7
Earthships
Sustainable Design
EARTHSHIPS STAGE 1: DESIGN
The Earthships have landed people....
In partners or individually create 3 design proposals each for your sustainable home construction.
Each design needs to be neat, properly titled, named and dated.
Your house must include at least 2 polyhedra or 3-D shapes.
You must use a ruler. You may use a computer design program if you know how to use one.
Drawings need to be to the scale of 1:1 or 1:2 (1 cm = 1cm or 1cm = .5m)
Designs must be handed in as a package.
Geographic location must be chosen before designing.
Money is not a consideration. The ecological footprint, however, is.
Design Number 1: Floor Plan/ Bird's eye perspective:
Create a top-down design of your property clearly outlining cardinal direction (north and south), sun direction, and dimensions.
You must provide the square meterage of the property and the house.
Label all the rooms and features.
Design Number 2: Front view perspective:
Create a front-view sketch of your house clearly labeling the main door and windows. Include a person to show the scale.
Ensure to label the angle of the windows and solar panels used to capture the sun. How will you maximize the gathering of sun while it moves?
Design Number 3: One renewable energy system: Although your house may include more than one energy system, show how one of these systems functions in detail. The energy system can be drawn on it’s own without the house in the sketch.
**If you are in Grade 8 you must focus on the renewable water systems in your house. You may also show power systems if you like.
Earthships Stage 2 - Build it and they will come!
Here it is!! Build that Earthship people!!!
Your building does not need to be to scale.
Your building does need to include the outdoor energy collection systems.
If you are feeling ambitious you may show a cut away to reveal interior features.
Please clear main building materials with me to ensure success.
Make sure to start with a solid base. Like a piece of plywood. I have a few if needed.
Use as many recyclable materials as possible - you want your model to make as little environmental impact as your real structure.
Make sure to choose a solid glue material. White glue will not work unless you are building it out of light paper.
Your building may be edible! Hint: GINGERBREAD! I can supply icing sugar cement.
Finally: show off your imagination and design skills. Who knows - your design might end up in a glass cabinet near the office!
Earthships Stage 3: Discussion Paper
Type an individual discussion paper answering the following questions. Please use proper formatting. Answers can be typed in word or neatly handwritten.
Power
What type of solar panels or collectors did you use on your house? Fixed, adjustable or tracking? Why did you make this choice? Show the calculations for all the seasons your panels are angled for.
Make a list of all the appliances in your house and how much power they use in Watts each month on average (Use the handy chart attached). Determine what amount of power you would need to collect and/or generate for a peak energy month. If one square foot of solar panel generates 30kwh/year, how many square feet of solar panels would you need? Is this realistic? If not, what other power systems might you rely on?
Describe your energy system. How does it flow? What backup provisions have you accounted for (i.e. what happens if there’s no sun for your solar panels?) What happens to excess power?
Building materials
What building materials did you use for your model? Why?
What building materials would be used for the real-life house? Describe at least 4 relative to their environmental features (e.g. Tire walls for thermal mass)
How did your geographical location affect your choices?
What other design choices did you make to reduce your house’s ecological footprint? (i.e. appliances, house size etc…)
If you built your house in Canada how did you protect your system and inhabitants from freezing?
Group Work (only for groups)
If you worked in a group, please outline the role of each member.
On a scale of 1-5, how fair do you think the division of labour was in the group?
On a scale of 1-5 how much work did you do in the group?
On a scale of 1-5 how much work did others do in the group compared to you?
