Cement, Skid Steer and Jumping Tamper

I forgot to mention that when we pile up the tires we fill in the spots that don't match with cement.
Filling inside the tire walls required some crazy concrete mixer setups.  The cement mixer is hooked up to our generator.

We looked at all the dirt we needed to move and decided we had rent a skid steer to fill the dirt.
We had to buy loads and loads of dirt. Skid Steers rock.

After filling the dirt we had to tamp it down to get the air and water (if it rained) out.
We also rented a jumping tamper. It was useful for tamping between the tire and the insulation.

Cisterns and pipes

As we started filling in the spaces with pebble and sand screenings between the insulation and tires and around our perimeter we had to fill around our cistern as well. To avoid putting too much pressure on our cisterns we had to fill our cisterns with water. In order to fill the cisterns we had put in our main water tap.

 First will drilled a hole and installed a bulk head in the cisterns. We learned the hard way that silicone is necessary after we sprung a leak.

We put in flex pipe to alleviate tension and joins. For flex pipes we use metal strapping and abs cement glue where there involved threads we used teflon tape. After the leak incident we siliconed every join just to be safe.

Filling up the cisterns required some imagination and creativity. Luckily we found an elevated spot that we can gravity feed the water from. 1000 litres had a barely noticeable effect on the water level in the cisterns. This took weeks.

 We also had to add in the conduit chases that penetrates our earthship insulation.

Around the land updates

Ontario Hydro came by and gave our great pine a haircut....

Found some critters around our tires.

Found some critters in our cistern.

















Had to wrack that one hard to get rid of it.

Dimitri - the russian landscaper!

Dimitri came and in 2 days pounded out 1.5 row of tires.....
August 11 - 3 rows of tires with perimeter insulation.

We did learn a better way to pound tires - a pick axe in one hand and a sledger hammer in the other!

Perimeter Insulation Started

Digging the trench

 

Two layers of 2.5 inch closed-cell styrofoam insulation surrounding the tire wall (to be covered with two layers of 6 mil plastic on the outside face)

 

More insulation to come...

New Fire Pit/Grille

Upgrade...