Earthship Owners: How High is a Tire-Tier? 9.5"?

Hello,

To all the Earthship home-owners out there, how high is the average tire-tier in your home?

I am working on modeling Earthship-style homes in 3D using FreeCAD, and would like to know the most common height used in real-life examples.
Any specific information gleaned from architectural drawings, direct measurements, or elsewhere would be greatly appreciated.
-Currently, I am using 24cm (∼9.45") per tier.

In Chapter 5 of Mike Reynolds's book, "Earthship Volume 1", he deemed that a packed tire should be 9 to 9+1/2 inches high (-see attached image).
Seeing as this book is now several decades old, is his information still accurate?  Is a height less or more than 9-9.5" more standard now?

As stated, any help/info. here would be most appreciated.


Thank you,
-Joe L.

It depends entirely on the type of tyre you are using.

I have pounded more than a few tires in my own builds and others even with Earthship Biotecture. This information was never accurate. There is no set height as there is no set standard size of tire, and as layers are added you use smaller and smaller tires anyway.... not even to mention the variances in sidewall size or how much it has been rammed with dirt.

Sorry for the lack of a set number... it just does not exist.   In my experience of the tires I have pounded the height is closer to 11-12in on average.

For my drawings I just take a guess then when building I manage the courses (tiers) as I go and it ends up however it ends up.

Bill

I don't have an earthship so I can't give an average for 'mine' but I don't think the average width of on road tires has changed much over the last 3 decades - modern tires are lower profile but the width is similar based upon vehicle weight - narrower compact tires thru heavy wide SUV and pickup tires.  It might be a bit less because I think more people drive compacts now but slightly wider performance tires are more common too.

Tire sizes are always on the sidewall in millimeters - the P235's on my pickup are 235mm wide or 9.25in, the P205's on my midsize or 8in, the P185's on my compact are 185mm wide or 7.3in.  Wanting to CAD up using an average is a similar danger to asking "how big are bottles? i'm CADding a bottle wall"...  i'd ask back how big of bottles do you have available to build with?  I'd try to keep plans flexible if you don't know if you'll be scoring tires from a schoolbus scrapper vs an urban tire shop mostly focusing on compact/midsize cars - get your tires first and sort before making plans too final.  

Thanks for the replies so far.

I understand that having some degree of flexibility is always a good idea.  However, I would assume that if "approved" architectural drawings called for, say, '12 tiers at a height of 288cm', then that would have to be rigidly followed. -No room for 'mistake', and thus making the building a bit taller or shorter.  But, I suppose this all depends on where you live, what the laws say or don't say, what your own personal preferences are, etc..

The good news here is that all car tires are quite flexible.  So, despite their lack of consistency whilst empty, they probably are able to adapt to most plans/desired-heights when packed (-assuming they're not all thicker truck tires, bus tires, etc.).  From my understanding, many Earthship builders don't just grab every tire offered to them.  There is a considerable bit of care in the selection process.  I imagine I'll be just as selective.

(For those curious, I am designing thoroughly insulated, freestanding Earthship-like homes (i.e., without berms), and with many of the walls 2-tires thick for the additional thermal-mass as well as stability.  For several reasons, designs along these lines require a considerable degree of tire-size consistency.  I hope to get around to sharing these ideas/concepts in a future post.)


-Joe L.