Reflections on our tire press

We've been getting emailed questions about our tire press, so I thought I would attempt to recap our experiences with it.

As described in an earlier posting we built the press out of materials we had on hand. The press design is quite simple.  The unit consists of:

• a stubby hydraulic cylinder, 
• two rounded steel plates welded at either end of the cylinder, 
• a control valve to extend and retract the cylinder, 
• hydraulic hose plus fittings,
  
• and a portable hydraulic pump that plugs into a standard 120 volt wall outlet.

The hydraulic cylinder is approximately 1' retracted length (including the attached steel plates) and extends out another 3-4" at full extension. The steel plates are 5/16" thick and were cut from steel pipe that was approximately 16 inches in diameter.  The photo shows the initial plates that I used that came close to packing an entire tire in one pass.  These plates were impractical ... it was too hard to place the packer in a tire, and it simply did not pack well.  We settled on much smaller plates that were only about 6" wide.

As shown in the video (below this paragraph) the size of the packer is dictated by the inside diameter of the tires being filled.  The packer is dropped into a previously hand packed tire that is still hollow in the middle.  With the packer fully retracted, dirt is then shoveled into the tire so that when the packer cylinder is extended the new and existing dirt is packed into the tire.  The packer is rotated and this process is repeated until the tire is sufficiently packed.

After the tire is sufficiently packed, the packer is removed.  The tamper is then used to fill and compact the centre of the tire.
 Our tamper was simply an old sprocket welded to a five foot length of steel pipe.  The whole 
unit weighs significantly more and has a much wider packing head (approximately 8" diameter) than a sledge hammer.  It was very effective at packing the centre of the tires.
Many thanks to Mike Casey for building and lending this packer to us!

Tamping requires a person to straddle the tire and compact the dirt by pounding the tamper up and down while periodically adding dirt until the tire is filled and compacted.
Care needs to be taken to not stand on the edges of the tire being tamped initially, as you run the risk of reducing the compaction of the tire by collapsing the dirt in the rim.  You also do no want to strike the side walls of the tire with the packer as this will also reduce the compaction of the tire.

Our packer was fairly small and portable.  We mounted the hydraulic pump and electric motor combination on a wheel barrow so that it could be moved easily from tire to tire.  We ran a 50' extension cord to an available electrical outlet.  (We also ran the unit off of a 3500 watt gas generator during a power failure.)  The hoses were long enough such that the packer could be used at the top of an eight foot wall with the packer at the base of the wall.
As the walls got higher the packer stayed inside the building, and we brought dirt to the tires from the outside of the building and backfilled as we went.  This meant that moving the dirt was done at ground level and the operator of the packer stood on a ladder as the walls got higher.  We had to extend the lever controlling the cylinder so that the person operating it could still extend and retract the ram.




I guess the important question is was it worth it?  Was the packer effective? Did we save time, money or labour?

In terms of cost our packer was essentially free.  I had all of the parts needed to make this unit, although I did cannibalize one piece of equipment that will have to be put back together.  Also, I did all of the welding and assembly, and it went together surprisingly quickly.  So, there was very little cost in building this unit. I suspect you could pay a few thousand dollars buying and scrounging the parts needed.

The packer proved to be very effective in packing the tires, it did a very consistent job of filling and compacting the rims of the tires.  I can only compare the effectiveness of the packer to tires we filled with sledge hammers on our first tier and tires I have seen in finished buildings.  Both methods seem equally effective at compacting dirt in a tire.  One advantage of the packer is that it did not get tired, and loose oomph as the day went on.  Quality control was critical regardless of the method used, and we were careful to consistently inspect finished tires.

We definitely saved a lot of hard labour using the packer.  We were exhausted after a day of hand packing the tires.  The hydraulic press eliminated the physically demanding effort of packing with the sledge hammer.  The tamping was still done by hand (and generated lots of complaints) but was far easier than the alternative.

I also think that the packer saved us time.  A crew of three was very efficient when filling tires; one to operate the packer, one to shovel dirt and one to tamp tires and supply dirt to the shoveler.  I am estimating (guessing?) that we could easily have done half a row of tires a day (approximately 40) and finished the main tire wall in under a month with a dedicated crew of three to four people.  It took us three months, we did not work steadily, and our crew of volunteers changed constantly.  I suspect that either method can be very efficient.  The bigger issue with either method is keeping people busy packing tires.  A lot of time and effort goes into moving, supplying and preparing material (dirt, tires, water and cardboard).  More than once we stopped working to scrounge tires, move dirt or cut cardboard!

Ultimately, at the end of the day using a hydraulic packer meant that the crew was as happy at the end of the day as at the beginning!

