Bale Producer Says Tyres are “Ideal” Building Material

One of the first houses constructed out of tyres is being built in Nedd, north of Ullapool, Scotland. The project is the brainchild of two green activists, who after seeing tyres compressed into bales used as retaining walls on embankments, decided to ask Inverness-based Northern Tyre Recycling, about the possibility of using the bales for their own homes.

The result is a house with both foundations and structural walls made out of the blocks. “In one day, 170 bales were laid for the foundations and the rest of the structure should be complete in time for the winter,” said Scott.

The bales consist of between 110 and 120 complete, used tyres compressed together by a baling machine imported from the US. They are then held together by high-tensile steel wires in blocks measuring 1.5 by 1.25 by 0.8 metres and weighing between 750kg and 820kg.

“We’ve also used them for road building in the UK, including a 300m section of the B871 near Kinbrace in the Highlands. The original road had sunk 2m, and the more aggregate was poured in, the more it sunk. The tyre bales, being 30% lighter, effectively float across the peat bog. It’s been in three years and is much better than before, when they had to repair it every three months,” commented company director, Dennis Scott, in a Contract Journal interview.