Alternative Construction - Rammed Earth Tire House
Start Date: February 29, 2008
Main Contact: Adam Howland, Construction Manager
Project Manager : Mateo Paneitz, E.D.
Current Status: In progress
Rammed Earth Tire House Media Files
Purpose
To practice rammed earth construction techniques that will be used to build the Vocational School,
create additional staff housing at Parque Chimiya, and provide a house for a local indigenous family.
Description
As Long Way Home's volunteer and internship program attracts more people, the need for on-site
housing increases. A neighbor living near Parque Chimiya offered to let us rent an abandoned structure on his property. The adobe house
was uninhabitable in its current state, leading Long Way Home to make an arrangement with the owner of the property. We will
reconstruct the house if the family will allow it to be used as staff housing for two years, after which point the family will
have the new home for themselves. During these two years, additional volunteer and staff housing will be built at the site of
the new Vocational School.
Environmental Contribution
Tire building is an alternative construction technique that uses discarded tires and dirt
as building materials. The tires are filled with dirt found on the property and then stacked to form walls. Through the
construction of this house, local Comalapans will be able to participate in rammed earth construction, thereby learning
this simple building technique that is low in cost (used tires are free), uses locally available materials, and provides
an environmentally friendly way to use items that would otherwise be sitting in a landfill. The house's kitchen will use
another rammed earth technique called earth bag, in which plastic sacks are pounded full of dirt and stacked like bricks.
The house also takes advantage of trash filled bottles as an alternative
building material. Long Way Home is showing people how to minimize the impact of trash by ramming it into
empty plastic bottles. Instead of burning trash, it can be used for building.
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