Tire Bale

Anyone have experience building in tire bales?  More to the point, anyone got a permit through their local planning board and can they share the application and permit with me so I can take it to my local goverment to show them I'm not crazy?

Thanks in advance!

Joe,

I am currently building a tire bale home in Kansas. My experience is unique as the county within which we are building does not have building codes... only septic requirements and standard offsets for where the home can be on the property. This is very unique and took me years (and a good amount of luck) to find such a lenient location. For you, I would guess, that it likely will all depend upon the local codes and the individuals within the zoning committee and if they are open minded wanting to help people or are code wonks looking to say no as often as possible.

My experience showed me that talking directly to the zoning committee about what I was hoping to do was the best way to assess the situation and how to move forward as soon as possible.  Also, most zoning codes have a process to apply for variances. If they say that a tire bale build is not allowed you can ask if they have a variance application process.

On a side note, having some earthship building experience (I have my degree in Biotecture from Earthship Biotecture in Taos NM) and well into a full size tire bale build I would personally hesitate on encouraging anyone without extensive building experience to do a tire bale build... not that it cannot be done. On the surface it appears simple, but it is anything but simple... or easy. Depending on your reasons for doing a tire bale build there are some other options that are simpler/easier and more within standard building codes.

Here is the website for my build. http://www.dragonflyprairie.com/full-build/

The photos are a month or two behind, but you will get the idea.  

Best - Bill

Hey Bill!

Strangely enough, I don't have building permits here, either.  I just need to show Missouri DNR that this kind of building works, or more specifically, that other governments have accepted that this kind of building works.  Then they can tell the local tire recycler he can release the bales to me.

Their main concern is that the baling wire will corrode and release the bales before the the tires lose their elasticity and then I'll end up with tires being flung all over the place.  Based on what I'm reading, four out of five wires have to corrode before you start to have a problem, and while you might have one or two fluke failures in the first couple of decades, the chances that even one bale out of hundreds will go bad in the first decades should be negligible.  Since the bales are stacked in a running bond, even if that happens, the neighbors should be more than enough to keep it from moving at all.

The project itself, since you're curious, is not a house, but a wedding venue castle.  Basically, we're using the tire bales as the outer wall which we will backfill with a long slope on which the rest of our buildings will be built.  The tire wall will be 8-12 feet high and will support low crenelations at alternating at 3 and 4 feet tall along the top edge.  I'll stucco the front face, probably with shotcrete, unless someone knows a better way.  Some of our wall will want to be taller towers up to 20 feet, and I expect to reinforce and stabilize those with an interior structure, plus their round profile should strenghten them greatly.  I understand it's a bad idea to free stack tires much over 25 feet.  In total, I have around 1600-2000 feet of wall to put in, so I think you can instantly see why I'm looking at tire bales.  I'd like to finish within my lifetime.  I also have the tools I need to do most of this already.

Any wisdom you may have is greatly appreciated, and if your Kansas site is anywhere close to the border with central Missouri (closest KS town to me is Ft. Scott), I'd love to make the trip out and see what you're doing and how.

Congrats on your certification, and your photos look great!  I love the little cabin you put together, too.  Looks quite cozy.

2000ft of wall, that is a lot of tyres and earth.
Photos would be great to see.
You maybe able to get the bales regularly and even have clean fill delivered, but you would need a skid steer or similar to move the dirt and maybe acrane for the bales.
There is a couple building just with bles on this site somewhere.

I will DEFINITELY be putting some hours on the skid steer with this project, I agree!

Hi Joe,

Thanks for the PM or I would not have noticed this... I thought I'd post the info I sent you privately in case it's helpful to anyone else. I think stacking the bales more than 3 courses high might require more engineering. I hope you are not planning on doing the towers out of bales! They weigh a ton each... sounds like an interesting project, and I agree a great application for tire bales. For covering them the quickest way, I recommend stuffing the gaps with riprap, clean trash, building materials scraps, dirt, rocks anything you can find... then staple a wire mesh over them following the contour if you want it like rocks ,or straight if you want a straight wall. Then have it shotcreted. You can do it without stuffing the walls if you are happy to use tons of extra concrete. The wire will help; without it folks have had a hard time getting the shotcrete to adhere to the tires.

Anyway, here is a repeat of the info I PMed...

Our structural engineer, Precision Structural Engineering in Oregon but licenced in 48 states could be a good resource.  They do a lot of green building, and we were their first tire bale structure (New Mexico requires an engineering plan for both a tire recycling permit and an alternative materials building permit). They even added a web page to their site highlighting building with tires, based on our house: https://www.structure1.com/tire-bale-home-engineering/ [some of the links on that page are broken] If you need a structural engineer, they are probably the best people to go to. The guy who used to do tire bale homes in CO is dead. Although talk with Jim Gagnepain because I think another CO engineer might have taken over Mike Shealy's engineering designs? Precision required a lot more concrete so that is a benefit of going with CO plans.

