2008 Updates

June2008 -- My oh my, but summer is here and it is HOT in Denver but cool in the mountains. It finally stopped snowing in June. Fortunately for us, we were working inside most of the time.

Jeffery worked outside a bit adding our new front porch. Don't you think it adds a bit of charm to the "industrial shopping mall" look? Jeffery is using all pine beetle killed trees for this.

The cattle drives have started from the local ranches. Bet you can't say you see this sort of thing in the city--cows, cowboys and cowgirls in your driveway.

After working with Elite Cabinetry and Granite in Denver for over a year (Thanks for your patience Gary Fielder), our granite was finally installed in the kitchen. It certainly adds a touch of class to the house. The plumber installed the kitchen faucet shortly thereafter.

Friend Art Wilson still continues to work with us. I guess it keeps him young. Here he and Duncan enjoy taping and mudding the drywall.

Mike Kunzman, American Clay in Denver, came up and showed us how to apply clay to the tire bale walls. We decided to cover the drywalled walls and the ceiling in the great room in clay. Our first task is to apply clay to the master bedroom. There are many interesting stories about clay, applying clay, and living in structures made with or covered in clay. Hopefully I'll get time to put some of those up. Mike also showed us the techniques of blending colors as well as making finger patterns in the clay. Thanks Mike.

Duncan and I arrived at the site one morning to find a winged visitor inside. We are happy to report that even though she was a bit stunned from hitting a window and then being picked up by a human and then released, she flew off about 5 minutes later after regaining her composure and having many long astounding looks at us.

Here is another look at our experimental house from a distance.

Would you like to know how to build a tire bale house? Our designer, Michael Shealy has put together a pictorial sequence to help answer some questions and to help others understand the sequence of building a tire bale house. We're also strating to work on a book. Check back later for an expected publish date.

May 2008 -- What happened to the beginning of 2008? We made slow progress on the interior due to a good ski season. Skip over to Gallery page 4 for the very latest images.

January 2008 -- Progress continues on the inside of our tire bale house in spite of gale force winds blowing mound after mound of snow across our road.

Take a look at Gallery Page 3 for more images from the inside and out.

2007 Updates

It is already November 2007, and Laura has been trying to stay on top of all of the latest updates to our website! She has added many new images and stories, so now there is a Gallery Page 3.

Some of you have reported problems seeing the movies and some of the images from the other galleries. She is still working to correct those issues. (Laura works with software all day and the house on weekends, and isn't thrilled to work with web sites in the evenings and weekends. So, please be patient.)

Are you interested in learning about what it takes to build a tire bale house? If so, please drop an email to Jon & Laura Hagar at our email address below. Our original plans for a workshop in spring 2007 did not materialize. Fate had other plans for us in the early months of 2007. We were very busy building the house, keeping the roads clear of snow during a hard, snowy winter, plus we have been working our "day" jobs.

Project Summary

We were looking for an easier building technique to the rammed earth tire (earthship) home as well as an alternative to the traditional stick house. We researched earthship and straw bale techniques and originally wanted to go with the earthship technique, but one of us did NOT want to do all of the work of ramming dirt into so many tires! Ta-Dah, tire bales!

Thanks to the help of our patient realtor (Jim Glenn in Granby, CO), we found a great piece of property surrounded by thousands of acres of public lands. We'll have very few neighbors, but more importantl--no covenants. Our house is similar to the "earthship" concept created by Michael Reynolds (formerly www.earthship.org) but with a few changes, some of which use conventional building techniques.

We really liked the idea of using tires, cans, and bottles to build with and using solar energy for electricity and warmth, but physically pounding dirt into so many tires--NO WAY!
Instead of pounding dirt into all those individual tires, an architectural designer of earthship houses, Michael Shealy, suggested we use tire bales for the outside walls effectively creating a large, active thermal mass.

A tire bale is a "big square brick" of about 100 compressed whole tires. Each bale is approximately 5 feet deep by 5 feet wide by 2.5 ft. high and weighs about 2,000 lbs. (1 ton). A tire bale (by iteself) has an energy rating of somewhere between R-40 and R-200 depending on which study you read and how it's used. The tire bales are encased in concrete, effectively making the tire bale walls of our house about 6-feet thick.