Building even a small garage with your own hands seems to many to be an expensive and overwhelming task.
In reality, everything is not so scary.
To create a foundation, all you need is to get used tires.
They are made of high-quality rubber, so they can withstand heavy loads, insulate from moisture, and are reliable and durable.
They are easy to get - there are plenty of car tires at any service station. Wheel tires often have no price at all at service stations - they will give you free or sell them for pennies .
Don’t forget your friends and neighbors who have a set or two of old tires in their garage that they can’t get around to throwing away.
Construction options: bathhouse, barn, house
If you believe the reviews of experts, a foundation made of tires will be just right for small buildings .
On it you can build:
- a barn or garage for several cars (if you cover the tires with broken bricks, screenings or loam, they will not bend even under the weight of the truck);
- terrace and summer veranda;
- gazebo and garden house;
- small bathhouse.
It is also possible to build a small residential building on a tire foundation, such as a one-story dacha or an outbuilding of a cottage. In this case, the tires should be laid not in one layer, but in several. Before building a house, you need to dig a foundation pit .
For block or brick buildings above one floor, are not suitable as the basis of a building .
They should be used for the foundations of light residential structures only.
When did the unusual technology appear?
For the first time, used tires were used to build residential buildings in the United States. The technology originated in 1970, and the first stingray house was built by the founder of Earthship Biotecture, Mark Reynolds. He called his first construction an “earth ship.”
Most buildings built using Reynolds technology are rectangular or circular in shape. They are intended for construction on a slope with subsequent covering with earth. There are large windows on the south side. They trap heat, which is retained in the room thanks to the thick adobe walls. The temperature inside such a house throughout the year remains in the range of 18-23℃.
The construction method was supported by American, Canadian, African, European and Australian environmental activists. So gradually the unusual construction technology began to be introduced throughout the world.
Backfilling on heaving soils
Loams and other types of heaving soils have a high water content. When it freezes and expands, such soils begin to rise and swell. Therefore, you can’t just build anything on them.
However, you can:
- Remove all raised soil and replace it with coarse, well-compacted sand. Water “does not linger” in it, it does not freeze and does not swell.
- “Heat” the soil. Put a layer of some kind of insulation between it and the house.
- Drain water using a special drainage system.
A tire foundation for heaving soils is a good choice because:
- rubber is a material that can withstand extreme cold and does not deteriorate for many decades;
- a tire foundation, unlike many other foundations, can easily withstand soil vibrations that are characteristic of heaving soils;
- rubber does not absorb moisture, it has excellent waterproofing properties, so the tire base will not expand or move much under the influence of frozen water.
Tools for work
To make crafts from tires for the dacha, you will have to work hard and show ingenuity and creativity. The right tools for the job will help us with this!
You will need:
- detergents to remove dirt from the surface;
- sharp cutting tool: a thick knife or scissors for gardening;
- primer and paint (if necessary);
- a drill, screwdriver and other tools may be useful for making holes and fixing fasteners in them (we will talk about this separately in each DIY);
- a little patience.
Now we have stocked up with everything we need and can get started!
Construction options
You can create several types of foundations from rubber tires. The most reliable of them, developed by specialists, are columnar and solid.
No hard-to-find tools or materials are needed to create a columnar or solid base.
But in any case, you can’t do without:
- rake or pipes for compaction;
- bricks (whole and broken);
- sand, roofing felt or linoleum;
- formwork boards;
- building levels;
- metal fittings;
- shovel
Columnar
A columnar foundation made of tires is especially needed for buildings that are being built in an area with increased seismic activity.
When it shakes, the tires will become a kind of soft buffer , capable of absorbing even strong tremors.
They will protect the building from cracks.
Tires from trucks, agricultural and special equipment such as tractors or large snowblowers are best suited for building foundations.
They have a larger diameter, so the weight of the building is distributed more evenly . The foundation of large tires is stronger and more reliable.
At first:
- “We clean the soil”, get rid of roots and stones.
- We remove the top 20-30 cm of soil saturated with moisture and dig a pit to lay the foundation. We do the installation only in two layers, then it will be much stronger and more reliable.
- We mark the boundaries using pegs . We put the tires on the pegs. We place the first tire exactly in the middle. Using a special tool (called a level), we perform horizontal alignment. It is very important that the tires are placed on the same plane to each other , otherwise they will not form a normal reliable base.
- We fill all the voids between the tires with broken bricks.
- Cover it with crushed stone and compact it.
- We moisten the crushed stone.
- Pour the concrete solution (into the inside of the tires).
- The concrete will set in 4-5 days. Then it will be possible to begin installing the formwork (the height of its sides should be at least 10-12 cm). You can remove it in at least a week and a half.
