As we are learning through various channels.., you can’t keep a good idea down.

So, before I explain let me get this out of the way.

Spend only  ONLY £49 and own a piece of history and share in the glory of a yet to create piece of history.

So, in the spirit of good ideas Michael Thompson made a bet with James Tully and it has gotten out of hand.
The bet was that he (Michael) could build a 100% wooden bike and that James could then ride it.., and consequently set a World Speed Record for a 100% Wooden Bike.

Now, I’m not sure who won the bet, because Michael did build the bike and James did ride it, but I guess that no longer matters now that we move on to SplinterBike 3 (although I’m sure here too is a one pound bet somewhere).

The point here is that Michael is planning a new and improved SplinterBike.., and James has a new challenge.

A World Hour Record

This means 2 things.., James has to ride a 100% wooden bike for one hour and set a new record, and Michael has to build a 100% wooden bike which can be driven for a whole hour while supporting a 200 pound “athlete”.
Well.., I don’t know about you.., but I would love to see that happen. Hence the SplinterBike Club.

So.., now for the hard part. Of course it takes time (mostly time) to build a 100% wooden bike. The actual cost of the bike (wood and glue) are not astronomical. What is expensive is setting a world record. You have to buy the officials.., oh wait.., no.., rent the officials.., rent a venue and the world record setup.

All in all.., it takes money.., like everything else.

BUT.., YOU CAN HELP and be a part of this adventure.., that is simple.., become part of The SplinterBike Club and receive the keyring.., no.., not just a keyring but one that “has been made from the same wood stock from which the original SplinterBike was created”.

Wow.., for only  ONLY £49 including shipping. (shed key not included), you can own a piece of history and share in the glory of a yet to create piece of history.

So.., what are you waiting for.., I have such a keyring and I can say.., if ever there was a perfect keyring (especially for a shed), this would be it.

Good luck Michael and James.., I hope you’ll get to set another World Record!

The Four Elements House Team has been on a mission to Norfolk.
The mission was to find out if and how rammed earth can be applied to the house. We (as a collective) already new quite a bit about rammed earth and it was to be an interesting weekend, because although we had theoretical knowledge, none of us ever did anything practical with rammed earth.., now we have.

Michael Thompson and his girlfriend Bridget created a great course. Very well organized with delicious vegetarian lunches (the best food we had in England actually).
Michael barely finished the build on the shed while starting with the course. He can talk passionate about his shed and all the labour that went into it. The course is mainly focused around his experiences during the build, the research he did for the build and the lessons learned.

Sid

So, what did we learn, well, we have to get our own Sid.
Sid is an invention of Michael. Sid is the Great Sifter, I’m sure other (in the history of the world) have crafted similar devices, but Michael did build this one and it works beautifully. Our student friends are already thinking up ways to improve it, if possible.  
Michael’s design sifts the soil in three parts. Rough stuff (+25 mm), medium stuff (+12 mm) and the rest, which is to be used for the mix. Good show, saves a tremendous amount of time.

Soil

We also have a challenge with our soil (in Chenogne). We believe it to be rich in clay. We’ll have to bring in quite a lot of sand in order to get a good mixture, and a good mixture is the basis for everything. And although Michael uses cement (only 5-8%) in the mixture, we’ll try and not use that. The cement is used for that extra bit of strength in the walls, we hope to come up with an alternative.

Shuttering

Michael uses “regular” formers, create a segment and move the former. He also created a much lighter version than the ones he found on the internet. Made out of plywood, so it can be handled by one person.
We might use a shuttering system, where one builds up a wall to full hight in one “former”. This is used quite often by larger projects, the Australians favor this method. 

Ramming

During the build of the shed Michael went manual for the ramming, he did pretty much all the ramming, about 60m2 of walls, which took him about 180 hours (double that time for mixing soil and handling the formers).
My student friends, who are always thinking, are considering mechanical ramming. Although we might have the help of volunteers, more hands is less work, then again, we’ll have more wall to build, and thicker.

Conclusion

Rammed Earth is a very viable method of building, and you can build, well, nearly anything. History shows it’s not only (relatively) easy to work with, but when properly build, it will last a lot longer than the occupants of the dwelling. And it is “green”.

