Sixty years before sustainability was a round-the-clock topic, solar pioneer Mike Reynolds was headed from architecture school in Ohio west to Taos, N.M., where he would start the “Earthship” movement — envisioning homes that could not only thrive off the power grid, but even absorb some of civilization’s vast tailings of trash and refuse.
Now a spectacular rendition of one of those is on the market on nearly seven acres in the Black Forest, northeast of Colorado Springs. eXp Realty Broker Jennifer Browne’s sellers were inspired by Reynolds’ “Biotecture” movement, then designed and built their own Earthship in 1997, doing 90% of the construction themselves.
11,000 aluminum cans
The Southwest-styled home is not only a good looker but performs great, according to Browne. It uses passive solar — heat from south-facing windows and skylights during winter — combined with “earth-sheltered” technology, with nonsolar parts of the home tucked into the earth to store heat and modify the temperature swings.
Walls and floors are a custom adobe blend designed as a heat sink, much of it filled into 1,500 old tires and 11,000 aluminum cans that add structural support. There are also PV panels that deliver up to 20 kilowatts of solar electricity, and there’s a whole-house backup generator if everything goes down.
That system, sellers say, keeps the home with 4,461 square feet of livable space at a core temperature of 65 degrees year-round, before they spend a paltry sum on backup heating and ventilation — $35 to $50 a month. Performance goes up with some system monitoring, they add, but electronically controlled vents and window shades take the heavy lifting out of that…