Earthship Progress Update!

Long time no blog! Fred is here to update all of our followers and supporters on our Earthship progress. 2010 was a very busy year for the farm and the Prell family, including a 34 day trip out West in the middle of the Summer. Mike and Kym returned from their incredible journey with a renewed spirit and quickly got back to work on the Earthship. Much progress was made due to countless hardworking hours and the help of several enthusiastic volunteers. Friends, family and strangers alike all came out to Peaceful Acres on hot summer days to help us get dirty and to become a part of the construction of Clinton County’s first ever Earthship.

From summer to fall, we completed the following projects on the ship:
Completed the roof (including 3 skylights!)
Cobbed all interior walls (lotta dirt, lotta mud!)
Laid out Plumbing
Laid out new Addition (will be constructing a straw bale addition connected to earthship for wellness studio/workshop space)
Septic
Started Utility Room Tire Wall (Just 100 more tires to pack!)
Poured concrete footers

Thanks to John Cropper of the Wilmington News Journal for doing an awesome video on our project.

2011 is slated to be an incredibly busy and exciting year for Peaceful Acres. I hope you can join us in realizing this awesome vision! Stay tuned for more updates and announcements!

It's been a long time!

Finally I'm back to the blogs. Earthship construction started slow this spring due to our first lavender festival preparation and the back not so friendly. But the good news is we have the framing just about complete. We have installed all of the roof, window frames and starting to finish the roof over our large room. Then we will tin the roof and seal the building up. Concrete flooring should be poured around Thanksgiving if my plans and help work out. Still waiting on the dirt mover to come out and finish back filling the outside berm. All I can think of is lots of concrete from here on out!









One of the strange things about the economy in our area is the lack of people needing or wanting to find jobs. We have help driving from Springfield, Ohio. I'm thinking the unemployed moved our found jobs outside of the county so the labors are becoming scarce. At least this is a good sign that people are finding good jobs.

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As of this week we have completed the installation on our top plates. I would like to start installing our rough cut beams but due the weather I'm holding off until it dries a bit. Instead we skipped a step and started installing our aluminum cans and mud into the tire voids to form a straight wall. You can see in the pictures how the cans are put into place by hand. Each void will have 3 cans packed around with mud. Neither of the cans will be touching one another. This has greatly added to our insulation and is keeping the inside under the tarp much warmer.