For us, as a team, it was also a good investment as we got to know each other even better and we all got a sense of what it was that we are planning. Plans are already set in motion by our TU Delft friends to build a showcase shed near the university. We are very interested in that project, it will give our friends even more experience which can be utilized while building the Four Elements Shed in August.

So, thanks Michael and Bridget for a great weekend.

For more information on the Rammed Earth Course, please visit Michael’s website. Or contact us. You might also want to read a small interview with Michael on the “Rammed Earth is for Everyone” blog.

So, you want to know why we chose not to build an Earthship, huh?

Well, there are a couple of reasons.
The first and foremost reason is Lotte.

Lotte Middelkoop

Last year, in February, when I (Rogier) went on a volunteer week in Normandy to work on the Trotts Earthship we had every intention on building an Earthship. Little did we know.
Early the first morning a small car with two huge guys and a not so huge girl came driving up to the site. They had been driving all night from Holland. My first thought was that these had to be students and were completely mad. Turned out I was right, partly.

I got to know Lotte a little and since we lived not far apart she suggested to meet up back in Holland. We (Laila, Lotte and I) did, it clicked and the idea to have our house designed by her became solid, fast. Second time we went to Normandy together, Laila, Lotte and I. Everything we came up with was confirmed that week and plans were set in motion.

This summer Lotte is earning her degree as an architect, specialised in sustainability at the TU Delft. The design of our future home is her thesis.

Second reason.

Building Permits

The story goes that some lady opted for a building permit for an Earthship in Belgium. She though she got it and hired Mike Reynolds’ team to build the thing. But, at the last minute the permit was pulled and the Earthship could not be build. Instead they build a hut, a consolation.

Other stories of having troubles getting a permit circulate as well.
In order to get a building permit one has to write to every county or district they can (and we have a language challenge with that option), then hoping one agrees and then hoping they have a suitable site, and ultimately a site where you want to build a somewhat expensive house and want to live for a long time to come. That is a lot hopes and ifs.

We decided that location, location, location was to be the most important thing, especially if you want to live there for 20 or 30 years. So the above process was eliminated. And after seeing the conditions with which a building had to comply in Chenogne, our choice was confirmed.
So, now we’re designing a reasonably normal looking house, but build in a sustainable manner, and autonomous.

I also believe that at least 99.9% of everything that is being build in Holland (’cause that’s where we’re from) will never be an Earthship. Because of the building materials and, simply,  the way it looks. We are to conservative.
The fact that we have an Earthship teahouseis a very rare exception and I believe individuals will never get a permit for an Earthship in a residential area, in Holland.
The upper half of Belgium is quite similair, but the chances get better the farther down you get in Europe.

Third reason.

Recycling

One of the corner stones of the Earthship concept is reusing discarded materials. I don’t think one can call it recycling, because once it’s used in the building it cannot be used again (the bottles and cans are laid in concrete, so you can’t reuse them, and concrete is not particularly sustainable either). This as opposed to a closed recycle system where, for instance, bottles are bought, used, brought back, recycled, filled, bought et cetera.
In Western Europe, and especially in Holland, the recycling is pretty advanced. And by using these recyclable materials in a building one takes them out of the whole recycle process, never to be (re)used again. This means that for every glass bottle or aluminium can used in a building, one has to be made a new to be used in the consumer process.

Now, the above reason is only valid in a country where the process of recycling is well implemented. My guess is that by far the bigger part of the world, including the US, is far from having a nice and tight closed loop. So building Earthships is still a good idea, maybe even a necessity. Better to build a house with garbage than to throw it in a landfill.

And the fourth reason.

Design

After visiting an Earthship, help build one and volunteering in one we decided that the design just didn’t cut it for us. This now is a mute reason, because of the above statements. But, like the land you buy, the house you intend to live in for a long, long time needs to be, and feel, just right.

The concept of an Earthship seemed right at the time, but life always has a trick up its sleeve and throws you off balance when ever it can. When that happens you take stock, adjust and move on.

For us it is clear that something needs to be done to sustain our way of living and one of the huge impacts on our environment is the way we put a roof over our heads.

In order to create a clean personal environment and to minimise our footprint we build “green”.

