I have a family property in the foothills of Boise, ID with an old larger house that needs many renovations but also has some retro features that are very worth keeping, a smaller unfinished building that was begun as a house but left as framed (no electric, water, HVAC), 2 wells, and tons of south facing hillside, terraced land. There are SO many things I want to do with this property to make it a showcase of sustainability over the long term, and today I stumbled across the concept of Earthships. I've decided this year to have fun experimenting with some smaller scale projects like building an underground greenhouse over an existing 8' deep hole next to the smaller building and experimenting with some hopefully deer-proof hoop / cage systems on the terraces for produce (deer are our biggest challenge to gardening this land -- soil, sun and water availability are great).
One of the challenges I faced this year was keeping the wellhouse warm during what was an unusually cold December / January here in Boise. It currently is a 10' X 10' wood shed with no insulation, so heat lamps and at the coldest point a space heater were used to prevent freezing of mechanisms inside. So we have the wasteful practice of running electric 24/7 in there throughout the coldest months to prevent a freeze (which happened when one of the lamps burned out) and it occurred to me that a great way to mitigate this problem and start a more sustainable practice for next winter -- while experimenting with the idea of an Earthship at a small level -- would be to do a "wrap-around" Earthship structure - with recycled windows on the South-facing front. So I am saying I would NOT tear down the existing building, but build an earthship like structure around it. I can get the tires and sand easily, and already have some old windows.
Is this a crazy idea? What am I not considering? Thanks for any input.
