Tire Foundation of our Earthship Home Complete! Onto French Drain and Adobe Pack-Out

It's been quite some time since I've provided an update on our home, so I will recap the past 2 months of our earthship build.  We were dumped on by the rain gods for several weeks in June which halted our progress on the home.  Instead, we took it as a sign that we needed to spend time together as a family and also work to make some overall improvements around the ole' homestead.  Zac and Elliot dug out a pond on our land in a matter of one weekend in order to gain more dirt for our build and the lovely pond is shown below.  It is even equipped with a private, exclusive "Duck Island" for Tanisha and Dewey, our Pekin ducks.  Now if only they'd stop identifying as chickens (we raised them all together) and begin taking advantage of their new digs...

The inside of our home was quite flooded due to the rain so we chose to invest in a water pump so that we could keep the build site dry to prevent erosion.

Our earthship has been providing us with a sense of community with like-minded individuals who come out to volunteer and end up becoming family.

All of the tires finally in place on July 17, 2015 and the celebratory spirit was palpable!

Is it weird that I've developed a serious love of photographing tires throughout this process?  They really are stunning!

Zac putting his squirrely Father's Day present to good use in pounding the LAST tire of our earthship build.  Just in case choosing to build an earthship wasn't a big enough signal that we had lost our minds...

Anthony, our good friend, hand-packing the last tire of our earthship build.  He stopped by last July due to an interest in earthship construction and has been a member of our earthship family ever since.  We are so very grateful for his friendship and the unrelenting positivity he surrounds us with.

The family minus Eivin working on the last tire of our home.  That kid needs to step it up a notch.  He may only be 3 months old, but he needs to start pulling his weight!

American Gothic earthship style.  Getting ready to begin the next phase of our earthship build: The French Drain!  Due to the high water table of our land, we will be installing a french drain around the inside of the perimeter of our home to ensure that water won't dampen our earthship lifestyle.

Anthony, Kate and Zac ensuring the correct placement of the french drain before breaking ground.  We invested in a transit this year and it has made our build go much more smoothly.  We wish we had purchased one at the start.  It was costly but absolutely worth it to ensure that everything was constructed up to snuff.

Our architect, Matthew Stanfield from FiELD9: architecture in Mansfield, OH came out with his family to help us in mid- July.  We are incredibly fortunate to have found him and we would highly recommend his services if you are in the market for building a home with sustainability in mind.

I was seriously beginning to question my sanity near the end of July as taking care of a 3-year-old and a 3-month-old who were both in high-needs stages was wearing on an already frayed and weathered mind.  My mother-in-law offered to watch our older guy so that I could get some things done.  Instead of tackling my personal to-do's, I got outside and worked on digging the french drain trench with Zac.  Is it sad that we had the GREATEST time ever digging a trench together?  Seriously.  An expensive night out has nothing on the joy we felt working together and actually talking for the first time in months.  Throughout building our earthship home, we have ended each night talking about our respective days and what tasks needed completed that week.  Usually, we'd get some brief moments within those conversations that were centered on how lucky we felt to be pursuing our dreams but these would always be short-lived due to a crying child or simply because our bodies were crying out for sleep.  While digging, we took note that this year of our earthship build just felt different than the last.  We felt more optimistic and more energetic and truly believe that 2015 will be the year that we're under-roof!  

This past weekend (August 1st and 2nd) marked another next phase of our earthship build: The Adobe Pack-Out Stage.  The interior walls of earthship homes don't have exposed tires because of off-gassing and flammability issues.  Thus, the voids between the tires are first packed with a layer of adobe (1 part sand, 1 part fine dry dirt, a handful of straw and some water to achieve the right consistency).  The adobe should be thick and moist and have the ability to stick to the tire wall with ease.  Aluminum cans are crushed into the adobe to take up some space which reduces the amount of adobe needed to fill the voids.  Once that has dried, another thick layer of adobe is added to bring the tires more level with one another.  It isn't imperative to achieve anything close to perfection in this stage of building out the wall. This stage simply helps finishing the walls later on go more smoothly.

Everyone had their own techniques for applying the adobe.  Interestingly enough however, many people eventually found it was most advantageous to adopt the bowling approach.

Another version of the bowling approach as demonstrated gracefully by Wyatt.  You were a swan in a past life, my friend.

The day couldn't have been more gorgeous.

Taking a break.

Elliot fetching some sand with Kate.

Wyatt, Elliot and Zac applying the second layer of adobe to our tire wall.

Elliot was all about the adobe pack-out portion of our earthship build.  Fortunately for him, the process will continue this upcoming weekend (August 8th and 9th).  If you're interested in coming out to learn the skills to build an earthship home, we'd love to have you out!  Not only do you get to learn sustainable building skills for free, but we will provide food for FREE to boot!  Oh, and entertainment comes with the territory so be prepared to get your weekly dose of weird.  If you'd like to come out, send us an email so that we can plan to have food for you.  We begin working both Saturdays and Sundays at 9:00 AM and finish off each day around 5:00 or 6:00 PM.  The address is 2687 S. River Rd., Cedarville, OH 45314.