The goal of our adventure is to be as neutral to the environment as possible. We want this to reflect in everything we do. And our house is the largest and longest lasting part of the project. So it will get a lot of attention.

Earthships. A short personal history…

You may well be aware that for a long time we’ve had the intention to build an Earthship, hence the name of the blog. It completely fulfilled our needs the first time we laid eyes upon it.

And our needs at the time were getting off the grid. Earthships are capable of doing just that. Not all the systems they use and the way they’re integrated are completely original, but an Earthship is more than the sum of its parts and the combination works.., beautiful buildings can be made. I even made a floor plan based on the Trott’s Earthship.

But, as time progresses so do plans evolve. We meet people, read books and educate ourselves. Ironically, or maybe it’s just the way of the Universe, we met a young woman during a volunteering week working on an Earthship who studies to become an architect specialized in sustainable housing. Isn’t that brilliant? And isn’t that one hell of an opportunity, even our time-lines kinda match.

So, what are we going to build? Honestly.., no idea…, yet. The house still has to be designed.

But I can tell you some of the criteria, and obviously it has to be build as sustainable as possible:

Materials

The materials are, of course, very important, they define the building. As a consequences the choice of material is paramount to anything else, thus they have to be:

• locally purchased (getting it close saves on carbon)
• recyclable (for when the house is torn down, or rebuild)
• from a renewable source (minimizing our carbon and resource footprint)
• non toxic (we do not want to poison ourselves or the environment)
• recycled (mind you, a lot of stuff is already being recycled, disrupting existing recycle chains might do more harm than good)

They can’t, of course, comply to all of the above, but when all materials apply to at least one of the points we win something. When more can be applied even better. Getting our wood, for instance, at a local mill would tick of three of the criteria: locally purchased, renewable, recyclable and non toxic, ahh.., that’s four… not bad.

Not Expensive

Well, this is a cheeky one. Off course we don’t want to spend to much.., one of the reasons is, we don’t have that much to spend. Another reason is an exemplaryone. We’d like to show that people can build a self sufficient and sustainable home.

Off the Grid

As mentioned before, we’d like to be off the grid.
It is possible to buy “green” energy from the utility companies, but you’d still be depended on them. I would like to suggest that anybody who wants green power should choose that option, not everybody can go off the grid, or completly self suficient. I know we can’t in the house we live in at the moment.

So, in conclusion: We still have find a piece of land. After that we start designing the house. But, work is in progress, the architect is investigating possibilities and we are still searching.

Don’t forget to read the previous episodes: Process of Elimination and Off the Grid.

Comments and/or questions are welcome…

The second part of the “How are we going to do it” series covers the going-off-the-grid part.

As a people, our reliance on the utility companies for power, water and gas is complete.
If anything goes wrong in these vast networks you’re lights will not come on, the tab stays dry or your house stays cold. Any one of the above causes real problems for a lot of people. In the future the cost will go up while the reliability goes down…
We want to minimize our dependence on an overly expensive and unreliable system and use what can be free to everybody.

In short, there are two flavors of “the Grid”. One is the information grid, like the banks, insurances, health care, a car.., anything that requires you to register or enable somebody else to track you, for whatever reason. One lives like this if one wishes to stay under the radar, out of sight.., hidden. This is not the grid we intend to get of..

We’re talking about the Utility Grid. Power, gas, water…

In Holland we pay all sort of taxes to keep everything running, more than 50% of our utility bill are taxes, no kidding. Next to the fact that it can be cheaper, it can also be, a lot, cleaner. Additional bonus of prducing our own is that we minimize our dependence on others. So, how are we going to do it?

Water

Water falls from the sky, at least in the better part of the world, and where we’re going to live for sure. We collect it via the roof and it gets collected in tanks. These tanks will be large enough to sustain us through dry periods.
From the tanks it is pumped through filters and comes out of the tap. We can shower, drink, wash clothes, whatever…
The waste product of these activities is grey water.., it’s dirty but not unusable. The grey water is used to feed indoor planters. The Earthship systems also use the filtered grey water to fill the toilet, which in turn is a low-use flush toilet. The black water from the toilet is flushed outside into a leech field where it is filtered until eventually leaving clean water to enter the ground.

