Sunday 21 June 2015

Tire Pounding

First row of tires along the back is done! The tarp and tires on top are just to keep the rain from getting in. Grass is already growing on our dirt pile. Nature's way of telling us we're going too slow...

This is our platform of compressed dirt the excavators made for the home to go on. It's just about a foot above the rest of the ground. Just an easy way to get things level. Some of our culverts arrived (you can see them poking out in the left of the photo). Still not quite ready to put them in yet. The rest should be arriving early next week (the company miscounted their stock).


Zilla surveying his kingdom.

Go Fund Me

Tom started a Go Fund Me campaign where anyone can donate to help out with the costs of building our earthship. The cheapest earthships I've heard of being built (maybe around $70,000) are when the husband/wife/immediate family members are engineers, contractors, and/or tradespeople, who can use their connections to get wholesale prices and call in favours from friends. Even then it's still a lot of work! We unfortunately have no connections so we seem to be paying a premium for everything. I have heard of earthships costing as much as $400,000 (yikes!). Some people are on a very tight timeline so they are forced to pay more. The one near Winnipeg wound up being $250,000+. We are trying to keep costs reasonable by taking our time and finding deals, but since Brandon and area is still in the "boom" phase, deals are hard to come by. Any donations are much appreciated and can be easily made by following the link above :)

Alumni News

We've gotten lots of emails from Brandon University alumni after our story was featured in their Alumni News (page 26 of 32 in the pdf). I've been told the story also wound up in the Solar Energy Society of Alberta newsletter. Cool! Lots of alumni from the '60's and '70's have been living sustainably for years, and are happy/excited to see people from the younger generation trying it too (I honestly have no idea what generation I am---generation next? what came after next?)