Fall and the Building Site

Cooler temperatures arrived around here right at the beginning of September. We no longer have the oppressive heat of July and August, and we have had a significant amount of rain that we were sorely lacking over the last two months.

Sandra and I have been working away on the eighth round of tires since the beginning of the month, and we are now a third of the way done. We hope to be done this round of tires by early next week. The kids had their first full day of school today, and we packed 18 tires while they were gone.

We used up all of our tires today, so hopefully Gary (Sandra's dad) has some luck in Kamloops today and brings back lots of tires. Thanks Gary!

Because we are now bringing in tires as we are using them the last two courses of tires have been layed out slightly differently. I am mixing different sizes of 235's much more as I lay them down. I started doing this for the simple reason that I do not have tires all of one size to do an entire row anymore. The results have been amazing! I have eliminated most of the spacer blocks that I used in courses four and five. Had I thought this through at the beginning I would have used multiple tire sizes in every course. Using multiple sizes makes getting everything to fit MUCH easier.

Most of the last week has been a write off due to the Barriere fall fair last week end. The kids showed their sheep. This did not go as well as hoped for, the kid's Suffolk meat sheep did not compare well against other breeds at the fair. There are three weeks left before we go to the Kamloops Winter Fair and the kids sell their sheep. We are increasing the food for the sheep and the kids are exercising them more. Hopefully, this will improve the sheep's finishing, and lead to better results and prices!

We also had some really positive results at the fair! Stephen entered a trio of laying pullets (chickens) and got a first! Sandra and the girls entered baked goods ranging from cakes to rustic bread, and walked away with a number of ribbons for their efforts. Sandra was most pleased with a first for her rustic bread, and the girls both got ribbons for the cakes they baked.

There are some ominous clouds on the horizon. The dump truck has been running poorly the last couple of times I used it; it is backfiring, has no power and is belching white smoke. Some discussion with Gary and Mike Casey leads me to believe that one of the cylinders may not be firing or compressing. I borrowed a compression tester from Mike Casey, and popped the hood this evening to see if I could track the problem. I've got problems ...

The white smoke I saw last time I ran the truck was obviously more than smoke. There was a fire in the engine compartment. The oil and sawdust mixture glued to everything in the compartment (not something I recommend having on you engine, but it is an occupational hazard) ignited and burned off. I am assuming this happened after I parked the truck as there were no obvious signs of an on-going engine-fire when I stopped the truck.

Fortunately the fire did not spread, and went out on its own. The bad news is that the covering on a number of wires was burned off, and some hoses are burned through. These will all need to be replaced. The worst damage seems to be an aluminum housing attached to the engine that is now a puddle of aluminum (three puddles actually). I do not know how significant this housing is (or more importantly what it housed), and will have to dig around over the next couple of days. This is a very common engine (a 427 V8) so parts should be easy to track down. Amazingly, I turned the ignition on and the engine cranked over ... that is a very good sign! I spend my days cursing the old equipment I use, but it sure takes a lot to put it down for the count.

If the truck is unavailable for a while we will have to figure out an alternative for moving more gravel to the building site. A problem for tomorrow ...

More supply shopping

Tuesday found us on the way into Kamloops with a list of supplies we needed to complete the perimeter drain for the building, the thermal wrap and the rest of the materials to do the tire walls. We are now on our third row of tires. Sean and Anna left last Saturday on errands in the lower mainland. We sure miss their help! Things go slower without them!

As our tire walls increase in height, we need to start backfilling so that we have a same-level surface to work on. That meant putting in the perimeter drain and starting the thermal wrap. On Monday evening we sat down and made an extensive list of supplies that we needed for Wednesday, which is when we asked Alvin to return and do some trench digging. On our way into Kamloops Tuesday morning Chris hit the cell phone and started to get some prices.

Our biggest learning curve was on what kind of rigid insulation to buy for the thermal wrap. The thermal wrap is the layer of rigid insulation that is buried around the house (to the height of the roof) that contains the heat around the house and prevents any thermal heat we acquire in the house from seeping slowly out into the ground. For a better explanation of this go to Earthship Biotecture at: http://www.earthship.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=27:thermal-wrap-turbo-charge-your-earthship&catid=49:comfort&Itemid=30

Rigid insulation differs in kind and price. The blue kind is the one more generally accepted for burial. However, we found a white brand that was half the price. Most sales people told us that it was not acceptable for burial. However, we saw a little bit of text on the promotional material that indicated otherwise. Sharon Donchi (who used to arrange log home shows and now works at Home Depot) called the technical rep for this company and it turns out that it can indeed be buried. We however, wanted to achieve an R12 value, which is generally accepted by Code for a traditional basement wall. This less expensive brand was only R8. By the time we ran the numbers the blue brand was still more expensive but probably by only 10-20 per cent. Using the white brand may have been less expensive, but it did have a lower compression value AND it is not generally viewed by traditional building authorities as a product that can be buried. When all was said and done we decided on the blue brand.

