Golden Straw House: Its all about tyres

This will set up some sympathy votes- Tyres. You may wonder why I am going to talk about tyres when we should be on the way to building a house of straw. Well!! Mr I want to build a straw bale house, likes all things that cost 'nothing'. Neighbours had horses and were moving and just before they moved they offered us some tyres that they used for a horse ring. They were for nothing, free, no cash and no delivery costs either. Mr I want to build a straw bale house thought tyres!!!! - there is 101 things you can do with tyres, and they are free (more incentive). He got so excited about the neighbours tyres - he arranged a couple of extra truck loads to be delivered - yes for free!! Not just car tyres there were 'TRUCK' tyres amongst the hundreds.

A chook shed was built by staking the tyres in a step like fashion. The huge truck tyres not only housed chooks but snakes were also comforted by the warmth and security that tyre bring. We ended up having to collect the eggs with very long tongs and during snake season, kids were not allowed near the make shift chook. I wonder why we started breading mozzies as well.

The following uses of our tyres so far:

Chook shed
Fence to direct the cows into the stock yards
garden bed in front of the house set up to stop cars running into the house - (It hadn't happened before but it might happen - It was our cars though mmmmmmmmmm)
rows of truck tyres to protect bee hives from the cows
holding down tin (so it does not blow away)
getting stack stuff off the ground.

hay
tin
wood lengths
garage bits
windows
anything really

fill the truck tryes with crushed rock and have them as the foundation or maybe the floor of the shed

When we were going to sell the property a clean up had to happen. Many trips of tyres were made to the new property. Lines of tyres at different fences now appear on our lovely fresh 110 acres in the country. You may ask why do you still have them? - It costs $25 to take a car tyre to the tip, not sure how much for a truck tyre. Moving the tryes is tuff work, dirty and often you get wet from the water that has been sitting in the rims. The truck tyres are extremly heavy and weigh even more with water, rocks or dirt.

When we bought the land, and after the success of the leaking and dangerous chook shed, Mr I want to build a straw bale house, first thought a house of tyres would be great. (so we got more). We have shifted hundreds of them more than once. For me I do not like double handling but Mr I want to build a straw bale house thinks it is character building to move things double / triple / ...... up to 3 squared (9). times - I remind myself that its not over yet.

We made a vegie patch using 5 truck tyres stack on top of each other - There was a row of 6 sets of tyre stacks. We had to surround them with chicken wire so the chooks didn't eat the vegies. This was in front of the house so it was a great look. Mind you we sold the house before we took away the tyres but the chicken wire was removed. I guess that was the seller!!!

I just want to talk about one of Mr I want to build a straw bale house's idea for the flooring of our new shed on the property. He thought instead of a rock, dirt or concrete floor for the shed he was going to fill up truck tyres with crushed rock. The idea was to cover the space with the filled tyres and possibly top them with concrete or more crushed rock. After several heated discussions he thought better of it and now we have a smooth concrete slab.

There are so many tyre stories I could tell but I am sure I am now losing your symphony. Workers that have delivered our containers - foundation is tyres and having the bungalow delivered with the 6 tyres not well placed the workman did not think we were serious. I had to gather up concrete blocks and bricks to sit on the tyres before they would unload the cabin. I offered to take photos for them. The quick response was "don't worry, we will never forget this day, we have not seen anything like this before in our 35 years of delivery buildings."