I built a tire foundation for the small earthbag house that I built a couple of years ago and decided to share my experience so others can avoid complications with a few tips and tricks I learned.
- Level the ground with a tractor or with a shovel and hoe (like I did, in 40 degree heat haha).
- Obtain used tires for free. You can find these at:
- local service stations as they often have them piled up in the back of the building.
- local junkyard as I am sure they will be happy to offload ones that they cannot sell.
- a farm. Often they have more than they need and they might be willing to give some away.
- Craigslist.com
- landfills. I often see a pile of them at the one I go to in East Hants, NS.
- freecycle.org
- local service stations as they often have them piled up in the back of the building.
- Obtain or use soil on your land. I purchased seven loads of soil for this purpose and placed it in the middle of where I am building the round tire foundation. This reduces the amount of shoveling and wheelbarrowing!
- Measure out your foundation location. If doing a round one I suggest driving a stake in the center and attach a rope to it. Then measure the distance on the rope and hold it with one hand. Use your other hand to mark (scratch) the ground to indicate the inside or the outside of the foundation location.
- Mark the location of your doors and build the frames or install the pre-hung door. Brace the door so that it is plumb and square. Brace it well so it won’t move when you bump it, which you will.
- Place the tires and make sure they are level. An option is to add a layer of gravel or crusher dust to make this process easier.
- Fill the tires with soil in layers with your hands and compact each layer with a ram (I used a bamboo pole) You can watch how I did it in the video below.
- Add soil to the interior and exterior areas where the tires touch as this is a narrow area. Compact the soil.
- Add a minimum of two inches of 1/2″ to 1″ clear stone to the top of the tires and compacted soil. This prevents your house walls from wicking moisture from the foundation soil. This is very important if you are building with natural materials for earthbag or adobe buildings.
- If (more like WHEN) you come to a doorway or a corner where the tires don’t fit together perfectly you will have to get creative.
Since I build a round tire foundation I started at the only door and worked my way around to the other side of the door. Here I ended with about a 24″ gap between the tire and door frame. - I used concrete to fill in the gap by building a little form to hold the concrete in place using scrap wood. Mix a bag of quikcrete or concrete and pour up to the top of the tires or gravel.
It doesn’t need to be fancy so you can “trowel” it with your hands or a trowel or a piece of wood. You can also use your hand to vibrate the wet concrete and it should self-level.
Watch me in he photos and videos below to see how I did it.
I used adobe bricks and a piece of wood to build the small form to hold the wet concrete. I had these left over from the toilet and shed building. Nothing fancy, just cheap and easy!

I am only building a one-level building so I think this should work (it did), but I should have poured it higher to match the top of the tire. I had to start with a small earthbag here to make it level. The hoe in the photo makes mixing concrete easy.


Make sure to brace both corners of the frame to prevent movement during construction. Leave the nails or screws out a bit so that they are easy to remove later. This wood is incredibly hard and I had free 1″ lumber so I used it. I think it is as strong as 2″ x 6″ lumber at home!
I had to predrill the holes because the nails were bending most of the time.

Door frame in place and waiting patiently for bracing. I braced it diagonally within the building with stakes driven into the ground. And also to the adobe building, but I haven’t found my photos of that yet.

I drove concrete nails through the wood and into the concrete on one side.

Trucks delivered the soil too the center of the construction area to reduce the amount of effort required to move materials around. The center stake (bamboo) and rope that I used to mark the foundation location are still in place.

The tire foundation did not move after more than two years of use. We coated the earthbag walls with mud on the inside and outside and there no cracks appeared!
The quality of the used tires may play a major role. The initial tests in Sweden to check the general rubber resistance to compression, it can be provided the winter specification tires at hand. Although used and deemed to be no longer suitable for cars, these were obviously of much higher quality than regular worn out Indonesian tires
Research Gate, Study: USED TIRE AS BASE ISOLATOR TIRE FOR EARTHQUAKE RESISTANT HOUSES
Although termites and a large tree branch destroyed the roof, but that is ok as we are building another house on this location. Stay tuned for photos and videos for that project!
