Selfsufficientish.com

as you get through tyres in the workplace, i hav aquired tyres, and have no use for them because they are either bald, or perished, and the only other thing is to take them to somewere like ATS or wotever to let them have them, but this would cost you a fee, so is there any way that i can re-use or re-cyle them myself without burning or putting them in for landfill

Make a house......

Nope not a flippant idea but one from a programme last night on the tV about an american who builds houses out of garbage.... Fasinating programme and what he did with the tyres was to ram them full of earth and I mean RAM them full using a sledge hammer to compact the soil in. During the day the black rubber heated up and the soil became a thermal store and this heated the house during the cold nights..

Grow tatties in them, a herb garden prehaps, fill with concrete and use as a driveway......

Try this link:
http://www.selfsufficientish.com/forum/ ... =29&t=1789
I'm sure we can think of more ideas if we try hard.

Zoe

Look at the Raised Bed thread - I've just had tyres suggested as raised beds!

The BF has just arrived with a car tyre Not only that but he cycled about 2 miles with it - top bloke He saw it on the cycle track and picked it up for me. No silly flowers, this guy knows how to keep a girl happy!!!!

Cheers
Zoe

I grew my carrots in three tyres (on top of each other) this year. I read that if you grow carrots higher than 21inches above ground the carrot fly doesn't get them! Not true!! pbf

Oooh... Always wanted a tyre swing....

Boring planters here too, but painted pretty colours.

We use ours for tire gardens. We have lousy soil but great compost. Growing in buckets and tires give us better growing soil and much better moisture retention that we can get in conventional garden beds.



Lynda

interesting use for them.

As my husband used to do motorsport we have a stack of them at the bottom of the garden.
the local tip want to charge £2.50 each to dispose of them, and despite advertising them on our local freecycle several times, we have no takers.

the thought of paying to dispose of them pains me

Bob Flowerdew uses them a lot in his organic garden. He plants potatoes and then builds them up as the plants grow to earth up.

Also use for a herb pyramid or spiral - makes them look quite pretty and gives you loads of spaces for different plants.

Windbreak, stuffed with earth, and grow something low-growing to drape over and hide the tyres.

We've got a boatyard in the village (he tinkers with cars too) and he's just given us half a dozen tyres to make our herb spiral.

They do make fantastically good walls - the other half is always tinkering with cars, so we generally have a few lying around the place. When they are infilled with earth they can make really strong walls, which are pretty immovable by the wind.

We've also grown spuds in them too - this was a very 'clean' way of doing things.

On the housebuilding front try http://www.earthships.org.uk hubby and I are seriously tempted by this, but it's finding the land *groan*.

missy wrote:interesting use for them.

As my husband used to do motorsport we have a stack of them at the bottom of the garden.
the local tip want to charge £2.50 each to dispose of them, and despite advertising them on our local freecycle several times, we have no takers.

the thought of paying to dispose of them pains me

Missy - whereabouts in Bucks are you? Do you still want to get rid of them? If you aren't too far from Swindon I might be interested in a few.

Cheers
Zoe

Hi ALL, may I suggest people could use old no good tyres to make a boarder, simply done by digging out a trench deep enough to cover the bottom part of the tyre in the trench with the soil you dig out, and deep enough for it to stand up to make a boarder with lots of them tuching each other to form a row at any hight you choose them to be, you could even add some flat lengths of wood to sit on or to put containers on I think would look good too, you could also us the space at the bottom of the tyre to grow something if you wanted to, it's just and idea I thought I would share with you which I haven't tried my self. John.J.R.P.

If any one has some tyre's going free in Manchester i will happly take them off your hands so i can build a low wall.

Eve