Miles City, Montana Day 3

June 26, 2009 from chromasomatic.com

The progress made on this project in a single day is mind blowing. There are about a dozen official Earthship crew members and then about another dozen interns. Two factors make things go so fast and smooth. One is that building an Earthship is not rocket science, anyone can do it. The construction process was designed that way. So when a bunch of interns show up on the job site, the official crew doesn’t have to train them. They spend about 10 minutes showing them how to do a task, then they just go off and do it. Simple as that. There is little to no micro-management and hand holding. The other reason is that the official crew members are self proclaimed crazy people and work harder and 10x faster than any union contractor in existence, which inspires the rest of us to attempt to keep up. And if inspiration is not enough, friendly competition takes care of the rest.

But I digress. Today the tire wall was completed! The installation of the cisterns was also started. The cisterns are used to store water collected from the runoff from the roof. This water is used for drinking, bathing, toilets, washing and all the plants. Before it’s used, the water is primarily filtered through gravel, but there may be more to it than that, but I’m not too versed on the water system yet. McCleasy and I spent a large part of the day working more on the thermal barrier, which I explained in yesterday’s post. A lot more got done, check out the photos and videos!

The cisterns just got delivered