Love at first sight? The waaw feeling? Take a look at the ‘Earthship’…
A sustainable and environmental friendly house, that takes care of it’s inhabitants independently. A selfsufficient home that is in no way connected to the grid (watersupply, electricity, sewage,..).
Photovoltaic solarpanels, windturbines and catching and reusing rainwater make the earthship entirely selfsustainable. By applying materials like used tires, glass bottles, aluminum cans and scraps of wood, this building technique minimizes waste issues.
Another great benefit of the earthship is that you can grow vegetables, fruits and herbs in the built in greenhouse. With the beautiful curves and shapes of the buidling, it is really love at first sight.
One BIG problem: nobody ever got a permit for this sort of building in Belgium. And as regulations are getting tighter, we see the chances of that happening diminishing. A friend of ours working for the building regulation thinks we don’t have much chance of getting a permit in Belgium. That’s too bad.
But we keep a bit of hope. In a few countries in Europe people are building earthships. Oscar and Lisa have a project in Spain, a demonstration earthship has been built in Brighton (England) and Fife (Scotland). There is an earthship being built in Ger (France). And a few people in the Netherlands are working on it. So the earthship concept seems to be spreading from America where it all started to Europe. So maybe, one day in Belgium too?
