Need free tires?

I just purchase 28 acres just outside of Macon, GA and the land was clearly used as an illegal tire dump site. I have hundreds, if not thousands, of tires for anyone who would like to come get them!

Megan Lynn wrote:I just purchase 28 acres just outside of Macon, GA and the land was clearly used as an illegal tire dump site. I have hundreds, if not thousands, of tires for anyone who would like to come get them!

Have you tried contacting the folks who build houses out of tires? They're called "Earth Ships".

Gail Gardner wrote:

Megan Lynn wrote:I just purchase 28 acres just outside of Macon, GA and the land was clearly used as an illegal tire dump site. I have hundreds, if not thousands, of tires for anyone who would like to come get them!

Have you tried contacting the folks who build houses out of tires? They're called "Earth Ships".

That’s why I posted in this topic “earthship”... I figured people here would be interested and potentially trying to build one.

Are people still doing that?

I always thought of it as too much needless work, both packing the tires full of earth mix and then building with a series of heavy, flat discs. It is much faster to build a wall using the same soil mixture, but tamping it down between either traditional removable concrete forms, or better yet, between insulated concrete forms that remain in place and insulate the thermal mass. There isn't really an earthship idea that can't be done better without tires.

Also, tires are toxic, and will continue to offgas until there's nothing left unless completely encapsulated. This is an issue, as one of the aims of healthy housing is often a breatheable housing envelope, especially in areas where certain types of radioactive gases can emanate from the soil into underground or earth-connected dwellings (I think xenon gas is the one most often mentioned). If your housing envelope breathes (as opposed to being impermeable to air), the tires in the structure are still going to offgas, and they are going to do so right into the home.

Have you looked into the cost of recycling? I would imagine it might be prohibitive.

One idea I suppose might work is perhaps using a mat of whole tires as a geotextile of sorts to form the base for a roadway or paths where it might be necessary to control erosion and distribute weight. I mean, they wouldn't really be encapsulated, even if filled with sand and gravel, compacted, and then graded, but in the right location, the land to either side could be treated regularly with an aggressive fungus of the sort used in bioremediation of polluted soil, like Oyster mushrooms. The decomposition of the tires would be slowed enough that healthy fungi in the ground down plume of them would manage the excess zinc, heavy metals and hydrocarbons handily.

Do you have any plans to use them yourself?

-CK