Generally perimeter drains are constructed using a product called Big O. This is a black, perforated, flexible pipe that is laid in a slightly sloped drainage ditch around the building. The pipe is accompanied by filter cloth and drainage rock and then buried. The idea is that if water accumulates around and in the ground surrounding the house, it will drain into the pipe and be passed around and beyond the house. However, our family and friends had had issues with Big O collapsing over time so we decided to use perforated 4" PVC. We also decided to install three vertical cleanouts should we ever get a plug up. For us, digging through 10 feet of bermed earth is a bigger issue than with a traditional home! More pictures of the finished drain in a few days!

The PVC pipe was a lesson in going to the specialists. We priced this product at all the big box hardware stores and there was up to a $5 difference in a 10' piece (ranging from $20 locally to $15 at Rona Hardware). As we were driving past Andrew Sheret, I pulled in and Chris came back with a quote of $11.10 per piece. With savings in hand, we started loading up.

Today another volunteer earthship builder arrived. James is from Newfoundland but is moving to Victoria and decided that before he got a job there, he wanted to do a few things, inlcuding help us for a few days. We are glad to have his help and look forward to Friday when Sean and Anna return with their "mate" Josh.

The photos are fairly straight forward but I'm having trouble manipulating them and being able to put captions on them. The trailer shot is of 30 of our 140 pieces of rigid insulation. There are several shots of the drainage ditch and because I'm always behind the camera, Katie took some pictures of me, doing what I do best, apparently: sitting and supervising!

Tire count is...

449! More than half way!

Tire count is...

401.

More tires...

We picked up a full load of tires today. We went to our standbys in Kamloops and although most of them didn't have a whole bunch of tires, we re-introduced ourselves after our tire hiatus. We left Kamloops with 13 tires but stopped in Barriere at our local tire shop and filled out the rest of the trailer.

We plan to go through the rest of Barriere's pile in the next few days and then talk to the folks in Clearwater about sorting through their pile before the recyclers come. It appears that the smaller centres don't have the recyclers come as often, so the tires build up. Good for us!

Because of the snow we can't put the tires where we normally do, so we've dumped them haphazardly on the edge of the driveway. In a week or so we will move them to the sorting area.

See tire counter at the end of the blog for our updated count!

We're not "tired" yet!

Yesterday saw us add 23 more tires to our cache of building blocks. The weather is challenging these days. It is alternately warm and mushy (the snow) and cold and frozen (the snow).

My brother Tom dropped off my dad's utility trailer (our tire gathering vehicle) on his way to his cabin project in Bridge Lake. Chris hooked up the trailer and we headed off to our piano recital. Chris and I and the other adult students of our piano teacher had a "get together" so that we could play our pieces for each other. Usually we join the kid group. Our adult session was much less nerve-wracking, although it is still a mystery to me why younger kids have no fear and we adults seem to get all wound up before playing...

At any rate, after piano recital I thought to peer into the back of the trailer and there was about 6" of ice in it that had accumulated over the winter. No amount of shoveling would remove it. Never mind, I thought, there's probably only five or six tires to be had at the Barriere Landfill.

The Barriere Landfill or, "the dump" as it is better known, recently underwent some major changes. Our regional district implemented new recycling rules in the new year. We have finally caught up to the efforts of major cities. We now have a blue bag recycling program and a pay for dumping charge on anything we can't/don't recycle. In general I support this. My parents and my generation has become very much a throw away society and these measures will make us really think about what we are consuming and how we deal with it afterward.

On the other hand, there have been some mutterings that it will only increase the wonton throwing away of garbage on back roads. So far I have not heard that this has become an issue, but I will be interested to see if it does.

It wasn't too cold yesterday, but it sure was windy. About 125 tires had accumulated at the Barriere dump since our last foray there in November. A full 23 were the size we needed.

Chris was a bit choked because he wanted to get over the 200 mark (see updated tire counter at the bottom of the blog). Given some of the design changes we made during the last few months, Chris now believes we only need about 900 tires. One hundred less to find and cart around, but more importantly, 100 fewer to pound with dirt!

Clearwater was a winner!

On Thursday we hooked up the trailer and headed to Clearwater...46 tires! Unfortunately they shipped about 300 the day before. Bummed Chris out. We are now up to 141 tires and Chris has been working on the plans to make them three-dimensional.

