Very unique home! I bet the views are amazing! What state are you located? We love the West!

Colorado. In the Colorado Springs area, on the Eastern plains. Yeah, the West is great!

how unique, how beautiful, gosh how I am jealous!! :)

love everything about it!!

Too cave like for me. Might be hard to sell.

Very nice! I have always liked solar homes...do you have any more photos?

Wonderful views are a great reason to live in the West. We live in eastern Washington (about five miles from Idaho) and watch the birds and the deer in the morning...and our horses. Living in the country is not for everyone, but we love it.

I've seen rammed earth tire houses before, but this looks different. It seems to be compacted old tires not filled with anything other than more old tires. Is that right? If so, that would simplify the process. I watched a neighbor build a rammed earth tire house, and the labor involved in filling the tires was monumental. Congratulations on your project. It is nice to read an upbeat post from someone who enjoyed the home building process.

Yes, these are tire bales. We stacked them with a skid steer, in 2 days. I have friends who pounded dirt in tires for 9 months.

As far as sellable, that's not an issue, because we never want to move. You see very few well-built earthships on the market, because the owners just love them, and never move. You'll find a few that have design problems out there. Just like any house, if you cut corners, you can create a lot of problems.

Did you see the link in the original post, for pictures? I'm out of town right now, and I just threw in the ones that were on my laptop.

I love your house. We recently visited the Earthship community outside of Taos. Great ideas, and so good for the Earth in terms of use and re-use.

We rented an earthship there, prior to building ours. Michael Reynolds, if not already there, will someday be considered a pioneer!

Colorado Springs! Lovely area! We had the privilege of staying at the Broadmore once. I love your solar home! Great work! Enjoy!

Jim--have you seen any models of how the thermal performance of tire bale earthships perform against rammed earth ones? I'd be curious to know of any differences.

Awesome, I love it!!!

I haven't seen any thermal performance models, but I've stayed in both. I don't think it makes any difference, with the berming. What does make a huge difference is how well the home is insulated and sealed. Also, some of the early designs didn't use French Drains. During monsoon season, there was usually water penetration at the bottom of the tire wall.

Curious about the structural stability of all of this. What stabilizes the tires? And what carries the roof load to the foundation? I would imagine you also have a fairly heavy snow loading that must be considered. What keeps everything in place?

A concrete bond beam, about 10"-12" thick surrounds the tire bales. We also shotcreted, which is optional. The tire bales are 5' x 5' x 2-1/2', and weigh about a ton each. The bales were very, very stable prior to the concrete applications. Here are a few more pics. In the words of a friend, who also lives in a tire-bale home - "It ain't going nowhere". These will stand for thousands and thousands of years.

amazing! thanks for sharing.

Thanks for looking. I GC'd this house. I was a little leery at first, but my designer told me that most GCs aren't familiar with this kind of build anyway. I hired a master carpenter (by the hour) who was experienced in building these homes, and he was an invaluable resource. I worked right along side him, and learned so much!!!

wow, this is great -- good for you!

Thanks for sharing! I thought most earthship models were moving away from the angled south elevation fenestration?

I had to look that word up - "fenestration". The angled windows are optional. They help in a cold climate, in the winter, to get more passive rays deep into the structure. I certainly wouldn't install them in the South. We were probably border-line, here in Colorado Springs, and could have gone with vertical. The angled approach certainly presents more challenges.

Thanks for sharing. I had never heard of tire bales before!

We liked the organic look inside, so we left the tire bales exposed. Some friends of mine furred their wall out for a more conventional look. Here's our living room with tire bale back walls, with an adobe mixture.

Here are some close-ups of the adobe. We added straw and mica. The straw serves to prevent it from cracking. The mica just gives it some sparkle. A sealer was also utilized. We even used adobe on our vertical walls, i.e. the vertical one behind the wood burning stove.

Hello, my husband and I are just beginning to research options construction and design options for our dream home. I want an earth bermed home and love the idea of non-traditional materials. Is it difficult to get planning permission to build use tire bales? Do you have any resources you can recommend on the underlying structural engineering of this technique?

I like parts of this very much.

I hope the OP comes back with a report on living in this house two years later. While I would probably lay the rooms out a bit differently, this is beautiful.

There are quite a few bermed earth homes in this part of Colorado. Luckily, I wasn't the first to try to get El Paso County Building Department approval. The biggest issue with Building Departments are the fire egresses. We have no windows in our bedrooms, and that is usually considered the egress for the fire department. They insisted that our bedrooms be on each end of the structure, so that the East and West entry doors could be considered the egresses. The bedrooms were also required to be open, with no doors. The arched doorways were added later, after we got the Occupancy Permit.

Unfortunately, last year, the Designer of these homes passed away. At his wake, his son-in-law was talking about taking over the design needs. However, I don't believe he ever did this. The Michael Reynolds rammed-earth designs are still available for purchase. It's a lot of work to pound dirt in all those tires. Friends of mine spent 9 months ramming tires, and then filling voids with Cobb mix, to make the walls smooth. BTW, we love living in this home. It's amazing!!!

You have better friends than I do...