renting a U-Haul everytime you need to haul something doesn't really work out financially or practically, especially here in crestone where the nearest rental is 1 hour away, that's driving your car 1 hour, picking up the U-Haul and going where ever it is you need to go to pick up materials and then to your build site and then driving the U-Haul an hour back to return.
Where'd you all go?
Sorry! Been a busy summer... more videos coming soon! Stay posted and thanks again for checking in.
Im volunteering to relocate and caretake someone elses earthship....just to gain experience.... im 62, single.... and intelligent serious!!!!
60K is good!
Thanks! Not bad... awesome not to have a mortgage!
Freaking amazing
*SEE: HomeMade PostKnocker @ 19minutes on 'Kris Harbour Natural Build' Channel Sept. 3, 2021 for tire packing.* 23min vid reviews his 5yr Rural OffGrid Build. Many HomeMade tools in his Playlists section.
Creststone? You guys in that Cult there?
haha nope! Just the tire cult
Instead of pounding tires with dirt why not pre-pack them with mud?
Well mud is just wet dirt so pretty much your just looking for a super high density for thermal mass and heavy "tire brick". You don't want to trap moisture inside the tires just like you wouldn't want to have a traditional wall get wet. Hope that makes sense. Thanks for your question!
I am gonna build an earthship. Concrete block instead of tires. The labor to pound tires I am better off with concrete block. 1.25 per block. Me and another mason can pour foundation and build 8'x160' feet of wall in a month. Gonna insulate with rockwool and vapor barrier before I add stone veneer. Thinking 32x72. The mono trusses are too expensive. I will be building rafters out of 2x12's. Windows seem to be huge cost. I have spring on gtfo property so water comes first than out house. Super capacitors work wonders for solar. They charge fully in under 10 minutes compared to hours with batteries. I have one panel, charge controller, 1800w inverter and super capacitor. I can now run circular saw all day while sun shining compared to only 15 minutes using lead acid or lithium ion. Super capacitors charge up that fast in minutes. My windows will be set plum so will need big summer overhang. My biggest questions are about the septic.
Very cool! And yeah adapting your build to what works for you is always a good move... I know with us the Septic permit and inspection is through our county.
Inflation
Yep!
@@OwnerBuildersUnite hyperinflation?
@@nirpy supersonic inflation
Great, I'm doomed.
You're not doomed! It's doable! Just a lot of things to look out for.