Building the Wall – Tire Pounding for Advanced

So what’s up with that wall really? One might ask, having read all these posts about retaining walls and tires used for massive constructions. But then this guy just talks about his mountain life at the end of the world somewhere! Of course, my excuse is that seeing a few tires between a big pile of dirt and a humongous cliff is never very impressive. And that’s actually what the site looked like for a long time at first. But I hoped once my time here was over, something close to a wall should emerge. And now that I’ve completed four weeks of almost constant work on it (minus three days off), it sure is something to behold...

The Hidden Part, the Hardest Work

As picturesque as this wall may seem, with its twelve course above the ground, the most interesting part lies hidden beneath it. Given the incline of the road, we had to start low, and work our way up, building stairs into the undisturbed ground. The lowest course is actually only two tires long, one being the first tire we compacted before we were made to start over, I mentioned in this post. I don’t remember its size, though it was a gringa tire, so not metric.

The next course is made up of three tires, the following five, then eight, as we could accommodate the lay of the land. It’s not until the sixth course that one reaches all across the entire wall, and it’s made up of 14 tires, mostly the biggest ones we could find. Building on undisturbed ground, the depth of the tire doesn’t matter, because we just need it to be level on the top. On the bottom we can dig as deep as needed. The tires are usually 275s or 285s but anything big goes (excluding back-hoe tires and other over-sized monstrosities).

The last tire in the course, being the cornerstone at the upper end of the entire retaining wall, I filled myself, breaking a personal record: This is the biggest tire I’ve ever filled, a proud 315. Best part of the story is that when it was finally put in place, after digging dirt and chipping rocks for days to make a leveled space for it, the pile of dirt collapsed on it. I was actually trying to pull some into it from that pile, so that’s exactly what I wanted, but not everything at once! Instead of digging it out, I just started pounding it, or where I assumed a tire to be. Eventually it emerged, and an hour later it had eaten up everything that was on top of it, while becoming super compact.

Concreting, a Necessary Evil

You can’t get around making concrete. At some point you just don’t have the tire that you’d need to fill a space while still obeying all the rules: one tire has to sit sufficiently on top of two to link into them both together, at the same time all the tires need to touch, and they must always form a leveled surface on the top. Sometimes you will end up with a gap, that wants to be filled. And a concrete block is the simplest solution.

Using the cheapest ways of making forms, such as chicken-wire, cardboard, and recycled scraps of all types, we find ways to contain the concrete, which is a pretty strong mix of two buckets of sand and two gravel to one 50kg sack.

While there may be alternatives to fill spaces, at the ends of the wall, concrete is called for. If you want straight walls, you’ll have half-tire spaces every other course, which are filled with concrete. If it weren’t for these concrete blocks at the end, the wall would run triangularly up to a single tire. On our wall, we added a so called castillo, a reinforced steel column, poured in sections, together with each half-tire block. This is my heroic 315-tire, prepared for the first pour.

Finally, there is the pack-out. The tires want to be covered, so they won’t be exposed to the sun, rain, and wind. That is all going to be concrete. But to reduce the space of concrete between the tires, we use cans: beer, soda, beans, you name it. This is nothing structural, so having to use as little concrete as possible is the goal.

Oh, did I mention, we mix concrete on the ground with shovels, a la Méxicana, as they say. It used to be a daunting and formidable task for me, but our two chalanes (workers) did a tremendous job teaching me a calm and relaxed way of doing it. It still is hard work, but at least not a panic-ridden “the water’s running away” -type affair.

Squishy Tires, the Flexible Way to Fill Spaces

Did I say alternatives to concreting? They are called Squishy Tires in Earthship circles. These are tires with really short rims, usually found on fast cars with furious drivers, making them super flexible… at least compared to regular tires. Depending on the space and the circumstances at hand, a good squishy can fill even the tightest challenges. They still need to have the right width, of course, and once placed must be leveled just like any tire. I’ve seen people use ropes, picks, and crowbars to force a squishy into place, but this skillful young tire-wall builder managed to squeeze it single handedly into the gap. And he’d been pounding tires for just under two weeks!

Though it wasn’t until my last day before we got to a squishy, occasionally we put in two, and once three tires at the same time. That’s the beauty of tires: they are flexible and they can be pushed to extremes. In the end, once they are in the right place, they already have a good amount of force around them. Once they’re pounded, they are not going anywhere.

A Shared Accomplishment

So once the first course was established, all we had to do was build on top of it, and after the 275s came the 265s, the 255s, and so on, using up the tires we had collected at the garbage dump. Some were so plentiful that we built two or three courses with them. After four weeks we had used up all the tires of 205 and over, all in all close to 200 tires.

Although I spent more time working on the wall than anyone else, I would not have been able to get nearly as far without the help I had. Stephane came by almost daily to help pounding, digging, and concreting, while supplying materials, including the groceries I kept ordering every day.

Then we had volunteers. About one day a week an eager bunch of volunteers came by to help. They are a lively group from Switzerland, also involved in theater, staying at the property in Mazunte where the Earthship theater will be built.

Finally, the most incredible and productive help came from our two chalanes. This is a word I just learned myself, and it means paid laborer. We’d been trying to find workers for the longest time, but the combination of a hard-to-reach location and the unusual type of work made it difficult to find workers. Eventually we did, though, and what a find it was: Meño had worked on a tire-wall before, and his nephew Axel was eager to acquire the skills of tire-builder. The two were amazing at all the aspects of tire-pounding, sometimes adopting a surprising scrutiny for small detail in leveling and positioning tires.

In the last week we managed to finish a course each day. We would place the empty tires all at once, fill the first and the last ones, position them perfectly, then draw a string between them, and pound the rest, adjusting them accordingly. Once pounded, we would check their levels with the laser-level, and adjust for an inch of maximal difference. (Yes, it is 2.54 cm! It is Earthship that’s getting me into the imperial measurement system. What is happening to me???)

The Long Run

So now, seeing that we’ve come so far, I don’t feel bad about leaving it behind. At least the worst part of the cliff, the biggest head-cut, will be protected. Of course, the wall is going to continue being built without me. Meño and Axel will no doubt carry on with full force, and might become fore-pounders to additional chalanes. Hope-hope! In any case, the second section has already been started. I myself know I will wait for each update-photo with excited anticipation. As for now, let me bask in achievement, on top of the wall…