I am looking to build a small, one room earthship in the Owen Sound area. I have an engineer friend making some autocad drawings and am actively looking for land. Does anyone know of someone in the area with a lot of land that they might be willing to sever off a small (1-2 acre) section to sell?
As far as permits go in that area, it looks like they will let you do pretty much whatever you want if you have stamped drawings. So now I need some advice on where to go to get the drawings.
Does anyone know of an engineer who would draw up and stamp blue prints? I will also need to get a septic approved. I would prefer not to have to get the classic septic tank installed. Any ideas on what I could do with that?
Any advice on these key issues would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

Zmon,

An Earthship uses a conventional septic tank and leach field... The difference is that the leach field is not permitted to enter the aquifer, it is instead routed to the exterior biocell where is grows "non-edible plants" (although, there is nothing wrong with using this waste to grow, say, fruit trees or vines)

Regardless, the septic permit will be granted in the usual method. One, draw up your house blueprints. Two, have a Civil Engineer conduct drainage and percolation testing on your property (usually with a representative of the Health Department present), and 3, with the known square footage of the Earthship and soil data, the Civil Engineer will draw up the septic plan. You can also get a book on how to do these things yourself but ultimately an engineer has to stamp the plans. Finally, build the septic as described except, in addition, add the exterior biocell structure (see volume 2)

Alternatively, if this is just a survival earthship, you can simply put in an outhouse and receive a 90-day occupancy permit, but in this case you are not permitted to RESIDE PERMANENTLY in the structure.

Hope that helps.

Now, your friend, is he a Professional Engineer? If so have him stamp the drawings. If not, ask him politely to take the exam!

Thanks for the reply. My friend just graduated from school and has to wait a couple years or something before she is able to stamp drawings.

Is a compost toilet a viable option when presenting this as a permanent residence? Or is it the same idea as an outhouse?

Have you seen any pictures of the makeshift septic that the Biotecture team installed in Haiti? Digging a hole, rubber lining it, stacking tires and then filling the rest of the hole around the tires with gravel. So the solids stay in the tires, while the liquid seeps out in the gravel, and once it gets to a certain point, the liquid flows to botanical cells like a conventional septic.
Might this idea fly if the project were presented as a part time residence?

I appreciate the feedback.

So I am looking at a plot of land on the southern Bruce Peninsula to build this earthship on. It seems that there isn't much soil and the bedrock is pretty close to the surface. I will probably have to haul in the back fill. Any thoughts on building on bedrock?

This project is coming along and I hope to be building in the summer. Any volunteers will be greatly appreciated.

I just received the plans from Biotechture and they look pretty good. Things are moving along for this project. I just need to get the last of the financing I need and we can get underway.
Any ideas on how to go about getting grants/loans to build? The main banks don't seem to like the idea very much and charge a pretty high interest.

Hi ZMON,

We actually had the exact same scenario on our build. Because of this we installed the septic tank first. We had the backhoe dig down to bedrock. We put in a level bed of gravel and then installed a low profile septic tank. Once that was in and buried, we were able to figure out how much fill to bring in. In our case, we decided to build up to get a minimum 2% grade from the toilet flange to the inflow of the septic tank. Luckily we are building in an area that is a bit lower than other parts of the lot so for us it made sense to build up. We now have a nice building platform and very good drainage. There were other options we could have considered such as raising the toilet on a small pedestal (I have seen this in a few Earthships in Taos), or using a pump. We could have also brought in a high hoe to break up the bedrock and get further down but that would have added to our costs.

One thing to note, we needed to get the septic system drawn and submitted as part of our building permit. This included a requirement for a conventional leach field. We actually have not installed the leach field at this point. The plan is to hook up the septic system as shown on our plans where the outflow feeds the blackwater cells then circulates back into the tank. I will add a three way valve on the outflow to add the leach field at a later date if needed but to begin with we want to run it as is and see if we can submit it and try to get the bylaws changed. We are hoping we can convince them once they see it running.

If you are interested, there are some photos of this entire process on our blog. The blog is not officially online yet but you can still access the photos here.

earthship.rlds.ca/?page_id=8

Good luck!