Senior Design 04-05: Team 13

 

At the time our group was formed, shortly after the fall semester began, we really had no good ideas for a project. We had a number of unrealistic brainstorms, but the entire group was unable to agree on what should actually be done. Then we received an email from Professor VanderLeest about a project proposed by a Calvin graduate named James Kuiper. Kuiper worked as a teacher on the Zuni Native American Reservation near Taos, New Mexico, and was interested in constructing a home out of old tires. However, this type of house is very time consuming to build because each tire must be packed with soil by hand, and this can take a long time to do. He proposed that a senior design team from Calvin design and build a tire packing machine that would make the building process quicker and easier. Our group decided that we wanted to pursue this project.

Shortly after we made our decision about wanting to do this project, we heard rumors that another senior design group had also decided that they wanted to pursue it. This conflict led to a number of meetings between our group and the other group, and we also contacted James Kuiper to see if he had any other potential senior design project ideas. By the end of the week, a second project idea had come up that involved building a lift to place the packed tires on the wall as the house was built. Our group decided that we would take on this project.

The type of house that Kuiper is aspiring to build is called an “Earthship” by its inventor, Michael Reynolds. The concept of these “Earthships” is to use old truck tires to build a fully self-sustaining house. Earth is firmly packed into the whole tire to form a 300lb tire brick. These are then stacked just like bricks to form the walls of the house. These houses are particularly effective in desert areas with cool evenings and very hot days. The earth in the tires basically acts as a big “thermo-economizer” for the house. During the day, the earth and tires will soak up most of the heat from the sun keeping it from the inside of the house, and when night comes they release the heat to the inside, therefore keeping it at a constant, comfortable temperature.

Kuiper wishes to build and live in an Earthship in order to show the Zuni natives that they are a cost effective way to inexpensively build, heat, and cool a home. Currently, the Zuni tend to rely on either wood or natural gas to heat their homes at night. Since it is a desert, the wood supply is running thin, and natural gas prices are rising, as they are throughout the nation. For these reasons, Earthships should sound appealing for this, but the time and labor involved with building these houses turns many people away from them. Current construction methods involve hand packing the tires with sledge hammers; this can take a person up to 45 minutes when not tired and much longer as the work day progresses. Under these conditions, a typical 1200 tire house can take up to 3 years to build even with a substantial amount of help. This is not appealing to the Zuni natives. The tire packer being built by group #4, coupled with our lifter could effectively reduce the 1 tire cycle time to as low as 6 minutes and this would allow for a house to built in as little time as 3 weeks (optimistically). Kuiper hopes to show that a cost effective and thermally efficient house can be built in a short amount of time.

Below is a picture of a typical earthship once it is completed