Building a house is hard work, but my parents had an awful lot of fun with it. My mom is an artist, so she incorporated a lot of artistic elements. She built a series of rabbit statues, inspired by the name of the neighborhood, “Hare Haven.” We imagine that someday in the future archaeologists will come across the statues and think that an interesting civilization must have lived there (like Easter Island).
The slanted windows are an essential part of an earth ship that creates a greenhouse effect, warming the house. It’s especially important in cold Colorado.
“We had our concrete floors poured this week. They look awesome! We used the best concrete contractors in the world! The garage floor is sealed, but the residence is not. Those floors will be acid etched and stained, and then later sealed. We have to wait a number of months before this process can proceed, so we will cover it with plastic and tarps, so that it won’t get stained during the rest of the construction process.”
“Second day of concrete work, Stephanie turns her attention fully to the rabbit sculptures, which will be the guardians of her path. Eventually the rabbits weighed over 120 pounds each, so rick, Paul, and Mark helped move them to their permanent locations with the skid steer.”
“Last day of concrete work, the garage floor is poured.”
Out on the prairie there are plenty of friendly animals.
“… Jim and I attached wood to the bond beam in preparation for the walls. The upper windows will be patio sized, and the lower windows will be smaller, with 8 operable ones for air flow. The air through these windows will flow through the 8 high windows at the back, which will be around 14 feet high.”
In their spare time they worked on building a path and planting trees and bushes (most of which didn’t survive the dry climate).
The earth ship could have been built off-the-grid, but my dad had a solar panel & wind turbine put in as a passion project. They generate more electricity than they can use, so the city actually pays them to feed the extra energy back into the grid. These pictures are of the forms for the solar panels and wind generator. Out on the Colorado prairie they get plenty of both wind and sun.
The roof and windows are installed, and the building starts to take on its final shape.
Boose on the Loose 
2 thoughts on “Earth ship part 2”