This is of course a simple description of a complicated proces. When we have the design of the house ready, we’ll have a much better understanding of the finished system.

Power

We have one of the greatest energy sources in the universe at our disposal. Our Sun.

Next to wind this an abundant source and we’ll be focusedon utilizing this as much as possible. Depending on where we end up wind energy is certainly a viable option, the wind turbine, however, is visually intrusive and we’ll try to avoid them.

Solar energy is relatively easy to implement. Put a couple (i.e. enough) photovoltaic panels on the roof, have them face south at a proper angle and hook them up to a couple of batteries. The power created is 24 volts on which you can run, at least, the lights in your home. A 24v fridge is also possible.
Systems which use 230v will get their power through an inverter. At the moment the initial costs are still pretty high, but prices are dropping all the time with the systems getting more efficient all the time.

A wind turbine can be hooked up to the same system.

Heat

The house will be solar heated through the windows. Any additional heating will be done by a wood stove.
Warm water will come from a solar water heater with assistance of a regular, but energy efficient, gas heater. The gas will also be used for cooking and will be derived from tanks. We won’t be producing that ourselves…

Simple

As mentioned, the above is of course a simple view of a complex system. As with Earthships the whole point of the building will be its systems. Without them, it will be just a (sustainably build and environment friendly) house.

Later on, when we have a design and are actually building, we’ll get back to these systems with more detail.

Any questions or comments, feel free… and, in case you missed it, don’t miss the first part: Process of Elimination.

For people out there who are thinking of tumbling down the same rabbit hole as we are at the moment, or for those who are just curious, we create a series of posts in an attempt to explain how we intend to live off the grid in a sustainable dwelling and produce (much of) our own food.

In the first episode I’ll explain our process of elimination for land, or rather the criteria we set and why. We have a few basic criteria to which any piece of land should, preferably, abide to. These are, in a slightly specific order:

• South Facing
• On a Slope
• No Utilities
• Quiet
• Not in Town
• No more than 3 hours away
• Big Enough/Affordable
• Pretty

Some are more important than others and we can put a value on them and then simply run the numbers.., or the process of elimination.

South Facing is imperative and belongs at the top of the list. If it the lot would lie on a north facing hill the sun would be behind the hill for the better part of the year, leaving us cold and powerless (except when you live on the southern hemisphere of course). On a flat piece of land a clear view to the south would be needed.

On a Slope is just really nice. Our architect absolutely likes that. One can use the earth as walls when digging in and a multi level house is easier to build. Also the rain (capture and irrigation) or sewage is easy to direct (downwards). Gravity assists and saves power needed for pumps.

No Utilities is pretty much a must. I wouldn’t mind having them, especially electricity, we could make the meter run backwards if we have plenty and maybe even earn a bit of cash. But the site is more expensive with utilities.., although a telephone line would be nice…

Quietness is something we yearn for. We now live in the city and it’s just never quiet, well maybe in the middle of night it is, we do live in a more quiet part of the city, but still.., the neighbors, the tram, the cars, you name it and it makes noise.

Not in Town, a bit related to all of the above, but this is about people in general. While building we don’t want to bother too many people, it might take a while. When we’re done it comes back to peace and quiet.., mind you, we don’t want to shunt all human contact. We just don’t want to draw curtains to have privacy.

Driving distance is just a personal favorite. Anybody can determine where they’d like to live and at what distance form where they are now. We just need to drive up to Holland regularly, so minimizing the distance saves on frustration.

Big Enough is more in the line of what we want to do, rather than just status, or keeping your neighbours at bay. There are a few things we want to achieve for which we need space. Our own vegetable garden, chickens, a bee hive and maybe a goat or two, for this one needs space.

1000m² is a very bare minimum. The bigger we can get the better. But, every square meter costs money, so there has to be balance. And for the region we’re looking at, 15€, or so, per square meter seems reasonable and 2000m² or more is preferable.

Pretty, well, quite obvious. We want a nice living environment and the surroundings are as important as the building we live in. So it has to feel right.

Mind you, living out in the country is also very beneficial for ones health. We live in Rotterdam and I can tell you, it’s not the healthiest city in the world. Add growing your own organic vegetables and you prolong you life.., at least we hope we will.

Any questions or comments, please let us now…