Here is the tire bale permit application file for NM showing that they permit building with tire bales https://www.env.nm.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2018/04/SWB_CEA-Large-Permit-Application-Revised-12-21-2018.pdf

Here is NM code related to building with (or maybe hauling and storing) tire bales that the NM env guy said we had to be familiar with:  (links accurate as of March 2020, this is environmental code rather than building permit code):
http://www.srca.nm.gov/parts/title20/20.009.0020.html 20.9.20.8, .10, .13, .14, (.18,.20,.21), .23, .26, .33, .37, .38, .41, .42, .47, .48, .49, .50, .51, .53

Here is the NM building page that lists building permit forms https://www.rld.nm.gov/construction-industries/forms-and-applications/
Here are the forms we needed from that page:
Multipurpose Building Application
Homeowner Permit forms
Alternative methods and materials forms

Here is a pdf on engineering for building with tire bales -- I assume Mike Shealy had something to do with this: https://www.solaripedia.com/files/1171.pdf

And I attached the file that I couldn't figure out how to attach in the PM, plus a couple others.

Hope that helps!

Kimi

Joe Bearden wrote:I will DEFINITELY be putting some hours on the skid steer with this project, I agree!

Once you get over 2 bales high you might need more than a skid steer...? Or do you have forks on your skid steer with a lift arm? We rented a forklift with a boom arm. You need to be able to go ~8' out and as high as your wall while holding a one-ton load.  We often used the fork to reach over top of the structure and tip the forks down to pull bales back a little to adjust, or to go on top of the bale to press it down to settle it.

We didn't know what we were doing and did 120 foot of wall and it took ~3 days. Once you get going it will go much faster. Our 3 days includes delivery; we were waiting on the next truckload a fair amount of the time. Our recycling permit did not allow us to store bales because we are in the middle of a very dry woodland and it's a fire hazard -- and at first we only could haul 4 bales at a time with an hour round trip each load!  Then the landfill thankfully bailed us out (so to speak) by delivering truckloads of 28 at a time.

Also check out Foxhole Homes (veteran housing development using tire bales; they have a facebook page and website). I think their first tire bale wall was 3 bales high and 100' long and took one day with a forklift. Might have only been 2 bales high (outdoor retaining wall).

Joe Bearden wrote:Hey Bill!

Strangely enough, I don't have building permits here, either.  I just need to show Missouri DNR that this kind of building works, or more specifically, that other governments have accepted that this kind of building works.  Then they can tell the local tire recycler he can release the bales to me.

Their main concern is that the baling wire will corrode and release the bales before the the tires lose their elasticity and then I'll end up with tires being flung all over the place.  Based on what I'm reading, four out of five wires have to corrode before you start to have a problem, and while you might have one or two fluke failures in the first couple of decades, the chances that even one bale out of hundreds will go bad in the first decades should be negligible.  Since the bales are stacked in a running bond, even if that happens, the neighbors should be more than enough to keep it from moving at all.

Great that you don't have to deal with building permits! You will have to do more due diligence to make sure that what you are building is engineered well...

When we had our bales in place you could stand on top and rock the whole thing. It did not feel stable at all -- we thought it would be super solid with those huge footprint 1-ton blocks. In fact, we decided to remove some of the buttress bales, and all it took was for Chip (hubby) to stand on top and shove the unwanted bale off with his foot -- it caused 3 bales to tumble! (luckily they were the 3 bales we wanted to get rid of, since we didn't have the forklift any more, and couldn't have put them back).

The structure did not solidify until we put on the concrete bond beam. I think a concrete bond beam is really a necessity.

Re: wires, you know to put the wires parallel to the wall, right? That means the longest dimension of the bale will be the thickness of the wall. If you have it all shotcreted in I don't see why the wires would corrode. You should add a vapor barrier if you plan to berm the wall.

Engineering plans would be a worthwhile investment for a project like this, especially if it is a rented venue with liability concerns.

Joe Bearden wrote:Some of our wall will want to be taller towers up to 20 feet, and I expect to reinforce and stabilize those with an interior structure, plus their round profile should strenghten them greatly.  

I wonder if earthbags would be a good choice for the round towers? You'd have a lot more flexibility. Although I don't know if they are recommended for structures that high either.

Kimi Iszikala wrote:Then have it shotcreted. You can do it without stuffing the walls if you are happy to use tons of extra concrete. The wire will help; without it folks have had a hard time getting the shotcrete to adhere to the tires.

Precision required a lot more concrete so that is a benefit of going with CO plans.

Hi Joe,

You asked (PM) about our concrete use. Precision first wanted us to do a full concrete foundation. When we pressed for minimal concrete, they re-engineered it for a concrete footprint underneath the bales -- sticking out 6" wider than the bales on both sides, and something like 18" deep (with gravel underneath that). It was a conservative approach because none of us were in NM at the time and we couldn't do an engineering soils test. Given that we built on a sandy loam hill, it's probably good that we are over-engineered. If you get a good soils test you probably wouldn't need as much.

The CO plans I have seen do not have concrete below the bales, but they are built on dry prairie so that makes sense and might not work where we are.

We also had I think 10" of concrete bond beam at the top. I would call that absolutely necessary to stabilize the bales as I mentioned.

Shotcrete is by far the fastest way to get the bales solidly covered, but also takes lots of concrete. The more times you spend filling holes the less concrete it will take.

Hope that helps!

Kimi

Can you infill the tyres with soil, prior to shotcreting?