Posts from — September 2009

Bonne chance – Terre-bateau Good news for Eurogreens who want a zero impact home but lack the skills to build their own. The man who constructed the mainland continent’s first Earthship, –  an off-grid ecohome — has put it up for sale for less than it cost to build.

Surveyor Kevan Trott who finished his 130 square meter home in Normandy, France only a year and a half ago, has been forced to sell after he was hit by the recession.   The three bedroom house with 3 foot thick walls constructed from old tyres filled with earth was originally on the market for 317,000 Euros ($465,000). But now he has dropped the price by nearly a quarter to 250,000 Euros.  It is the first time an Earthship, has been available on the open market in Europe. “We have two houses, one in Brighton (UK), one in Normandy,” said Trott. “Unfortunately with two mortgages, things are a bit stretched at the moment and we have to choose one or the other. As well as three double bedrooms the accommodation features an open-plan kitchen /dining / living area, with oak beams, a marble and granite floor, a seating area and a “godin” woodburner. Off the kitchen is the systems and utility room housing a washing machine.

Self sufficient home

According to Trott, the house is completely self sufficient in water, power, sewage, cooling and heating. The bathroom has a grey water flushing WC, a basin, a bath and shower within the bath. There is a new gas-fired boiler in the utility room to boost the solar thermal system on dark winter days. “We can’t get enough rent from letting the Normandy house to cover the mortgage, and we can’t uproot from Brighton because of the kids schools, so with great reluctance we have had to put it up for sale.” Free from infrastructure Earthships, so-called because they are built of local earth, “float free” from infrastructure -mains water, gas, electricity and sewerage. Trott’s building is located on the edge of the small village of Ger, midway between Saint Malo and Caen, surrounded by hills, pastures, woods and orchards. Trott took a year to build it with his wife Gillian and a team of volunteers after being inspired to get involved in Brighton five years ago, at a talk given by Mike Reynolds, the American architect. “It’s a wonderful place to live in,” says Trott with real sadness. “It’s fantastic to be in a space that heats and cools itself, that operates completely autonomously and doesn’t have a damaging effect on the environment.”

As the first Earthship in Europe, the house was designed to demonstrate the viability of eco-living first hand and provide a blue-print for large-scale sustainable developments in the future.

Bound by red tape

Demand for earthships has been lower than hoped for admits Thanks to bureaucracy and the recession only 10 have been built in the UK, France and The Netherlands. “Planning and the reluctance of planners to think outside of the book of rules they have is the main obstacle, especially in the UK. The rules do offer a way forward for this type of development but planners are not keen to use them. But of course money is also a big issue,” says Trott. But they do seem to hit a ‘sweet spot’, providing a low carbon lifestyle without compromising modern day standards of  convenience. Built of tyres… The rear wall of the building was constructed from 750 tyres and internal walls are made of clay, straw, sand and water. But the south-facing front is fully glazed to maximise thermal gain. It is separated from the rooms by a seven foot wide corridor which functions as a thermal buffer. As a result the bedrooms maintain a constant temperature of 16 degrees C with little or no additional heating. Hot water is provided by a solar heated hot water tank and electricity comes from an array of 10 solar panels and one wind turbine together with 6 batteries for energy storage. Water is harvested from the roof and stored in 10,000 litre cisterns buried under ground.

…and red ink

It’s clearly an inspirational building. But you cant help wondering if an asking price of even E250,000 isn’t, well, a little steep? “Not at all,” says Trott.  The house cost E200,000 to construct and Trott and his wife spent six months working on it unpaid. But then he says there are agency commissions of a further E15,000 and capital gains tax and VAT taxes which could amount to another E30,000. “We put a lot of hard work into pushing the boundaries of eco and sustainable design and we will still lose money.”

For more information contact Kevantrott@mac.com or www.ibs-immobilier.net/viewrecord.php?id=144

All I drink is the air that I breathe A new generation of machines sucks the moisture from air to provide clean drinking water.  And they use relatively little energy to do so.

The summer of 2009 was the hottest ever recorded in parts of Texas and the accompanying drought has prompted authorities in many areas to order residents to reduce their water use. The average temperature of 88.6 degrees in August was almost 2 degrees hotter than the previous high in 1925, according to the National Weather Service. (more…)

Sarkozy and wife: Growth is happiness France is set to become the first country to adopt a radical new approach to calculating its national wealth by including ‘soft’ measures such as happiness, and sustainability. (more…)

Remember those silly little Chia Pets? Little did we know then that those strange little seeds painted on those cheesy terracotta pots shaped like animals were actually GOOD for us… It turns out that they are, they are high in vitamins, minerals, loads of fiber and it’s a better source of omega’s than flax seeds are. This is a very good survival food. (more…)

Goodbye to all that A wealthy lakeside community in Quebec is being torn apart by a plan for a wind farm atop the green mountains that form its spectacular backdrop. The big power company behind the project is doing all it can to create fear and dissent in the community, including offering bribes to residents who support the plan, and threatening those who don’t with a wind turbine right on their property line.   (more…)

No Impact Man Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has used a peculiar executive order to impose the most demanding alternative energy standards in the US on Californian utility companies.
The decree which was signed on Tuesday requires electricity companies to generate a third of their power from renewable sources by 2020. It sets California ahead of even Hawaii in the move to renewable energy. (more…)

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad) has warned of a new financial bubble fueled by banking greed and called for urgent, far-reaching reform of the world’s financial system and foreign exchange markets so they serve the people and productive economic investment, rather than the other way around.

The Unctad report questions the extent to which there is a genuine self-sustaining economic recovery going on, arguing that falling wages present a huge danger to the world that is being too often ignored by many economists and policymakers. (more…)

Nice place but pricey A multimillion-dollar house on the back of Aspen Mountain went on the market this summer.  Is there such a thing as an Eco  McMansion?

The 3,600 square feet house on the New York Lode patented mining claim is completely off the grid, with a geothermal system providing hot water for heating and domestic use, and a five-kilowatt solar photovoltaic system providing the electricity. (more…)

Cycle-powered hovercraft UK campaigners are just dismantling a week-long “Climate Camp” in London which succeeded in highlighting the link between finance and the climate crisis in the world’s media.

Nearly 2,000 campaigners set up temporary home on Blackheath, an area of open common ground in South London, overlooking the financial towers of Canary Wharf and The City of London.

“We are targeting the City of London because it is the centre of an economic system whose obsession with economic expansion and the chase for profits is making it impossible to deal with the climate crisis,” (more…)