On Tuesday we are going on a field trip to see two Earthships located in the hills south of us...the owners have no telephone but I managed to track down who they are and found exact directions...thank you John Sawatsky, Dan Poirier and Joe Scanlon, Carleton Journalism School profs who armed me and my classmates (about 20 years ago!) with basic investigative tools (all legal, of course). We are taking our friends Henry and Lee-Ann who are two of the most super friendly people in the world, and are blessed with the uncanny ability to talk their way into anybody's home. Hopefully we won't freak out these unsuspecting Earthship owners when we turn up on their doorsteps unannounced...I'll have to wear my Martian clothes...

The Tire Gathering Continues

On Tuesday, November 25th, Chris and I hooked up the trailer and headed into Kamloops specifically for a tire "run". I had five tire shops lined up to set aside 235 tires so we decided to make a day of it and try to cultivate a few relationships while we were at it.

Our first stop was the Movie Gallery; we had forgotten to return "Iron Man" when we were in Kamloops a few days before. I was glad to see the end of it; Stephen watched it too many times lounging on the couch recovering from a stomach bug. Then, a few errands and we drove up to our first tire shop; a well known big box store.

Darren, the manager of the tire shop, had seemed interested in our house when I spoke to him on the phone. In the week since speaking to him, he had gathered six 235/75 R15 tires. Feeling our tire count increase exponentially, I backed the trailer out of the loading bay and we continued on our way.

An aside: I insisted on driving the car and trailer. It had been years since I'd driven our company 5 tonne delivery truck and I'd had little practice maneuvering a trailer, so I was game to practice.

On we went.

Before we turned onto the highway that would take us to the industrial parks across Kamloops, we realized we were minutes away from another big box tire shop. I pulled a successful "U"ey and we sauntered in. We had let our memberships lapse, but the card-checker lady let us in to the tire shop.

After several minutes of discourse we were told that due to liability issues that came from "regional" office, the tire shop could not give us any tires. Apparently if I took the tires and put them on a car and there was an accident, this big box store/tire shop would be liable. The manager was even asked if they slashed the sidewalls, if we could have them (we are considering cutting one sidewall out to ease the job of pounding dirt). That wasn't going to fly either. The manager was sticking to his guns on the liability concern.

Fair enough. But I felt it my responsibility to point out that my recycling effort was less wasteful than trucking all those tires 6 hours south, and then to spend more resources grinding them up and producing another product. Given all the tire piles we had seen over the last few weeks, I didn't try very hard, but I did leave with the number of the "regional" office.

On our way to the highway to get to the industrial parks, we almost passed another big box store with a tire shop. I make a point not to shop at this one, but since I was looking to receive and not buy, I made a hard right and pulled up to the door. This shop was agreeable to letting us have tires (and coming back for more at a later date) but the manager did say he wanted to be a "silent partner" as he wasn't sure the company policy meshed with what he was doing.

Ahhh.. a pattern was emerging.

Next stop: Back to the original tire shop in Kamloops to pick up the tires we could not fit in the CRV on Saturday. This time Terry was there and we had a good chat about tire houses. By this time we were up to a paltry 12 tires and Chris was seeing his dreams of a full trailer load disappearing in the dust.

We had a quick discussion outside another Kamloops tire shop and decided that we would ask for ANY tire with 235 on it. We figure as long as we stay consistent on size for each course, we would still have square walls, and we would reach our goal of 1,000 tires just a little faster.

Clayton, the shop foreman, was incredibly helpful, interested and offered to set aside all the 235 tires in the scrap area. He even told us that we could bring our trailer in on Saturday, park it at the shop and come back in the afternoon to load it, after our children's swimming lessons and our errands were complete.

By accepting all 235 tires (235/85 R16, 235/80 R17, etc), we now had a full trailer load and headed home. This brought our count to 43 tires.

Today we went back to our local tire shop and dug through the scrap piles for 235 tires and found 50 more tires. We almost starting pulling from its "used" pile (the ones they actually do re-sell) in our excitement, but luckily an employee stopped us!

Tomorrow we will go north to a tire shop in Clearwater and clean them out of tires.

I am going to stop mentioning tire shops by name because I don't want to get anyone in trouble for helping us out. It seems a really stupid thing to have to do because everything we are doing makes sense in terms of recycling these tires, but I guess that is the litigious society we now live in!

All 235 Tires are not Created Equal

We now have five tire shops lined up for collecting tire size 235/75 R15. We started with our local tire shop, Insight Tire and Auto, located in Barriere, the community closest to Darfield. Owner Scott Kershaw told us to go right ahead and search through his pile.

