** This thread discusses the content article: Green Building Construction Materials **

Doing a project designing a campus community using sustainability as my concept. I'm trying to figure out how many tires/recycled materials are used for one 12,000 sq foot house. This way I can see how much trash could be taken from a landfill for this community.
So, if anyone has any idea about how many tires they used for their house or how many lbs/tons of trash they used?

Hi Landscape Gal,

We built a 2,700 sf home using 170 Tire Bales--each bale contains 100 used tires "smooshed" to create a solid brick like mass. The tire bales are then stacked like bricks to create the walls. Electrical and plumbing are put into the walls before they are "shot creted" (spray on concrete) or into the floor. We used probably a ton of cans, bottles, plastic trays, milk bottles, cartons, etc. to fill in any gaps (to cut down on the amount of concrete used). Our home removed over 190 tons of trash from the landfill. Check out our web site at www.hagartirebales.com or our blog at hagartirebales.wordpress.com. Drop us a note if you have more questions. And, visit www.touchtheearthranch.com/tirebales.htm to find out more.
Hagars

landscape gal wrote:
Doing a project designing a campus community using sustainability as my concept. I'm trying to figure out how many tires/recycled materials are used for one 12,000 sq foot house. This way I can see how much trash could be taken from a landfill for this community.
So, if anyone has any idea about how many tires they used for their house or how many lbs/tons of trash they used?

By looking at the pictures from the Global Design on this website, it appears that the outside walls are about 9 tires high. If my calculations are correct, a 2000 sq foot earthship, should take about 500 tires. But I'm sure others, with practical experience, could give a more exact number.

Big Timber, Montana Project, Sept, 2009
Global Model Earthship: Two bedroom, with garage

Day 1 - 117 tires
Day 2 - 105 tires
Day 3 - 148 tires
Day 4...

read more...
Go to earthship.com/global-network/montana
and scroll down...