Self-building an earthship

A three-day course run in partnership with Low Carbon Trust

22 - 24 October 2010 (Friday - Sunday)

All days of the course run 9.00am - 5.30pm

This course is for anyone thinking about building their own home and anyone interested in learning about Earthships and includes practical workshops

Venue

Stanmer Park (near University of Sussex), Brighton. Click here for directions to our meeting point at Stanmer Park.

Click here for details of local accommodation and to find out about Brighton Permaculture Trust supporters who can provide accommodation in their homes.

What is an Earthship?

An Earthship is a low impact building that makes use of recycled materials in its construction including over 1000 car tyres. It has passive solar heating and cooling and uses only renewable technologies. All the water used is harvested from rain-water and recycled with waste water management on site.

Who is the course for?

This course is for anyone thinking about building their own home and anyone interested in learning about Earthships. It is suitable for complete beginners, as well as those who are familiar with eco-building and want to know more.

What will the course cover?

We will go through how a building can use the sun instead of central heating and how to build in natural, passive ventilation. We’ll look at how it’s possible to live off-grid, this includes; how you can harvest and recycle water and an outline of the relative merits of micro-renewable technologies like solar, biomass, wind and hydro. We will look at what you need to think about when sourcing environmentally friendly materials and how to avoid the most damaging materials. And we will look at the practicalities of turning the dream into a reality. There will also be a hands-on practical on ramming car tyres that make up the walls of an Earthship, an earth rendering workshop and a glass bottle brick workshop. This course will build on the good work of Mike Reynolds and focus on adapting Earthships to the UK climate.

Course tutors

Rebecca Sarll is the main tutor and is a qualified trainer with an MSc in Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies (Distinction) from the Centre for Alternative Technology. She has experience in straw bale and hemp lime building as well as more conventional construction methods.

Jon Kalviac worked on Earthship Brighton and also on the Zwolle Earthship built in Holland last year. He is a regular tour guide of Earthship Brighton and has much experience of working with rammed tyres.

Paulina Wojciechowska is an architect and author of the book Building with Earth, a guide to free-form Earthbag construction. She has worked on natural building projects in the USA, Mexico, and Poland. She has taught natural building workshops since 1998, including earth rendering.

Mischa Hewitt was one of the Project Managers of Earthship Brighton, the author of the book Earthships: Build a zero carbon future and has an MSc in Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies (Distinction) from the Centre for Alternative Technology. He is a building consultant and works with the green building company Earthwise Construction.

Learning outcomes

Participants will learn what needs to be considered when building an environmentally sensitive home as well as what is involved in building an Earthship. They will learn how to gain autonomy and free themselves from gas and electricity bills. They will learn basic building physics which can shed light on how all buildings work. And they will gain the knowledge and confidence to take their ideas to the next stage.

Photovoltaics course

A one-day introduction to photovoltaics course is also run in partnership with Low Carbon Trust. This course is designed to compliment the self-building an earthship course and is normally timed to coincide with them. Read more: introduction to photovoltaics

What you will need to bring

Handouts will be provided, but a note-pad and pen is useful to jot down extra ideas. Also bring some clothes and footwear you don’t mind getting dirty for the practicals, along with some work gloves. Please bring food to share for lunch or your own lunch.

Fees

Fees include tuition, handouts, refreshments and a copy of Earthships: Building a zero carbon future.

£280 - Sponsored/organisation rate
£280 - Individual income more than 25k/yr
£235 - Individual income 18-25k/yr
£190 - Individual waged less than 18k/yr
£145 - Individual, concessionary rate

Concessionary rates are available to people in receipt of means-tested benefits (including housing benefit, council tax benefit and working tax credit), also full-time students and OAP s.

We endeavour to make our courses/events affordable to all. Unfortunately we do not receive any external funding for most of our courses/events and as such rely on large amounts of voluntary input to run courses/events.

See the cancellations and refunds policy.

Booking

Booking is essential as most of our courses/events are fully booked weeks in advance. However if places are still available then reservations can be made until midday the day before the course/event.

You can pay now using a credit/debit card or paypal. This is our preferred option as it saves us administration time. It is usually also possible to pay by cheque/postal order, however this option will not be available on the form in the 2 weeks leading up to the course/event, or if it is nearly fully booked.  A place is not secured until we have received the requested payment and reservations will only be valid for 3 working days.

Please read the information on this page then
register here for Self-building an Earthship, 22-24 October 2010
If places are available you will automatically be taken to the booking form.

You will receive email confirmation of your registration; please check your spam or junk email folder (especially Hotmail account holders).

Contact us

For further information or if you have problems with your registration please contact us.