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hey everyone! it's danielle from exploring alternatives. in this video, we're checking out a tiny earthship at the terra perma eco-resort in harrington,quebec, canada. [music playing] so it's basically a form of passive solarhome that allows you to heat your home and keepit cool just by controlling the energy from the sun. there's one main wall in this earthship
and it's built in a u-shape using recycledtires that are filled with earth and then they piled on a bunch of earth ontop of that wall at the back so that the wall and that huge mound thatthey created form a thermal mass that can absorb energyfrom the sun and what that's meant to do is create an indoortemperature that's stable all year round. so they've got these huge south facing windowsthat let the sun in during the winter and then an overhanging roof to block thesun during the summer. this tiny earth ship has a lot of really interestingsustainable features and it's a beautiful structure
so let's go take a look inside. when you first come into the earthship, there'sa really generous sized entryway with a huge storage closet and a beautiful recycled bottle wall thatmust have taken hundreds of hours to create. then you can come into the main room of theearthship and it's absolutely stunning in here. you've got the back side of the bottle wallhere, they did some beautiful sculptures using cob on all of the walls,
and then they painted it with a natural limepaint. you've got a nice big log bed frame here right in the center of the house. a cozy sitting area with a futon that stretches out so you canactually sleep 4 in here. huge windows inside give you a really amazingview so you really feel like you're part of nature. there's a wood stove for supplemental heatin the winter and there's a small kitchen over here
with a sink that's not plumbed so you havethis water jug. there's a small propane cook top here that'shooked up to a small propane tank outside. a little bit of space for storage and then they've got compost, garbage andrecycling which i always like to see. a small kind of working and/or dining roomarea and they've got a couple of plugs here thatare attached to their solar system outside so that you can plug in a fan or a computeror whatever you want. and then just a small book shelf. so overall it's a really beautiful space andyou really do have everything you need in
here except a shower and a toilet. there is an outhouse outside and for the shower, this is part of an eco-village so there is a communal shower block not toofar down the path. for us, if we were going to live here we wouldprobably create a small little shower stall somewhere in the house. because this is a miniature earthship, itdoesn't have the exact proportions of a regular earthship.
so, from what we've learned touring otherearthships, the square footage of your window area issupposed to be 30% of the square footage of your floor space to get the right ratio of the energy fromthe sun heating up the thermal mass in the back so that you're not overheating the house andso that it's not too cold in the winter. so based on the amount of windows in here it's really beautiful but i think it's probablymore than 30% so it is a little bit warmer in here duringthe summer.
so what they've done to address that is they'vegot a little pump beside the bed that has a pipe going behind the house andinto the mountain behind it and basically that's allowing air to circulatethrough the pipe and cool down underground and then be recirculated into the earthship so it's bringing cool air in and circulatingit through here to keep it cool. they've also got some curtains that you canput up when the sun is really bright and they also have the large overhang as well,which is blocking the summer sun. another thing you'd usually see in an earthshipis angled windows so that they're on an angle to the wintersun.
these ones, they've put them in straight upand down so they're at right angles to the ground and the reason they did that is because it'sa vacation rental and they just wanted to have lower maintenance. so they didn't want to have a lot of dirtor snow collecting on the windows so that they'd have to come by all the timeand clean them off. in case it does get colder in here in thewinter, they do have the wood stove and they have plans to have an in-floor radiantheating system.
so they have put pipes throughout the floor that they can fill up with glycol and then have that be heated by the wood stoveso you would even have a heated floor. this tiny earthship has a huge 1000 watt solarpower system outside which seems like a lot of energy for sucha small space. one of the reasons why they put in such ahuge system is because they are going to have a pump runningthe glycol through the floor 24 hours a day during the winter. another really important component to an earthshipis that they're usually designed to collect
rainwater. so this one doesn't have their gutter systemset up yet but they did create an angled roof and theydo plan to add gutters so that they have a 3-season rainwater collection system to provide water for whoever is staying here. terra perma is an eco village that's tryingto incorporate community, and tourism, and permaculture, and sustainability all into one space and it's really interesting.
so they've got a residential area on thishuge piece of land that they have where they're selling lots so that peoplecan actually move here full time then they've got a cooperative business area so that residents of the eco village can createtheir own businesses and share resources and then there's the tourism area which iswhere we are right now and this is where they've built miniaturemodels of green buildings so that people can come here and stay fora night or two or a week and experience what it's like to live in atiny earth ship
or a yurt or another kind of sustainable building. thanks for watching, i hope you enjoyed thisvideo about the tiny earthship if you liked it, give it a thumbs up and subscribe to see more like it.