Earthships.

We went to see the earth ships on the far bank of the river. These are the "Biotecture" people who build homes from recycled tyres filled with rammed earth.  The internal none load supporting walls are made from empty bottles and cans filled with concrete. They are not visible in the finished building as they are internally plastered and externally covered with "adobe" although it is the imitation concrete render type not traditional mud plaster. A feature of earthships is that they have a large southfacing conservatory which helps to regulate sun capture and can be used to grow plants.

 They use solar and sometime wind power for energy , collect and treat rainwater and can be completely off grid.Some have been built at Brighton although I think they needed to be modified to meet building regulations.

The receptionist thought that keeping grey water inside the build was problematical for some planning authorities. After the treated rainwater has been used for cooking and showers the waste is kept as grey water  and used for watering plants and flushing toilets. The black water from the toilets then goes to a conventional septic tank and then to a reed bed. 

I had reservations. In any high density community (and they see cities being built like this in the future) I am not sure about the reed beds. I am with Bazellgette about communal professionally run sewage works. They improved the one on the Dee in Chester a few years ago eliminating the smell and turned a working class area with smells into  a desirable middle class neighbourhood.

 There was also no attempt at "green roofs" although in the semi-arid area that might not be feasible. 

There was a lot of use of concrete and I would have thought that glass bottles and cans would be better recycled than re-purposed although that would depend on your recycling infrastructure.

 I also could not get my head round the floors. Earthships do not need traditional foundations because the weight of the thick tyre and mud walls anchors them. The floor is made of packed earth and then a layer of bricks or in the case of the demo ship a thin skim of polished concrete is placed over. I can see that that might work in the desert but in say Connah's Quay where the water table is really high I would think a few days of heavy rain would cause it to deform and leak.

The presentation was very commercial and I came away with feeling that they may have been a radical alternative when first invented and are a simple technology but that  Grand Designs may have overtaken them.