Onward and Upward

The Fifth Course.....sigh. Shouldn't we be at dessert yet? 120 tires to go.

The peak of the Season Food Fest was held at Jackson Gardens this afternoon. Kenai Resilience asked people to bring a dish made with local foods. We truly are at the peak of the season here in Alaska and the chill is returning to the air. The grass is less green than it was for the more vibrant months of summer... The earthship continues. The fifth course is finished, the sixth has begun. What this means is that the 24 tire wall has three courses left counting the one we're on. The 15 tire garage wall has four courses remaining.....
The South facing window wall is two courses high and is being prepped for the concrete bond beam pour. The bond beam runs continuously the length of all tire walls. It sits on top of the pounded tires, is at least 8 inches square(ours is 12) has at least two continuous horizontal rebar running through with vertical pieces of rebar pounded down into each tire and into the ground beneath. The framed in window wall will be sitting on the top plate which will sit on the bond beam which will in turn sit on the tires (and the green grass grows all around all around and the green grass grows all around). We are building the South wall crazy strong by using plywood to form along the tire wall. This will allow the concrete to fall down into the gaps around where the tires come together making a 2 1/2 foot thick thermal mass wall. There will be insulation on the outside of this wall until we can build a greenhouse the length of it.
Another project we've begun is the packing of the gaps in the tire walls. Earthship Biotecture suggests filling these gaps with a straw/clay/sand mixture that you throw at the wall to get in all the gaps. I propose to use Salvation Army reject clothing dipped in cement to stuff into all of the gaps. This route is being taken for two reasons. Firstly, here in Alaska we are having a rainy summer to say the least. The sun came out this afternoon and that is the first time I have seen it directly since August 5th. That sunny evening was the first in a couple of weeks... and so on and so forth. Anyhow, not much sun for South Central Alaskans this summer. However, I haven't had to water my garden since June! When it is so wet all the time, I don't see how a heavy mud mixture is going to fully dry. Cement will cure even if it is humid... Secondly, because it is cheaper and less labor intensive to use clothing as straw is 13.00 a bale and sand is $130+ a load. We could go to the beach to collect the sand, but time is of the essence so we are trying to take reasonable shortcuts wherever possible. The clothing is free and so is the cement as the landfill has a literal ton of it just sitting there.
I'm going to leave off for now, as we are just plugging along trying to finish the tire pounding so we can move along to all things bigger and better (or at least new and exciting)