Building a Earthship berm
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 พ.ย. 2024
- In this video we are down the road at our neighbor and friends Thomas and Debra's Earthship building the berm. Thomas had the idea to incorporate strawbale to help with insulating it instead of solely rigid foam board... we've never seen this before but it seems like a great idea of incorporating a natural material and wanted to film the process.
Thanks Thomas and Debra! Check out PART II at the link below...
• Building a Earthship b...
Doesn't a sandy berm blow away in the wind? Do you plant it with cactus or something?
A sandy berm for sure can blow away and erode over time if it's to steep. I've stabilized mine with straw, wood chips, and horse manure which the native plants like sunflowers and others really like. We are going to post a video showing that soon! Thanks again for your comments and watching the channel.
In response to R value on straw bale, at 1.85 per inch it would be 29.6 as the straw bales are on edge which is 16 inches. Also used tear off insulation was utilized not only to add a little more insulation but mainly to protect the wrapped straw bales from being punctured from objects in the backfill and utilizing materials that were already used in temporary roof system during construction of the main house.
Thanks Thomas!
Definitely relate to that!! Thanks for this video, super interesting.
How do you plan to stabilize the berm over time, so that you’re not reworking it year after year?
Matt and Goldie retained the back of their Earthship with another tire retaining wall and rocks so that helped. I retained mine with strawbales that were terraced on the back of my berm... also spread alot of woodchips and horse manure so the SLV sunflowers really liked that. Our next video I'm going to highlight it because for the first 2 years it just getting smaller and smaller because of the sand and wind... and now it's great!
How about layers of bermed earth, cardboard and plastic sheeting?
I did lay down some 6 mil plastic sheeting and tarps on mine to act as a vapor barrier a bit... I will highlight it in the next video! Thanks for the comment.
My property is all sand, with lots of wind. Have you noticed an issue with soil erosion around earthships?
Yes we have! I've terraced the back of my berm with strawbales and hugelkultur garden techniques on top of adding wood chips and horse manure... so it certainly helps with not having it blow away. We should be posting a video next on that. Thanks for the comment and good luck with your build!
You can keep the mound from eroding by rock mulching it. You could also put a pond liner all on the mound, cover with rocks/ rock mulch it and have more rain catchment with the rocks taking the UV and helping stabalize the mound temperature, and filtering sand and sediment from the water caught.
Great ideas too!@@GrowTreeOrganics