Even though the plumbing isn't done yet, we wanted to see what the tire bales will look like so we decided to set the west wall and a few on the north wall.

Using the lines and squares Steve had drawn on the ground, we began to set the first tire bales in place. We put the forks on the skid steer for this.

Using the forks, we were able to push the bales together. We marked where the edge of the bale should be and only pushed it to that mark.

We then noticed that there were gaps between the bales even though they were lined up right. When they are pushed together, they don't measure the 5 feet they need to according to the blueprints. We could stuff mud or cans in the void between the bales but we decided to add two additional tires, side by side, between the bales.

The half bales have a tendency to want to roll so we secured the half bale to the full bale next to it with cable. This picture is of the wing wall on the outside of the house with the half bale in the middle row.

Then we cut the treads off several truck tires with a Sawzall (they cut like butter), cut them in half to match the width of the tire bale, and screwed eight of them together with long screws.

We used the skid steer to lift the end of the top bale and stacked the treads underneath and shoved a few more treads behind them to create a wedge. They are all screwed to the bale below. Now we can use the concrete bond beam to even out the top of the wall. (View from the inside the house)

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