Progress with tyres

Over the past week or so we have been diligently filling the tyres with 10mm chippings, the majority of the filling happened during two days on site with large groups of students working in teams to shovel and compact the stones. I required the assistance of another college staff member (Mike Prosser) to supervise these larger groups. we are now almost ready for the straw walls to go up.

You can also see in the background of this picture that we now have a site office and canteen so that we can establish the required welfare facilities on site. Untill now we have been sharing the occombe farm buildings to satisfy the CDM regulations. We can now be self sufficient on site without interfering with farm operations.

Filling tyres with stone

We are now in the position to fill all of the tyres as we now have enough to complete the foundations. The method we employed to ensure the tyres are full with chippings is to lever the inner edge of the tire with a pick axe and ram the chippings in with a blunt object (stick). We will let the chippings settle for a couple of weeks (over the christmas period) and then we will settle them more using a plate compactor topping up the tyres as required.

Things take shape

Here's a lovely drawing that our architect, Mark Ledgard at Stratton & Holborow has done, to show a little better what the building will look like.

Car tyres are now arriving from our friends at ATS in all the towns hereabouts, who have been collecting the right size tyres for our foundations. We have around 130 of the 180 we need and the students have been setting them out on site. It doesn't look very rural at the moment!

Other highlights - we have commissioned local Devon woodsman Brian Williamson to prepare the 570 pointed hazel stakes we will use to pin the straw bales together, and he's started work already on this, delivery expected early January when we will start on the walls. Here's a picture of Brian's apprentice, Ruth, at work in the woods cutting the hazel rods.

Today a class of College students have had a straw-bale building course on site under Nick's tuition, as a dry run prior to the real build, and have also started fabricating the wall plate out of timber. This sits between the tyres and the straw and is used to anchor everything together.

A static caravan has been manoevred onto site today. Donated by Hoburne Holiday Park in Paignton, the caravan will act as the site office for the next few months, giving the students much-needed shelter and R&R facilities during the doubtless wet Devon winter that's to come.

Students from the college carried out some new (to them) methods of working on site. One of these being the use of a power barrow. After some intensive training from the digger driver they were all given the opportunity to use the equipment to fill the foundations with crusher run stone. This was then spread and compacted in 150mm layers. It was good to see the students keen to get stuck in so that within the first week of operation on site the foundations were dug, lined with a geotextile material and filled to the correct level. The next stage of the job will be to locate the tires into position fill and compact them and prepare for the timber wall base plate. This stage will be carried out with the aid of the carpentry students.

South Devon College students compacting stone in the foundations.

Tyres start to be laid out

The tyres have been donated by local branch of ATS. We are using two sizes 175/65 R14 and 185/65 R14. There will be two rows stacked one on top of the other.

Foundations continued.

Here you can see the the 2 trenches that cross the centre of the building.

Nick Cleasby project leader for South Devon College holds one of the steel rods that will pass up through the foundations, tyres and wooden base plate.