Family Builds Earthship

Bernie and Diane Wylie and their four children live in Nanaimo. The family is building an earthship. It is a house made out of old car and truck tires. The Wylies will use about 700 tires to build the house. They will pack each tire with 159 kilograms (350 pounds) of dirt. Then, they will stack the tires like bricks to form walls. They will use aluminum cans to fill the spaces between the tires. The inside walls will have a coat of plaster to make them smooth.

The first earthship was built in New Mexico in the nineteen eighties. These houses are becoming popular in the United States and Canada.

Bernie Wylie says the house will cost about $20,000 to build. The family hopes to move into their earthship this fall.

Did you Know? Old tires are a big problem for the environment. In North America, about 250 million tires are thrown into garbage dumps each year.

In 1989, a garbage dump near Toronto caught fire. The dump had 14 million old tires. It took firefighters 17 days to put out the fire.

Background Information

Today, protecting the environment is very important. Talk about what you do (or should do) to help the environment. You could include recycling, not using aerosol cans, using organic soap, etc.

Questions

1. What is the Wylie family building?

2. Where are they from?

3. How many tires will they use to build their house?

4. What is another word for dirt?

5. Why do you think the Wylies want to build a house out of tires and aluminum cans?

6. What do you think the earthship will look like?

7. Where was the first earthship built?

8. Use the word popular in a sentence.

9. What is the environment?

10. Why do you think we need to protect the environment?