Using Tires For Landscaping
With the enormous amount of dirt I have to move, I am slowly making a front yard as I mound it, bucket by bucket, in front of the building site. I am still working on clearing the earth from where I will be laying my tire foundation. Because of the time of year and lack of rain, the earth is dry and solid, and unlike digging in spring time when the clay and rock fall away easily, in some places it’s pretty hard and a real challenge to break through.
I have just turned the corner on the 3rd side of the foundation. Because the hill is now over my head, I need to leave at least a 3 foot shelf to stand on until I can dig down to a place I can reach with my pick. In the picture you can see the shelf against the back wall. Once I dig at least 4 feet in, I can make another shelf going in that direction (towards the right in the picture), and remove that shelf you can see.
But it’s not over. I then have to dig a drain to lay gravel and a pipe before I can start laying the tire foundation on that side. I’ve decided to leave the earth in the center so I have someplace to stand when I’m laying the papercrete blocks for the actual pyramid itself. It will be much easier to stand on that patch of earth than using ladders or constructing a scaffold. When the blocks are completely in place and the pyramid is done, I plan on digging out that patch of dirt and throwing it out the front door.
So far, with the dirt I’ve moved, I have taken my narrow foot path and have widened it to make a fairly flat area at least 5 feet wide. I would keep mounding the dirt, except in my minds eye I envision a small pond at the bottom of the hill outside the front door.
In order to keep dirt away from that area, I am using tires as a retaining wall. First, leveling and placing a row at the bottom of the hill and filling and tamping them with dirt. Then, back filling them until I have enough dirt behind them to stack another row of tires on top (leaning slightly back against the hill), filling them, then backfilling, until I reach the desired height or until I run out of dirt. Which ever comes first. I seriously doubt that I will run out of dirt first!
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the block is rock solid and dry. It has shrunk considerably, especially top to bottom. Since I am making a concrete pad for the first row to sit on, I’m not too concerned about the base row since I can make up for the few inches of shrinkage with concrete. Hopefully an idea will come by the time I’m ready to start the second row. Since I have to make 24 of them, plus four corners, I’m not going to worry about it yet.
February 2nd, 2011 at 9:30 am
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