Solid
You can create a foundation with a continuous layer in different ways. The most common is the tiled option.
Such a foundation is a two-layer, evenly laid base made of tires.
We create a tiled base from tires like this:
- We clean the area , remove the moisture-rich layer of soil. There is no need to make a pit deeper than the freezing point of the soil.
- We lay down the tires. Tires should be the same, preferably with a larger diameter . These tires are more durable.
- the voids between the tires with fine gravel or broken bricks. Sand is not suitable for this. If they fill voids, the foundation can quickly sink.
- We put roofing felt on . Thanks to it, the surface intended for pouring concrete will become more even, and there will be no need to spend money on expensive waterproofing.
- Along the perimeter of the bus base of the building we build formwork with wooden sides at least 10 cm high.
- Within the territory outlined by the formwork, we lay reinforcement .
- Cover with concrete mortar.
Without soil removal
A foundation made from car tires can be built without removing the soil at all. There is nothing complicated about it. We do this:
- We lay tires around the entire perimeter of the building.
- Fill with concrete mortar.
- We tie the tires with channels.
At the end, we bind the lower part of the building.
We invite you to read reviews from forum members about building a foundation from tires with your own hands for a barn, for a bathhouse or for a house on the Forum House website.
Where did the legs of the tire foundation come from?
Having studied the sources, I came to the conclusion that people have been using such supports for quite a long time, but they have become more widespread thanks to the Internet; on one forum house there is already a third thread discussing the foundation for a house on tires.
There is a patent for such a foundation, comrade Mikhail Egorovich Semykin, who has patented the technology for constructing foundation supports using tires. His tires work to increase the area of support for the foundation; the soil is swampy and does not hold the load well. This is what it looks like for him.
Option from Semykin
Where: 1 – concrete slab, 2 – Linoleum (Roofing felt), 3 – tires.
Building a house from tires
From tires you can build not only a foundation, but also real strong and reliable walls of a house :
- We place the tire foundation on a belt (made of reinforced concrete);
- we build tire walls, doing mutual dressing (similar to the one that is used when laying bricks);
- we fill the voids between the tires with a clay solution (an alternative is plastic clay);
- We cover the “yard” and the inner sides of the walls with wood and plasterboard;
- so that the tires cannot catch fire, we must plaster the walls;
- We reinforce the walls with reinforcement to make them stronger and more stable.
A house with walls made of tires, built with your own hands, is characterized by a high level of thermal insulation. This advantage allows you to significantly save on heating .
There are hands, but no money
The idea came to Kachalina suddenly after bitter thoughts about an imminent retirement and the lack of her own living space. She could not build a good house from timber or brick - it was expensive. And so I started looking on the Internet for alternative types of construction. There were houses made from bottles, glass and plastic, from bags of earth, from straw, etc. The choice settled on tires after a friend from the USA told me about her neighbors. The government took away their housing with a mortgage, and with the money that was returned to them, they bought a piece of land and built a house... out of tires.
- Only there they hired a company that builds tire houses. Everything is done there at once: heating, water, light, sewage are thought out in advance. We do everything ourselves. We have hands, no money... But we also think through everything - there are air ducts, sewerage is already included in the project.
A tire house costs many times less than a regular one. The family spent 200 thousand rubles on the roof, and the rest was “mined.”
Irina says that a tire house costs many times less than a regular one. The family spent 200 thousand rubles on the roof, and the rest was “mined.” A house made of timber costs at least 450-500 thousand. And if you start a stone project, then you need at least 1 million. Plus the foundation! And they are all on tires, free of charge.
“They bought tires from tire shops—they went and begged for old wheels. First, I rode the bus and noticed where the tire shops were, then I went to negotiate. They do not have the right to store more than 10 used wheels, so any workshop is happy to get rid of them! I took the gazelle and drove around them all at once, collecting the wheels. The diameters came across different ones, but I tried to take the 16th diameter. Then in one tire shop, in Igris, I asked twice, and the third time the director himself called and said, pick it up again. But I don’t have a car... Then he himself began to carry it for me, in large quantities.
— As they say, the whole world was looking for materials. The neighbors called and said where they could get what they didn’t need... They still have about two dozen window frames near the entrance to the house. Half plastic, half wood. There are piles of old tires in the garden...
“I couldn’t find Straw for a long time.” One friend calls me: “You, she says, were looking for straw in the fields, but we have a lot of it here at the Dynamo stadium. There were races there, but then they didn’t take us out.” I turned to the director, this way and that, and he said: “Yes, take it! We’ll deliver it to you ourselves!” And soon four KamAZ trucks with soldiers brought the straw. You should have seen the faces of your neighbors! Such a landing!
