Tire pounding in New Mexico

I live in New Mexico, I would love to talk to someone from here, I live in eastern NM. I would like to go see some builds. I would also like to know what and how people are pounding tires, is there some apparatus that can do it that can save the back. Can adobe be poored, show me your shortcuts. Thanks fellas

We love earthships, but we are retirees and were not having any of that pounding... life's too short! We're building a tire bale home with a NM permit in NW New Mexico (Prewitt -- north of I-40 between Grants and Gallup).
Our walls went up in 4 days plus a couple hours.  They cost us less than $2500 including materials, labor, and hauling fees (this only includes installing the tire bales themselves... not foundation, engineering, etc).  The biggest chunk of the cost was renting a forklift.

If interested, you could check out our blog posts.  The first link below is the site prep and foundation; the second is the tire bale installation, which we just finished on Tuesday. If you want more info I've been deep into this for the last couple years (permitting requirements for building and for recycling tires, engineering plans, etc.) and would be happy to share.  

https://www.brownkawa.com/post/breaking-new-ground
https://www.brownkawa.com/post/getting-tired

Also re: pouring adobe, have you looked into compressed earth block (CEB)?  It uses pressure to make sort of instant earthen blocks that lock together.  You need a machine though (some are manual and some are powered, you might be able to rent one, or buy one used and then sell it when you're done).  Earthbags (or superadobe or hyperadobe) are another less-labor-intensive (than earthship pounding) method.  All those are far more labor intensive than tire bales, though!

Good luck with your build, girlie! (yeah, I know, but I'm not a fella either! haha)

I haven't yet done this myself, but might try this spring. Was just planning on using sand & clay mix, kind of like what's used for adobe, and big sledgehammer. Probably hurt myself after 3 swings LOL. But I'm interested in trying. Have you made any progress yet?

I'm curious about this myself.
Ive always thought cutting off one side wall and using a homemade pounding tool would make sense.
I've never seen or read of anyone cutting off the sidewalls but I have read about a tool consisting of a handle set into concrete.

William Bronson wrote:I'm curious about this myself.
Ive always thought cutting off one side wall and using a homemade pounding tool would make sense.
I've never seen or read of anyone cutting off the sidewalls but I have read about a tool consisting of a handle set into concrete.

I'm curious what you guys think the advantage is of pounding tires vs using tire bales...?  For me, the advantage of bales is having walls erected in 4 days with minimal physical labor.  The disadvantages of tire bales might be transportation or availability, and needing to rent a forklift to place them.  But for me, I would never consider pounding tires to make walls over placing bales...? But maybe I'm just lucky to live 7 miles from a landfill with bales and with really great, accommodating staff...

It's mostly academic for me, I am more interested in building structures with pallets and soil, but its my nature to ponder ways to reuse things.

I think many people who are considering building with tires have little or no money to work with.
Tires can be transported and set in place by almost anyone and  are available anywhere for free.
Bales might me free, or close to it, but I'm not sure if a full sized pickup truck could move more than one, and positioning it on site might require heavy equipment.

At my own lot, tires might become foundations or be used as mechanical concrete for a driveway.
If I really wanted to build with giant blocks, I will probably use IBC totes.

Kimi Iszikala wrote:
I'm curious what you guys think the advantage is of pounding tires vs using tire bales...?

For me, I'm just thinking of a way to help stabilize a hill & incorporating steps. So single tires would be overlapped into tiers / terraces.
I'm not building a house, but if I were, I'd definitely consider the bales. Although I'm fond of old school adobe (but I'm biased) ;)

William Bronson wrote: Tires can be transported and set in place by almost anyone and  are available anywhere for free.
Bales might me free, or close to it, but I'm not sure if a full sized pickup truck could move more than one, and positioning it on site might require heavy equipment.

You're absolutely right about that... we started out using a 16' trailer and could only bring 4 at a time, with a 1-hour round trip. We were EXTREMELY lucky that after our 4th load, the landfill took pity on us and transported the rest of our tires with their semi, at a nominal fee -- so in all, we got 90 1-ton bales, or about 9000 tires, transported to our site for $400 total.  Then we did need to rent a forklift to place them.