?s on a tire/pallet house

ok so here goes im torn on the idea between earthships and pallet houses so how about a combo package im thinking tires "earthship style" for foundation and crawl space and maybe partially up in living area and using 5x7 pallets used for walls and then for roof typical shipping pallets screwwed together with recycled barn tin.
asking for suggestions ideas etc everything would be appreciated also if anyone has seen pics of sumthing like im talking about id love to see them thanks

Hi James,

Really need to know more about your ideas, location, skills and budget. Earth-ships are very costly of money and/or time. They probably require more thinking than other forms of architecture. The idea of using pallets, though appealing from a recycling perspective, probably would not work well within the demands structurally for earth-ships, or not with out a lot of labor and time to incorporate them into the design. If you had an unlimited supply of pallets and did not care about the longevity of the structure, you could do some impromptu, with a smaller design scheme, if that is what you had been thinking about. Again, proper design and engineering must be considered.

Regards,

jay

A common misconception is that an "Earthship" must have a rammed earth tirewall structure. This isn't true. Earthship is simply the sustainable model presented by Michael Reynolds. He only came to using tirewalls as the lastest iteration of technologies he used to make Earthship structures.

That being said, you can get all the benefits of an Earthship using whatever method of wall retaining that you like. Personally I think earthbag contruction is far less expensive labor-wise, although theoretically it is more expensive money-wise. (Theoretically, of course, because tires are getting to be more difficult to find for free, and then there is the cost in fuel of transporting them to your homstead)

Personally I take all the Earthship training, books and videos with a grain of salt. I like the concept but there are better, work-smarter-not-harder ways to accomplish the same things. (Reynolds advocates a cob fireplace for auxiliary heat, but wouldn't a RMH be much better?)

I am not sure how you would use pallets as your main structural material for an Earthship concept, though. Where is the thermal mass? Basically you need any wall strong enough that you can backfill it with earth and insulation to create a massive structure that you can then set a hyper-insulated water-shedding roof on. You can easily use the rest of the "Earthship systems" if you want to; they should easily adapt to any structure.