Tire Bales are here!  They are rock-solid.  R-45 to R-60 with great thermal mass (no product is better in this regard).


Using adobe to cover the tire bales on the inside of the house gives a unique cave-like look to wall.  Here's a close up.  This adobe has added straw and a little mica for some sparkle.  It is sealed, which really makes the straw and mica stand out.


The living room with the organic tire bale wall.  This is a bermed wall.  The ceiling is about 14'.  A bermed house, closed-up, sealed and insulated, will never drop below 58 deg F.  No freezing pipes, and much easier to heat!



That was the North side of the home.  The south side is all passive solar.  The straight walls are also adobe, although drywall will also provide thermal mass.  Just our preference here.

The Angled Glass (optional) allows sunlight to infiltrate deeply into the house in the winter.



A hybrid hot water, with refrigerant and a circulation fan, was placed near the windows, inside an insulated pony wall, for quiet.  The water heater often has 90-100 deg F air near the windows.  A poor man's solar hot water!




The house from the outside.  It was a hot day, so the outdoor shades are drawn.  The bermed home stays nice and cool, without A/C, even on 100 deg F days.   Usually, it starts warming up in the evening, but we live in Colorado where the nights are cool.  We open the house up, and presto.   Cool again!  Wind turbine is in the background.  We use that for electricity, along with solar panels, with NetMetering.  The house is all-electric.  There is no gas.

Interesting to say the least

These earthship homes were very problematic and the design has been since deemed obsolete. Especially the sloped southern facing wall of glass. This contributed to major overheating (even with thermal mass) and keeping sloped windows from leaking is difficult at best and impossible during heavy rains.

No modern house design calls for sloped glass on the south face. Building scientists have deemed it as obsolete.

The tires is another debated topic. First off, they are secured using high-strength cables which can and have snapped. This can cause serious injury if you are standing there or if they snap during install they can shift the wall. The other issue is that all tires off-gas and are very toxic. Go near any tire junkyard and not only is the water filled with toxins but so is the soil the tires sit on. Tires leach poisons and there is no way to stop that.

Tire companies are more than happy for you to take their scrap tires. They love it since it relieves them of the cost and risk of storing those toxic tires.

Then there is the tire/rubber fires. When a fireman hears about a "tire fire" their heart sinks because they know they burn very hot, toxic and can remain burning for months.
EPA - TIRE FIRES - TOXIC

Then comes the building code department. Apparently you live in an area that is very remote and probably doesn't even have a building code department that enforces modern IBC/IRC code. 99% of code enforcement would NOT allow one to build a home out of used tires. Maybe some middle of nowhere lot in a middle of nowhere town might allow it but not going to happen in 99% of places. Then comes the financing. No bank out there will lend to build such a structure. Not going to happen. Then comes homeowners insurance. One would be hard pressed to find a company that will appraise and insure a structure like that without major amendments and clauses.

Sloped glass earthship homes built out of tires is not the future of green building. If anything, they give it a bad name since that is what people think of when you talk about passive solar homes. They think back to 1970's earthship homes that turned into design and maintenance nightmares.

Your particular design may work for you but it is not going to become commonplace and is for a niche group of people looking to live in very remote and off-grid locations with no building codes.

Posted By Lbear on 24 Jun 2015 06:10 PM
These earthship homes were very problematic and the design has been since deemed obsolete. Especially the sloped southern facing wall of glass. This contributed to major overheating (even with thermal mass) and keeping sloped windows from leaking is difficult at best and impossible during heavy rains.

No modern house design calls for sloped glass on the south face. Building scientists have deemed it as obsolete.

The tires is another debated topic. First off, they are secured using high-strength cables which can and have snapped. This can cause serious injury if you are standing there or if they snap during install they can shift the wall. The other issue is that all tires off-gas and are very toxic. Go near any tire junkyard and not only is the water filled with toxins but so is the soil the tires sit on. Tires leach poisons and there is no way to stop that.

Tire companies are more than happy for you to take their scrap tires. They love it since it relieves them of the cost and risk of storing those toxic tires.

Then there is the tire/rubber fires. When a fireman hears about a "tire fire" their heart sinks because they know they burn very hot, toxic and can remain burning for months.
EPA - TIRE FIRES - TOXIC

Then comes the building code department. Apparently you live in an area that is very remote and probably doesn't even have a building code department that enforces modern IBC/IRC code. 99% of code enforcement would NOT allow one to build a home out of used tires. Maybe some middle of nowhere lot in a middle of nowhere town might allow it but not going to happen in 99% of places. Then comes the financing. No bank out there will lend to build such a structure. Not going to happen. Then comes homeowners insurance. One would be hard pressed to find a company that will appraise and insure a structure like that without major amendments and clauses.

Sloped glass earthship homes built out of tires is not the future of green building. If anything, they give it a bad name since that is what people think of when you talk about passive solar homes. They think back to 1970's earthship homes that turned into design and maintenance nightmares.

Your particular design may work for you but it is not going to become commonplace and is for a niche group of people looking to live in very remote and off-grid locations with no building codes.

1. Plenty of modern design homes used sloped glass.  Come to Colorado.  I can show you plenty of recently built ones.  This said, one can accomplish the same passive solar with vertical glass.  Just not as much heating.
2. We found that outdoor shades do a great job of keeping the place cool.  If you look at my last photo, I discuss this.
3. Front window leaking can be an issue.  Mine are sealed very well with creative flashing.  Also, adding a weephole to the awning windows takes care of those.  (My neighbor's brand new home leaks badly in 2 different areas.  Man that conventional construction should be made obsolete).
4. No gassing of old used tires.  That's been proven by studies by the Earthship Community in Taos.   Discussed on their website.  But if you're concerned about gassing, don't install carpeting.
5. Gonna be kind of hard to start a tire fire when they're covered by either concrete, adobe, dirt, or a combination thereof.
6. State Farm insurance - no problem.  PPRBD, Pikes Peak Regional Building Department is very rigid, and they are mainly concerned about safety.  Since this is much safer than conventional construction, with it's massive design, they were fine with it.  The biggest obstacle is fire egresses (there's another negative argument for you).  I did have to have all my ducks in a row, because it's not the norm.  I financed my own home.  I did get an Equity loan though, using it as collateral.
7. Two more are going up right now, here in Colorado.  My building inspector was so impressed, he's talking about building one.  Same goes for my electrician and some of the concrete contractors.

The biggest problem with a lot of the early earthships is that people were building them with very little money.  Build a cheap conventional home, and take a lot of shortcuts, and I bet it doesn't perform very well.  There are certainly enough of those out there to cite as evidence.