Help! Building a tire wall but it's not working

I'm building a tire wall and I'm having trouble getting the tires to stay settled in the days after I fill them. I seem to get them real solid and level but after a day or two they get air pockets and are not hard packed all the way around.

Any tips? Techniques I'm missing?

Our current method: We use a pick axe as a wedge to peel up the top tire rim while we use our feet to kick dirt into the tire sides to pack it in. We also try to pack in some hand sized rocks with a sledge hammer along with dirt to help hold the structure. When that all is basically level, we use a large tamper to flatten and pack down the dirt in the middle of the tire. When finished it seems totally solid and level but when we come back after a day or two the tops of the tires feel a bit squishy like there are air pockets in the tire rims. Help! Pointers needed. Thank you!

We got three wheelbarrows of silt into each tire (a three "U" structure).  We rammed it hard with a home made hydraulic press, and finished with hammers.  If we felt any air pockets they were rammed up until solid.  We never had to go back to get more dirt in a day, or two, later.  We did some tires with straight sledge hammers as well, but once we had the press made, it took over the brunt of the work.  It had a hydraulic piston with a 1/4 section piece of steel pipe welded to it.  Opposite the piston another pipe section was mounted which worked in reaction to the piston pressing outward.  The biggest pain with this system was hauling around a wagon that held the hydraulic unit and battery that ran it, but it beat the hell out of sledge hammering dirt for every tire.  

You really just have to pound the crap out of them with a sledge hammer. Make sure you are pounding into the side walls and not down. Its the dirt in the side walls that gives it strength. You can tamp down the center once the side walls are fully pounded. We averaged about 9-11 5 gallon buckets of dirt into each tire. Also we found that using larger than golf ball sized rocks made levelling difficult and increased the air pockets. Keep at it, its hard long work, but worthit in the end. Took us two years to finish our tire wall, of 9 courses of about 65 tires per course, for a two bed global model.

Have you solved the problem yet? Don't give up, i haven't pounded a tire yet but soon. Without being there to see everything, im thinking the problem may be the dirt, not all dirt is right for packing. I picture it a little too sandy and will pack momentarily but not overnight. Hope to get an update. Good luck

Mike Feddersen wrote:

Oh those glorious dirt bitches, my favorite part of tire pounding! I'm a dirt bitch mofo! And those puffed up tires sure do suck cuz you gotta pound the shit out of the tires around them! Hahaha great video!