Building with Earth
(Page 4 of 6)
April/May 2002
By Dan Chiras
These structures are the brainchild of New Mexico architect and builder Michael Reynolds, who calls his tire homes Earthships. In building an Earthship, tires are laid out, typically in a U-shape, on compacted subsoil or on a foundation.
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The tires are then filled with dirt from the site, and the dirt is compacted using a sledge hammer or a pneumatic tamping device. A fully compacted tire bulges with 300 to 350 pounds of dirt.
After the first row is finished, a second row is laid down, filled with dirt and tamped. Tires are placed on top of the first course in a running bond, with six to eight rows of tires making up a wall.
The tire walls are typically finished with a mud plaster or cement stucco, erasing all evidence of their composition and eliminating fire hazards and potential odors.
The majority of earthen building techniques lend themselves to owner-builder projects.
With the walls complete, the rest of the building is framed in. Depending upon your building design and skills, the result can be the funky look of an Earthship or a more normal-looking house for those with more conventional taste.
Advantages of Tire Homes
• Uses an abundant waste product and local resources. Most are earth-sheltered and thus protected from temperature extremes.
• Often easier to get approval, thanks to extensive data and assistance available from Reynolds.
• Resistant to earthquakes, tornadoes
and hurricanes.
Disadvantages of Tire Homes
• It's hard work.
• Tire homes tend to have an open design and can be noisy and less than private.
• Walls tend to gobble up living space.
Earthbag Homes
Although humans have been using sandbags to build bunkers and to hold back rising flood waters for a very long time, building homes from bags of dirt is a relatively new concept in the field of natural building.
Earthbag walls are made from reject burlap or polypropylene bags (the kind bulk rice comes in). The bags are filled with slightly moistened clay-dirt or cement-stabilized dirt, then pinned shut, laid down on a foundation and tamped. When the soil dries, it hardens like rammed earth. Earthbags are set in a running bond, then covered with plaster. Earthbags are ideal for creating vaults or for building round structures with domed roofs.
Advantages of Earthbag Construction
• Easy to learn.
• Used to build domes, vaults, foun dations and patio walls.
Disadvantages of EarthbagConstruction
• Labor-intensive.
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