Zen or the Art of Pounding Tires ...

We finally got to pound tires today!

The kids and I moved enough tires for the first tier of the building yesterday morning, and spent the afternoon laying out rooms. The kids struggled with rolling tires, but were very impressed when I dumped tires out of the back of the dump truck.

Every time we design and lay out a building it always seems too small when the shell is initially laid out. As Sandra says you always worry that the rooms are big enough for their intended use, and feel badly for the customer. By the time everything is closed in (the walls are complete and the roof is on) your perspective changes and everything looks fine. This building is no different ... every thing looks too small only this time we are the customers! On the assumption that everything will go back to its proper size when it is closed in we have decided to take a deep breath and carry on ...



This morning I used the backhoe to level the ground for the retaining wall wings, and this afternoon Sandra and I double checked all the measurements and straightness of the walls. Everything looked good so we put a double layer of 6 mm vapour barrier under the first couple of tires and started pounding.

Lots of people have expressed opinions on the experience of filling around 900 tires with compacted earth using a sledge hammer. These opinions have ranged from skepticism about the process to suggestions that this might be suitable work for a chain gang. I admit to approaching my first tire anxiously ... my hopeful attitude is that it is cheaper than a gym membership and a good opportunity for meditation while focusing on a repetitive task.

The first step in the process is to shovel dirt into the tire. This was quite easy ... as I remarked to Sandra in those first five minutes I could do this all day. Shoveling dirt is physical work but not particularly hard (I say this after ten years of handling 300 pound plus timbers for a living). I could already feel my mind wandering as I settled into the repetitive task of shoveling and had to remind myself to stay in the meditative moment.

Once the centre of the tire is full of dirt the next step is to push the dirt into the casing using your hands. This was still pretty easy and a lot like gardening. You continue shoveling and pushing until you can get no more dirt into the tire. I still had no complaints, I can easily lose an hour weeding the garden.

The third step is compacting the soil in the tire. Compaction is accomplished by swinging an 8 lb sledge hammer repeatedly into the casing while moving around the tire to ensure uniform compaction. As the soil compacts more dirt is shoveled in and you repeat the process with the sledge hammer.

By the end of 10 minutes of wildly swinging my sledge hammer and sending dirt everywhere we had packed our first tire. I was sweating heavily, my arms felt weak and I had definitely lost the moment. My thoughts ranged from wild schemes to automate the process to wondering if we could switch to straw bale at this point in the construction project.

Experience has taught us that succeeding at repetitive physical labour requires working at a pace that you can sustain for a couple of hours and staying focused enough on the task that you do not risk hurting yourself. By both counts I was in trouble.

Sandra did more of the packing on the second tire while I went back to my happy place shoveling dirt. She did not wave her sledge around nearly as much as I did and there was not as much dirt flying around but at the end the tire looked (and felt) pretty much the same. Lesson learned (I think I LOOKED more impressive packing the first tire though)! We finished off by packing one more tire to make sure we were getting a feel for the whole process.

Sandra and I packed three tires and we spent about twenty minutes packing each tire. The estimates I have read state that a compacted tire takes approximately 3 wheel barrows of dirt and weighs around 300 lbs. So ... we have about 897 more tires to pack, that is a lot of free exercise and meditation time.

We are planning to work in the mornings and evenings when it is cooler, and take the middle of the day off. Personally, I am planning to spend this time off thinking of more reasons why this is a great experience. I will start by exploring the many evils of automating this process and the environmental benefits of packing each one of those tires by hand ... with a sledge hammer.
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The work is really quite enjoyable; you get a great work out (for free), and you can achieve a state of mind that people strive their entire lives for. Frankly I cannot think why anybody would not want to do this, and we will probably have to insist that some people go home when we get overwhelmed by volunteers.

Really.