Tour a Self-Sustaining Green Earthship Home with 'Zillow Gone Wild'

As intrepid explorer-in-chief on Zillow Gone Wild, HGTV’s real estate safari featuring the market’s most exotic listings, host Jack McBrayer digs into the whys, hows and what-in-the?!s behind homeowners’ unusual choices. On a recent trip to northern New Mexico, he toured an Earthship — that is, an off-the-grid, self-sustaining home created with techniques first developed in the '70s, natural materials and, most notoriously, upcycled trash. (A 2007 documentary about the Earthship's inventor, architect Michael Reynolds, is called The Garbage Warrior.)

Could you live this far off the beaten path? This Earthship’s current captain, LaNaeh, gave Jack an eye-opening and consciousness-raising tour of her digs. (Pun very much intended, a lot of digging goes into building one of these beauties.)

Built in 2010, this three-bedroom, two-bathroom, roughly 2,000-square-foot home is part of the Greater World Subdivision, the biggest community of Earthships in the world. Designed to produce their own energy, food and water, these sustainable homes are located west of the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge in New Mexico’s Taos County. Homeowners have dazzling desert and mountain views in every direction, and the 360 acres of common land they share will never be developed.

Perched on a 1.83-acre lot nearly 7,000 feet above sea level, this property is part of a 630-acre, all-Earthship subdivision about 15 minutes from the high-desert town of Taos. The subdivision can accommodate up to 130 homes, and there are about 60 in the community at present. More than half of the land in the subdivision belongs to everyone, and that “greenbelt” is intended to give all residents plenty of space in perpetuity.

Homeowner and gardener-in-chief LaNaeh has tended this property for the past nine years. She’d planned on living here forever, but “I do have children who are hoping to have children very soon, and I do want to live closer to where my grandbabies are going to be,” she explained. Just inside her front entryway, visitors meet the first of her many, many green babies, a fig tree that thrives in the greenhouse that runs the length of the building.

LaNaeh’s 90-foot atrium features slanted windows that help the interior space mimic her plants’ natural environment, enabling her to grow specimens like this coffee tree that couldn’t survive outdoors. (Temperatures in this part of the state range from 0 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter to 90 degrees in the summer.) She also grows lemons, limes, celery, peas, sweet potatoes, oregano and lavender … you get the idea. “When people come over here for the first time, they’re walking around with amazement that a house [could] have this type of garden [on the inside],” she said.

This home has what’s known as an “autonomous sewage treatment system” that reuses both gray water (that is, water that’s been used for baths, bathroom sinks and washing machines) and black water (or water that’s been used in toilets, dishwashers and kitchen drains). The first sort is piped back to water LaNaeh’s edible plants and eventually operate the toilets in her bathrooms; the second kind flows into a septic tank that ultimately waters exterior landscaping plants. Every drop of water that’s collected on LaNaeh’s property gets used a total of four times.

There are 22 massive windows lining the atrium of this property to drench LaNaeh’s indoor garden in life-giving light. Above them, two sets of solar panels heat water and supply electricity to her machinery and appliances. “The internet is the only utility I pay for out here,” she explained. “Other than that, this house is entirely free.” When the nearby town of Taos loses power, she often doesn’t even notice.

The familiar-looking “steps” providing access to LaNaeh’s roof are upcycling in action. “This is a great example of the tires in the foundation of the house,” she explained. “They’re cantilevered up, and this becomes the back wall of the house — but I’ve used them here as a stairstep.” During the house’s construction, builders used sledgehammers to pack the dirt inside the tires. “Form and function? Sign me up, LaNaeh!” Jack exclaimed.

On the other side of LaNaeh’s slanted roof, ridges and channels direct every drop of precipitation to her water-catchment system. “I have four 1,700-gallon cisterns, and that’s what supplies my water for the house itself,” she said. This part of New Mexico gets an average of 21 inches of rainfall per year, which is why every precious drop gets put to work four times.

The Earthship’s exterior is entirely recycled, featuring pounded tires with earth, aluminum cans and bottles. The interior prioritizes upcycling as ornamentation as well: “Part of being sustainable is that we wanted to take care of some of the products ending up in the landfill, so we take those things and we recycle them and use them as materials to build with,” LaNaeh said.

Steps from the interior garden and through a graceful arch studded with gleaming glass bottles, the open-plan kitchen and living room features an eat-in island and intricate custom cabinetry. Believe it or not, these spaces feel airy and comfortable throughout the year without supplemental heat or air conditioning. The home’s rammed-earth walls absorb heat during the day and release it at night, maintaining a steadily pleasant temperature all the time.

The hand-troweled earthen walls in LaNaeh’s cozy bedroom and elsewhere in her home sparkle with pink mica sourced from local mines. They're embedded with another detail that's more practical than pretty: Vents known as "earth tubes" transmit cool air from room to room in the summertime.

LaNaeh is particularly fond of the way repurposed glass functions in her bedroom. “[The builders] would cut the tops off of bottles and put them end to end and use them in the wall,” she explained, “so they were not using up as much material to make that wall. But then it becomes a beautiful feature, and for me in the morning when I wake up, the sun is shining through [the] bottles, it’s like bubbles!”

Speaking of sights in the primary suite, LaNaeh’s cistern-powered shower and tub have views that are rather … community-minded, let’s say. “Check it out,” she said. “You’re naked, you’ve got the soap on, you see all the neighbors out the window…”

“I don’t want to get arrested!” Jack replied.

With a graceful retaining wall, LaNaeh’s biomorphic bath isn’t totally exposed to the elements — though it does feel connected to them, given both the dreamy lunar mural she added to its interior and the fact that sun and rain provide all of its heat and water. Humidity-loving plants like the staghorn fern suspended beside her showerhead adore spaces like these, thanks to the way the Earthship’s interior retains moisture.

Impressive as the greenhouse is, LaNaeh’s outdoor garden is no slouch when it comes to supplying her kitchen. She’s got apple, nectarine and peach trees to supplement the atrium’s bounty, as well as roses and other ornamental plants.

LaNaeh’s fragrant cedar fencing provides privacy at eye level, while her 16’ x 16’ raised deck and dining area offer panoramic views of the area. Though it can get quite chilly at night in the fall and winter, it’s tempting to stray from the cozy fire pit after the sun goes down. New Mexico is a dark-sky state with strict regulations on artificial illumination at night, and this area’s high altitude, dry climate and relatively remote location add up to spectacular stargazing.