The problem was, that the tire size I had written down on a piece of paper was in my work jeans and I wasn't wearing them. We still had not memorized the size but I was pretty sure what it was. Chris decided that since there were so many 235 tires we could mix and match them. After a brief explanation by Scott of what the tire numbers mean, we threw about six into the trailer; several 235/85 R14 and a few 235/75 R16 and R15's. When we stood them up next to each other we realized that we needed a longer explanation! The numbers did not mean what we thought. By this time I was getting cranky and Chris was determined to fill the trailer.

I insisted that we needed tires the same size; Chris vehemently insisted we could probably mix and match. I told him I wasn't too keen to demolish the stacks Scott had made (tire shops do this weaving thing with the used tires that looks impossible to duplicate). Chris was gearing up to look through every pile. I was getting hungry and irritated; ditto for Chris. Finally we decided we would only take the size we had originally determined we would use, so in two went, we tossed all the others back on the pile.

On the way home, I looked at Chris and said I wasn't sure we had actually got the correct tire size, thereby ensuring lack of confidence in my role of Quality Control manager. As we sailed into the yard and past our lone dump tire we craned our necks through Chris' window to read the tire. Crap! I told Chris to keep the 235/75 R16's and throw the 235/75 R15's back in Scott's yard.

How deflating...

Today, however, we stopped at Kal Tire in Kamloops where a fellow named Terry had agreed to start setting aside 235/75 R15's for us. Although we didn't have the trailer (kids swimming lessons today and lots of running around in town), we made sure the back of the CRV had nothing in it (all the groceries went in the Yakima Skybox). Terry wasn't there but a colleague took us back to the tire pile (having now visited a number of tire shops, I've concluded that we definitely have a problem with the number of scrap tires in this country). We manged to cram six of the correct tires in the CRV and drove home. So, now we have seven tires! Seven down and 993+ to go.

Next week Chris and I will hook up the trailer and go around Kamloops picking up tires at the other shops I've contacted.

For those who care, we will be posting our tire count at the bottom of our blog!

Also, for those who don't know and want to, a good explanation of tire sizes can be found at http://www.helium.com/items/1161436-tiresnewtiresautomotiveautotiresizestiresizemeasurementsradials

We started our earthship ... kind of ...

My wife and I have been talking for months now about building an earthship (see www.earthship.net for details).

I was all set to start digging this fall, but Sandra talked me out of it. She insisted that we needed to plan to get things right. Picture me rolling my eyes and gnashing my teeth. I reluctantly agreed, put down my shovel, and unstrapped my tool belt.

Since then we have been talking, planning and organizing. I admit now that we were not ready to start this fall.

A basic premise in building an earthship is to build with used materials to minimize the manufacturing of new building materials to be used in construction. As such, the walls of an earthship are made of old tires rammed with earth. We have decided to use one tire size for our building as hopefully the uniformity will make stacking the tires that much easier. We have picked a tire commonly used on light trucks and larger cars (an 235/75R15), as this is small truck country where we live.

We decided to go and pick up our first load of used tires today. We noticed earlier this summer when we were at our local dump that there was a huge stack of tires there. We have been planning to go back --once we had a good method of hauling -- and see if they will let us take tires away for free.

We did not re-licence our pickup truck this fall as we are trying to manage as a single vehicle household this year. This has worked fairly well except we simply cannot picture hauling tires in the back of our CRV!

Today we finished rewiring our Honda CRV so that we can haul a utility trailer. The wiring was fairly straight forward, but getting access to the wiring harness was challenging. We had to remove three of the plastic panels in the cargo area. Even this was not too bad, except it was not obvious how to remove these panels, and we were quite anxious about pulling too hard and breaking them. After a bit of trial and error and some suspicious snapping noises, we managed to access the wiring harness without visible damage to the car.

With the car rewired we loaded up the kids, went up to the in-laws to borrow the utility trailer, returned home, loaded up our garbage from the last month (a small amount as we are composters and recyclers), and headed to the dump! The excitement in the car was palpable.

When we got to the dump we got our first piece of bad news. The pile of tires had just been hauled off to the local recycling dump. But the attendant had no problems with us picking over the now much smaller pile of tires as long as we promised to re-stack them when we were done.

We pulled our utility trailer up to a pile of about twenty tires. Not quite the massive stack of old tires from which I was planning to select my radial, steel belted building bricks. Not to be discouraged, we gamely searched through the stack of tires.

We found one tire that matched our chosen size! I must admit I pictured a utility trailer piled high with tires, and our one lonely little tire was a bit of a let down.

Our house may only be one tire and a vision in our heads, but we are finally started!