The House That Lives: Lessons from an Alaskan Bioshelter

 

Several PEC members toured the Yukon from Fairbanks to Anchorage, led by Rev. Curtis Karns, EP of Yukon Presbytery, and his amazing crew from the Presbytery.

The tour included Curt and Cindee’s amazing and one-of-a-kind, home which they had designed.  (They have since moved, but I am grateful for their hospitality and continued ministry in both social and environmental justice.). Curt was a previous member of the Steering Committee of PEC.  PEC continues to appreciate their work greatly. 

Most people think of a house as a shelter—a place that protects us from the weather while consuming water, energy, and other resources. But tucked into the hillside of Eagle River, Alaska, stands a home that turns that idea upside down. Known as EcoEscape, this remarkable bioshelter was designed to function as a living organism, collecting its own water, recycling its own waste, growing food, and working with nature rather than against it.

Built in the early 1980s by Bob Crosby, EcoEscape began as an experiment. At the time, many rural Alaskan communities lacked modern water and sewer systems. Residents often carried water from lakes or rivers and disposed of waste in so-called “honey buckets.” Installing conventional infrastructure in remote areas was—and remains—staggeringly expensive because of permafrost, rugged terrain, and small populations. In some villages, the cost of installing a modern sewer system has exceeded $50,000 per household toilet. Crosby believed there had to be a better way. Using mostly off-the-shelf materials available from ordinary hardware stores, he created a home-scale water and waste management system for a fraction of that cost.

Years later, Curt and Cindee Karns discovered the unusual house while searching online for environmentally friendly homes. Purchasing it proved difficult because it lacked both a conventional well and septic system, making lenders reluctant to finance it. After successfully persuading the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation to approve a mortgage, they moved into the home in 2008 and continued its mission as a place for education, tours, and environmental workshops.

What makes EcoEscape extraordinary is not exotic building materials or futuristic technology. The house itself is surprisingly conventional. Its walls are wood-framed with standard insulation, its windows are double-paned, and most of its fixtures are familiar to any homeowner. The innovation lies in how the home’s systems work together.

The Karns often described the bioshelter as if it were a living creature. “The house breathes, drinks, digests, and, since we can’t process urine, it pees,” Cindee explained. That simple description captures the philosophy behind the design: every output becomes an input for another part of the system.

Instead of relying on a well, EcoEscape collects rainwater and snowmelt from its roof. Two 5,000-gallon cisterns store the water, one inside the house and another nearby. The primary cistern is more than a storage tank. Filled with gravel, aquatic plants, and koi, it functions as a miniature ecosystem. Fish waste nourishes the plants, while the plants help clean the water. The koi also serve as an early warning system. If someone accidentally introduces a harmful chemical into the water, the fish are the first to react, alerting the homeowners before serious damage occurs. After passing through standard sediment and carbon filters, the water is clean enough for drinking.

Water is only borrowed, never wasted. Water from sinks, showers, and laundry flows through settling tanks populated by beneficial aerobic bacteria that naturally break down contaminants. After several days of treatment, ultraviolet light disinfects the water before it is safely returned to the environment. The system requires only modest maintenance, and its components are readily available from local hardware stores.

Even human waste becomes a resource. Composting toilets send waste into rotating drums where bacteria and red wiggler worms slowly convert it into compost. After nearly two years of decomposition and additional outdoor curing, the material becomes fertile soil that nourishes gardens both inside and outside the home. Kitchen scraps join the same cycle, creating a nearly closed-loop system in which very little is discarded.

The bioshelter also makes excellent use of Alaska’s limited sunlight. Its south-facing glass solarium captures solar energy throughout the day, warming the space while providing an ideal environment for plants. Warm air is circulated throughout the house using a heat recovery ventilation system, reducing the need for supplemental heating. A masonry fireplace provides additional warmth during the coldest weather, while a backup natural gas furnace is used primarily for hot water. Even in winter, the heat stored in the home’s large water cistern helps keep the solarium warm enough for both plants and fish to survive.

When the Karns purchased the property, they expanded its environmental mission by introducing permaculture principles. They added rooftop gardens, planted fruit trees, and began constructing a greenhouse using natural building materials. Their goal was to demonstrate not only sustainable living, but also sustainable food production in one of North America’s most challenging climates.

Yet perhaps the most valuable lesson of EcoEscape is not technological at all.

In a later reflection written after they left the home, Curt and Cindee acknowledged that despite 15 years of living lightly on the planet, hosting tours, teaching classes, and inspiring thousands of visitors, global environmental problems have continued to worsen. They wondered whether their efforts had made any difference.

Their answer was both humble and hopeful: perhaps they planted a seed.

That may be the true legacy of EcoEscape. Its greatest achievement is not simply demonstrating that a house can recycle water, compost waste, or grow food. It shows that sustainable living is possible using practical, understandable systems rather than expensive, high-tech solutions. While no single home can solve climate change, each one can become an example that inspires others to rethink how they live.

As communities everywhere search for ways to conserve water, reduce waste, and build resilience in a changing climate, the lessons from this remarkable Alaskan bioshelter remain as relevant today as they were more than forty years ago. Sometimes the most powerful environmental innovations are not the largest or most expensive. Sometimes they begin with a single house—and the people willing to imagine that it could live as gently on the Earth as the ecosystem surrounding it.

ADDENDUM to the Bioshelter story 

 

In reality, there were 31 steps to arrive at the front door of our mountain home and we weren’t getitng any younger. We chose to move back home to Fairbanks in retirement where  all of our siblings/parents live. Since moving back and leaving the bioshelter to new  caretakers/owners who have not kept up with all of the bioshelter’s systems, Curt and I have  returned to a regular American lifestyle. We moved into a log house heated by fossil fuel  (propane and oil). We have three flush toilets and we recycle the best that we can just like  everyone else. For 15 years we lived lightly on the planet, we invited countless people into our  home to see it, we had students from all over the country see it via zoom, built a straw/clay  greenhouse heated with a rocket stove as well as an attached sauna built from cord wood. As  the tours came through people would oohh and ahhhh and talk about how very cool it was  and how they wished they had that house. We learned and taught permaculture, taught classes, engaged  groups, pushed a no-waste lifestyles. And with all of that, not much has changed as a result of  living in our living house. The country and world’s population continues to rise, the country’s leaders won’t change our trajectory, the pollution continues to worsen, everything is melting and warming faster  than ever. 

 

In reality all we can hope is that we planted a small seed somewhere. We shake our heads and  can’t believe that humanity is very similar to the reindeer on St. Mathhew’s island, who left to  their own devices, ate all the food on the island and starved to death. Or the man who sat on  his roof and prayed for God to help him in the flood while he waved off the rescue boat and  the rescue helicopters, being so sure that “God will save me.” But when he got to heaven and  asked God why God didn’t save him, God said, “I sent boats and helicopters, what did you  want God tells us almost daily of the plight of the planet in different ways, yet we don’t  heed the warnings. We don’t curb our appetites. We consume. But we know it does not have  to be that way. 

 

**Curt continues to work on Citizen’s Climate Lobby and Cindee is working on Alaska’s Food  Security, both gearing up for the stresses: fires, storms, floods, etc. that are sure to come.