Have you read
Comfort in any Climate by Michael Reynolds?
In essense, he breaks down climates into several types:
1) High desert
2) Hot and humid
3) Temperature and wet
4) Northern
The "packaged" Earthships sold by Earthship Biotecture are really only ideal for the high desert environment present in New Mexico. They don't worry too much about waterproofing and simply build the Earthships to store
enough heat from the sun through the day to make it through the night. And that is a problem for almost everywhere else: It is rare to find a climate that, although sometimes cold, has a tremendous amount of sunlight even in the Winter.
Which means, either pay Earthship Biotecture to come up with a custom plan, or do it yourself.
Step one is to come up with the LIMITING FACTORS present in your environment.
1) Does the environment drop below freezing for long periods of time?
No. So
SOLAR GAIN and HEAT STORAGE are not limiting factors.
2) How much rain do you get per year?
Anything more than 25" per year pretty much eliminates ROOF AREA (for
water collection) as a limiting factor. You will have sufficient volume for your usage based on even a conservative house size. However, another limiting factor may be WATER CONTROL.
3) What is the longest period of time you go without rain?
Based on this quantity, and your actual needed water usage, you can determine CISTERN SIZE.
4) Does the environment stay above a comfortable temperature for long periods of time?
This may be so. If so, then COOLING is a limiting factor.
5) Does humidity stay above 70% during parts of the year?
If so HUMIDITY becomes a limiting factor.
6) And, although
GREENHOUSE SIZE is implicitly a limiting factor that may be considered, in my opinion Earthships have never been shown to have sufficient growing room, and in all cases additional growing room for food (or buying) is necessary.
Not knowing much about the actual environment you live in, I imagine you have mild winters and hot, humid summers with a long growing season. Based on that, I would think that your Earthship would have the following features:
1) A large Earth contact patch without floor or wall insulation.
2) Above ground, not sunken, with vapor barriers on the outside of all tire walls,
berms, and under the floor.
3) Vertical
greenhouse windows with a large overhang to keep out Spring and Summer sun. No greenhouse vent windows.
4) Extensive use of deeply buried cooling tubes.
5) Sufficient gravity skylights to draft said cooling tubes.
6) Narrow, deep rooms (vice wide, shallow rooms use in cold climates)
7) Very well insulated roof with reflective barrier, and roofing surface capable of surviving the humidity (steel may be out)
Greenhouse of sufficient size to use your greywater, but most of your growing outside.
How does that sound?
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