'My house is no different than yours': Earthship house now four years underway in Westminster

John Grant of Westminster West talks about the Earthship home that he is building on his property.

WESTMINSTER WEST — For the past four years, John Grant has been building an Earthship on 12 acres of land in Westminster West.

Earthships are a newly emerging architectural style of off-the-grid building that utilizes solar energy and upcycled materials to create an energy-efficient, self-sustaining and affordable house.

Grant's Earthship is a replica of the building style developed by Earthship's New Mexico-based founder, Michael Reynolds. In fact, Grant took Reynolds' internship program to learn the fundamentals of sustainable design.

The Earthship in Westminster is not Grant's first; he has already worked on two others in Burlington and Canada. He expects to finish his home next summer after being slowed down by COVID-era costs and building delays.

"There are six main principles to any building," said Grant. "They are heat, cooling, electricity, water, waste and food."

Grant initially moved a camper onto the property, and the construction process started with clearing the forested lot and using the timber to build a 3,000-square-foot barn, which Grant used as his base of operations for most of the project. Grant used the leftover barn wood — oak and hemlock as Viga beams in the Earthship.

"I made an outhouse here, and on the backside was my shower. I used to have a black water bag that I would shower with," said Grant.

Construction of the Earthship started with leveling a sloping hill on the property and using the excess soil to fill a retaining wall bounded by over 700 tires, which will later be sealed and buried in self-made Vermont adobe: a natural concoction of hay, water and clay dirt.

The solid mass of earth retained by the tires is positioned at the north side of the house and reaches all the way up to the roof of the building. Underneath the solid mound are three cisterns that can collect up to 4,500 gallons of rainwater runoff from the metal roof and custom-fabricated six-inch gutter.

"In the wintertime, when the sun is at its lowest apex, the sun will reach through the southern-facing glass windows and heat up the soil behind the concrete wall at the back of the house. The sun charges the building up. It's a solar thermal battery."

Solar panels will also be added to the roof to provide electricity to the house's water filtration pump, fridge and other electrical appliances. The house, however, does not rely on electrical heating or air conditioning and naturally maintains 70 degrees Fahrenheit year-round through solar energy alone.

In the summer dog days of August, to beat the heat, Grant will rely on six long culverts buried underneath the northern dirt berm, which, through convection, naturally draw in and cools the warmer outdoor air. The Earthship is heavily insulated, with seven inches of insulation on the ceiling alone to keep warm air and cold air in during winter and summer, respectively.

"I did all of this by myself; this whole project was done by myself, minus cranes and an excavator," noted Grant.

Some might find Grant's project to be a daunting one, especially with all the imaginable complexities of building a home from the ground up, but Grant doesn't think so.

"I was an arborist by training; my whole life and career was working with trees. I didn't know anything about solar or what I was doing here. I used YouTube. Literally. I'm now amazed that people will pay Green Mountain Power; all of it is so simple, black wire here, green there and red here, even a dummy like me could do it."

For insurance coverage, Grant did have to speak with electricians, engineers and plumbers to make sure his self-wiring and plumbing were consistent with state codes.

"I will never ever be out of electricity; in my shed is a generator, too; when my battery system gets below 50 percent, my generator will automatically turn on, which runs any power that my building might need and charges my battery up. I also have a 500-gallon propane tank as a backup, just in case. We've filled it up just twice in four years."

The house will have a full kitchen, a master and guest bedroom, two bathrooms and a living room.

The bathrooms and kitchen rely on a solar-powered water organization module that filters the stored rainwater through fine layers up to and through activated charcoal filtering.

"My house is no different than yours. I have stoves, refrigerators and freezers and everything," said Grant

The house is also fitted with self-watering stucco and aluminum can-lined greenhouse beds where Grant plans to plant lemon, banana and avocado trees among household herbs and spices year-round. He also has a chicken coop outside.

"We had kids from the Compass School figure out mathematically how much volume a 12 oz. can take up and figure out how much concrete I would save by filling the walls with cans," said Grant.

"Overall, for the house, I'm at about almost $65 per square foot. This is a 2,300-square-foot building. If you were to call a contractor and say, 'build me one of these,' it would probably be two to three hundred dollars a square foot. I'm at way less than half. My hope is that for $250,000, I will be able to build both this house and the barn out. It's all out of my pocket. To get a mortgage for this thing is hard."

Grant also remarked how he was fortunate to get three skylights, normally valued at $2,300, for $1,000 each, 12 solar panels for $380 a piece and a cosmetically damaged $9,800 solar system for $3,500.

When building the brunt of the Earthship, Grant used power tools connected to two solar panels in a 24-volt system.

"All of the screws, table saw, nail guns, cement mixer and everything was done with this system."

Based on his current power consumption and lifestyle, Grant estimates that he could live in his house for three days without needing sunlight to power his solar panels, but he looks forward to an efficient solar energy storage system to be invented in the future.

Next summer will be Grant's final push, where he hopes to finish and live in the house by the end of the season.

On Sept. 1, 2023 from 5 to 6:30 p.m. Grant will host an open house where all who are interested are invited to learn about and tour the Earthship. There is an abundance of parking available at the house at 165 Upper Hourglass Road in Westminster.

Grant thinks it's important, too, to teach about sustainability and self-sufficiency practices.

"I'm tired of doing climate demonstrations and making signs that say we need to change for the climate. We did something. My wife and I give talks about the impacts of climate change; my goal here was to say look, I have a positive carbon footprint, and I'm taking in more carbon than I am emitting.

"I hope that more people come. I want to talk to whoever I can. I'm not saying anybody is wrong or bad, but my home is no different than yours. I do have some cans in the wall, and I'm using old tires, but you know what? I'm spending a whole lot less than you are."