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by Peter Sur Hawaii Tribune-Herald Staff Writer MOUNTAIN VIEW-- Somewhere, deep in the forest, rises the House of the Future. That's the promise of the Earthship, a self-sustaining structure that proves you can build a home without relying on water lines, an electric grid, sewage system or building -permits. Last week Saturday,I visited a dozen ecology-minded citizens from Taos,N.M., who were turning old tires and beer bottles into walls and windows. The building is located about a mile down a bumpy,muddy road.This made me wonder: "Will the Roads of the Future also look like this?" And: "If Kilauea is the nation's top producer of sulfur dioxide,why build an Earthship here?Wouldn't it make more sense to plug the volcano?" Earthship Biotecture founder Mike Reynolds has been building these houses for some 35 years. Saturday,he was pounding dirt into a tire, one of about 1,000 "rammed-earth bricks encased in steel-belted rubber" that will be used in the construction of the Earthship. Reynolds says the building heats and cools itself naturally via solar energy, gets power from the sun and wind,harvests water from rain, contains and treats sewage, is built with "society's byproducts" and produces a significant amount of food. "It's a house that will take care of itself in spite of the infrastructure," Reynolds said. "Because the house is made from rubber, there's no termite problem,no hurricane problem,no earthquake problem." Reynolds says when the basic house is erected, "people from California" will live in it and complete the structure, which may take months or years. He's asked whether all the permits have been completed for the Earthship. "Not necessarily," he said. "We're demonstrating this concept, and from the design people will see what, if anything,they need to get a variance on." Reynolds asks that the exact location of this dwelling not be revealed,for that reason. Also working at the site is Kirsten Jacobsen,who's setting "glass bricks" into a concrete wall. I would call the bricks "two glass jars,held together at the open end by duct tape," but this is the House of the Future. Jacobsen explains that building an Earthship takes more labor than a conventional home, but the cost of materials is lower.That makes sense; how many people does it take to raise a tire-- er,a "rammed-earth brick" -- above your head?The tires were set into the wall with generous globs of concrete, which were pocked with hammers so that the plaster could "bite" into it when it was added. Someone also sets into the wall an empty Gatorade bottle. While trying not to consider the redemption value of the beer and soda cans that were being placed in the wall, I promised to come back later, and did some research in the a Comm. No. 0 Z 3 fief. To: P j W P i_ fief. Date nCT 0 2 2012