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Jiff64138

similar goals,more experience, expanding into similar territories, already pretty self sufficient.

Conor

Tell you what would be interesting -

Building an Earthship but, instead of rammed earth tyres, using Liberator-made CEBs. The Earthship is an awesome piece of autonomous housing design, but the drawback is that ramming earth with a sledgehammer into thousands of tyres is really labour-intensive. Compressed earth blocks have the advantages of tyres - they are good insulators and made from local materials - but take a lot less labour. The water, energy and waste systems developed for Earthship could be kept as they are.

Jiff64138

bingo,exactly why I made the suggestion. Build earthen brick submerged dwelling with Monolithic Dome top. Would the water be potable after running down a polyurethane foam roof?

Colin

The idea behind using tires in an earthship is two-fold: Structural integrity--wet climates tend to erode earthen brick over time. Recycling: there is no conventional route for recycling vulcanized rubber. The best thing (being done at scale) is to grind it up into asphalt. Of course, rubber can be pyrolyzed carefully at high heat into synthesis gas, but to use them structurally is probably a better idea. now, maybe if the brick pressing idea could be adapted to packing tires, we'd have a perfect solution.

Jiff64138

The Link for the first post no longer valid, correct link (E.V.E.) Earthship Village Ecologies

jerryshaw

Do tires outgas though? Is there a health risk using tires?

Allen15

The tires that are being used for Earthships don't have an off-gassing problem. Brand new tires might off-gas, but no one would waste perfectly new tires on rammed-earth construction. Tests have shown that by the time a tire has 30K miles on it or more, any off-gassing it was going to do is already done.

Colin's post is right on target.

Jiff64138

Mike Reynolds was told by someone who would know, something to the effect that the thread-bare tires are about harmful as a peanut and jelly sandwich. A quick search turned up the below.

Q. What about used tires out-gassing into the house? Don’t tires do that?

A. Any gas produced by used tires in this application will have to go through at a minimum; a moisture barrier of 6 mil construction plastic film and at least 1" of stucco (cement) or adobe plaster, with nothing forcing it to do so (static pressure, both sides of barrier). NOTE: The surface of used tires has been subjected to years of exposure to oxygen by high speed rotation in the atmosphere. This exposure causes a phenomenon called oxidation. Oxidation 'interlocks' the surface molecules with oxygen and 'out-gassing' (fly-away molecules of synthetic rubber) is considerably limited, if not stopped completely. It's the new tires that stink/outgas, they just need to “rust” for a while, before they are suitable for use as a building material.

and from several places.

Rubber tires make a wind- and puncture- resistant wall. They may be safe from outgassing when plastered semi-airtight.

dada

I am trying to get a project started in Guyana using OST. Does anyone have an idea how to best go about doing it. I was told that it would be to expensive to ship equipment from the US. Thanks for your input and collaboration.
Dada

Matt_Maier

Man, pounding dirt into 750 tires with a sledghammer doesn't sound like any fun at all.

Maybe they could put the tire on a spinning plate and use that to jam the dirt into it. Like a centrifuge. Just drop the dirt in the middle and it should find its way into the tire. Maybe it wouldn't fill up the middle...at least it would be more fun.

Clifton

Here is my question...
If you replace the tire wall with a CEB wall, and bermed up to the CEB wall in a similar manner, every 6"-9" in height or so... how thick would you need to build your CEB wall to retain the berm? And would you need to consider any special measures for a CEB retaining wall? I don't really know the answer, myself.

I would say that weathering for the CEB wall would be a non issue for an earthship because it is completely covered by the berm. Perhaps in the forward facing sections in front of the south wall they would need to be stabilized, but not the back and side walls.

Allen15

Pounding dirt into hundreds of tires may not seem like or sound like fun, but it does make for a durable wall, and on the plus side, you only have to do it once per building... It will last forever.

I think that is the main reason that the company Earthship Biotecture tends to have an army of helpers on any given build, though most of them are volunteers.

With sufficient planning, folks could have scheduled parties where they traveled to help out with the grunt work on each other's home building.

Matt_Maier

You're not going to achieve any kind of scale at all when you need "an army" of volunteers to do your massive amount of manual labor. If you want a permanent way to keep dirt from going anywhere, just toss this concrete cloth stuff over it, water it, and come back tomorrow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS859KlD7ec

Metz

there is always building a house with foam board, then spraying stucco reinforced with plastic fiber over it. They were working on this in Haiti several years ago. i recall they were using floating slab floors also...

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