Cob vs Earthship -

We have been spending some time (ok a day's discussion) over possibly building a cob house by the early evening we were finding that the flexibility of cob and getting a house style home with tons of artistic ability would be fun to do - besides who doesnt like smooshing cob between their feet and splattering it on a wall?

However after some more thought our hearts went back to the earthship, for us it made more sense for us and it is the style we love. We figured that we want to build our own home but not a home that looks like a normal home we love the earthship design the flexability of the space for us to place what we want where we want and the use of the berm.

So we fell back in love with the earthship, however we did conclude that we will not be doing the can walls (we still want the artistic bottle walls) we will be doing cob walls to add to our thermal mass and to give us the artistic creativity that we love. our house main walls will be tire walls, and the frame work will be wood but we will also add in the cob walls and we will be also adding an earthen floor

I believe both designs are great but I had concerns over adding a greenhouse to the front of a cob house I read things that questioned my faith in it holding up. I also wanted to berm my cob house and some articles suggested that doing so would not last and that the cob house is better off being free standing and have living roofs. you can still use passive solar for heating your home in the cob house but the humidity from adding the greenhouse raised questions of keeping said cob dry and structually sound. I felt I could live without the greenhouse on my house but it is one of the main items I loved about the earthship and what got us here in the first place. Being able to grow our own food in our home that I can simply wake up and grab a fruit while walking around the house in my underware in the middle of winter.

no matter how much it would make a great youtube video I don't plan on venturing outside in my undies in winter to our free standing outside greenhouse.

So earthship wins with the modification of added Cob :)