For a very long time I have had the desire to build myself a house. I don't just want to build your average brick or wooden frame house. I want to build a rammed earth, tyre house. I was first wowed by the Earthship houses about 8-9 years ago and have a mental image of exactly what I want to build all drawn up in my head since then. Not only are the tyres great insulation and strong, but in a lot of cases you can get them for free. It costs garages/mechanics money to dispose of the things and are usually only to happy to let you take them away. There are millions if not billions of tyres thrown away every year, all over the world. Why not take them and use them again to build gorgeous houses like these?
And this is what they start out as...
... tyres rammed tightly with earth and stacked on top of each other like bricks. Then they get rendered and hey presto you have a tyre wall.
The Earthship buildings have been designed to be as self sufficient as possible. You can read all about them on the Earthship website.
If you are a builder or a keen DIY person I have found this great site that is trying to help reduce building waste. It's called Trade Leftovers and it does exactly what the name suggests. It gives you a place to advertise any left over building materials, so you can either sell or trade them instead of throwing them in the skip.
2 months ago
