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Commentary from Bill Wesley, owner of garage

A tire bale is an excellent building block for “earth friendly” construction. It allows us to re-use an otherwise discarded waste material. It provides the structure and thermal mass that we need in a passive solar building.

We have been living in and thoroughly enjoying our Earthship for five years. Our paradigm for the “perfect home” is rooted in the Earthship model. We have merely replaced “pounding tires” with “stacking tire bales” in our subsequent construction projects. Tire bales give us more thermal mass, re-use more waste product, and are a lot less work than we experienced building with rammed-earth tire construction in our Earthship.

Tire bales, however, require heavy equipment to transport to and build with on-site. Initially, our tire bales came from Vern and Annie Houtchens’ baling facility at Midway Tires between Pueblo and Colorado Springs. Randy O’Bannon, the person who introduced us to tire bales, was hauling used tires out of the valley to Midway. He hauled tire bales back to us on otherwise empty return trips. More recently, we have received tire bales from Ernest Cordova and Sons in Cuba New Mexico. Ernest Cordova has also arranged for us to get tire bales from a friend of his in Fort Collins, Colorado. Transporting the tire bales to our site has involved the use of semi trucks and trailers. The challenge of manipulating the tire bales on site was solved by our neighbor, Stan Woodman and his big John Deer tractor. Stan welded some heavy steel together to make a clamp to pick up and carry the bales around with his tractor.

Pump House

Construction: We used 33 tire bales. We brought our water pipes, electrical wires, and drainpipe from underground up to near the well. We poured a cement slab around our well to make the floor and stacked the tire bales, three high directly on top of each other, on the ground around the outside of the cement slab to form four walls with an opening facing south for the door way. We bermed the exterior east, west, and north sides with on-site dirt making a gentle slope from grade to the top of the tire bales. Our property used to be part of the SLV Muskrat Ranch. There is an abundance of very heavy gauge “chicken wire” around here that was used as fencing for the muskrats. We covered all exposed rubber including the inside and exterior south side of the tire bales, first with the muskrats’ wire, then with cement and then with fast wall stucco and a color coat. We formed and poured a regular stem wall on top of the tire bales. Anchor bolts in the stem wall held our top plate of pressure treated 2x8s, upon which we placed our trusses. We secured our trusses with hurricane clips. Our trusses had a 1-12 pitch facing south to match that of our Earthship. We topped it off with ¾” plywood deck and sidewalls, some tar paper, and covered the whole roof structure with propannal. We vented the roof structure on the east and west sides above R-38 rolled insulation, and installed a cedar ceiling inside for visual and aromatic ascetics. The thickness of the tire bale wall allowed us to situate two exterior entry doors in the doorway, one flush with the exterior and the other flush with the interior, thus making an entryway or air space between the two doors.

Operation: The pump house contains the pressure tank for our water system and an array of shelves for food storage etc. We have no heater and have not used any heat lamps or other devices to produce heat inside our pump house. During the winter the inside temperature does not drop below 38 degrees above zero Fahrenheit. The heat storage properties of the tire bale construction with about an R-38 insulated ceiling and the insulation from the surrounding earth berm produces a narrow ten-degree range of temperature through out the whole winter. This is an efficient long-term storage for keeping apples and potatoes in excellent condition.

Garage

Construction: There are 19 tire bales forming a front face connecting wall between our Earthship and garage. The U-shaped wall of the garage is composed of another 106 tire bales. The bales are stacked in place, like bricks, bermed around the exterior, and covered with muskrat wire, cement, fast wall stucco, and a color coat on the interior and south face. We formed the first four feet of the interior wall and poured cement to make a straight vertical wall. We sculptured the cement coat around the tire bales the rest of the way up so slight outlines of tire bales appear like huge fake rocks. Like the pump house, we built a stem wall on top to make a squared and level surface to attach sill plates and trusses. We back filled the floor area to get the height we wanted. We laid radiant heat tubing for a back up heating system and had McGuire Construction pour a cement floor. We constructed the front face, facing south, out of 2x6s with a laminated 2x12 header across the whole wall to accommodate the large window and door space below. We went with a slightly steeper pitch (1 ½ - 12) for the factory built trusses running north and south. We ran 2x4 perlins east/west and 7/16 OBS for the roof deck and sides. We covered all that with tar paper and propannel roofing. We are currently in the middle of this part of the construction project.

Greenhouse

Plan: Our future greenhouse will be constructed in a similar manner as the garage. It will be long and narrow, situated to the south and parallel with the Earthship and Garage.

Note:

Our favorite color of propannel is Patina Green. The metal work on the Earthship, pump house, and garage is Patina Green. We plan the same for the Greenhouse. Our favorite color for the stucco on the exterior cement work of our buildings is #110 Cottonwood. We have a lot of tire bales yet to cover and build upon. We welcome visitors and encourage interested people to consider this type of construction.

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