Inspector Gadjet

Thank's to everyone who participated in the recent workshop which saw fifteen tyres saved from landfill and pounded with dirt transforming waste into re purposed building materials! discussing passive solar design and Earthship principles In the coming Months we will be continuing construction of the tyre bench seat with new projects added each consecutive Month. two courses of rammed earth tyres and cob with aluminium cans If you are interested in natural and Sustainable building then these Workshops are a great introduction and certainly a lot of fun! Here is a video of the last Workshop:

Are tyres toxic? Do they off-gas in an Earthship?? What about fire risk??? I hear questions like these all the time and it's time to clarify some little known facts about the EVIL DANGEROUS TERRIBLE car tyre! Source: Mad Max 2 Firstly tyres contain three main ingredients: Rubber, sulfur and carbon black. Rubber, as we know, comes from a plant (no harm there);  Sulfur is also a naturally occurring substance, which leaves carbon black: carbon black is a petroleum based product and is widely used as a colourant in things like kitchen utensils and cake tins so it shouldn't be dangerous for our health. Synthetic tyres are made from silicone, another product widely used in the food industry. So what are tyres off-gassing and why is everyone so worried about it? The average passenger tyre lasts anywhere from one year or longer and as the tyre turns and is in contact with the road surface, tiny particles of the tyre are worn off, this is known as road dust and ...

Whilst harvesting tyres for my upcoming workshop I thought I would share some answers to questions I have often fielded about the procurement of used tyres. Question #1 Where do you get the tyres? The tyres come from tyre shops and servo's, sometimes peoples back yards! Question #2 Do you have to pay for them? The tyres are free and the tyre places actually have to pay anywhere from $1 to $5 for disposal of each tyre so they are generally more than happy to part with them! Who knows, one day maybe they will be a marketable building material and there will be a price tag. Question #3 Do you get them delivered, how do you get them? I pick the tyres up from my suppliers rather than getting them dropped off, one major advantage with picking them up is that I can be choosy about the specific sizes I require for a particular stage of the project and I don't end up with dozens of sizes I can't use and subsequently have to dispose of. That...

Imagine a dwelling that heats and cools itself... a building made with things like used car tyres and aluminium cans... a home which grows your food... a place to live completely independent of outside services such as water, electricity and sewerage... The Earthship, invented by Michael Reynolds is all of these things and more! The sheer volume of used tyres that end up in land fill every year is mind boggling, just think, every car on the road has five tryes including the spare! how often does your car need new tryes? Tyres make up the walls of an Earthship and when they are filled with dirt and the dirt is compacted, they make incredibly strong load bearing walls and have unique thermal properties. The dirt is rammed into the trye using a sledge hammer making the construction a time and labour intensive process requiring volunteers who share a common interest in Earthships and natural building methods. If you want to know more about ea...

Building with waste beyond sustainability. I have an upcoming hands on workshop at Our Sacred Space in Dural, NSW. click  here  for more info or to purchase tickets. « All Events Building from Waste Materials – Beyond Sustainability June 25 @ 9:00 am  -  2:00 pm $120.00 Ever think about all those empty plastic or glass bottles who throw out? What about used tyres? Ever wish you could create something useful out of the tons of things we throw out each day? Join us as we dive in to the creative world of repurposed goods! Using nothing but all natural and repurposed items you can create amazing and useful everyday household items, including your very house! Leander Oakley has come to know a thing of two about making something out of nothing.  He has participated in more that 4 Earthship builds including his own home in Tasmania, a community aid in Guatemala, disaster relief in Taos, New Mexico, USA as well as Vanuatu, Fiji.  He has gai...

Max Rockatansky inside a car tyre compound. picture courtesy of Mad Max 2 When I mention using car tyres and other by products of society for re use as construction materials, most people I talk to are shocked and their re-action is that the buildings made from such materials must be like something out of the Post apocalyptic wasteland. It is interesting to note that in a Global community   seemingly oblivious to the limits of production of the finite resources of Planet Earth, aesthetics is the first consideration when it comes to alternative housing options. Simple survival model Earthship in Taos New Mexico Just the mental image of 700 plus used car tyres forming the spine of a building, throw in a couple of thousand bottles, cans and half a tonne of cardboard and it is enough to put the average "Consumer" off having anything to do with such a radical way of building. Inside an earthship Fortunately the reality of the finished building is noth...

Having just come back from Tasmania incorporating a meeting with the local Council building inspector and some continuing earthworks and bits and bobs I thought I would publish a bit of an update on the situation. Looking like something from the apocalypse, the first stages of the building back in 2014. partial floor and walls cob pack out and my swag, this trip I slept in the bedroom for the first time! As the above picture shows, the sun in winter reaches half way up the back walls of the earthship making the living spaces warm and bright. bottles make up the gaps in the inner greenhouse recycled window wall. The cob will be rendered over with a light grey grout. This trip was only for five days so I didn't do any big jobs but I managed to get some interesting little side jobs done, such as this repurposed suitcase laundry chute I installed in the bedroom which backs onto the bathroom/laundry: I hinged the bottom so that by closing the...

What is Repurposing? Repurposing is the process by which an object with one use value is transformed  or redeployed as an object with an alternative use value. Repurposing should not be confused with Recycling or Upcycling, we are not  cycling the product or object back through the manufacturing chain... We are Transforming. Transforming rubbish into free building materials. So if recycling is a step towards Sustainability, Repurposing is moving beyond  Sustainability and towards affordability and significant Carbon reduction in that  the waste material is not being Remanufactured but transformed through  another use.

Know your Building Materials Tyres. All tyres havs a combination of numbers and letters on their sidewall, for instance:  215/65 R 15 Let's look at these cryptic digits and see how we can decipher them and use  them to help us Repurpose the discarded tyre and bring it back into use as a  brick. *The first number (215) represents the tyres tread width and this is measured in  Millimeters. *The second number (65) is the aspect ratio or: a percentage of the width, this  being the sidewall of our tyre, in other words: 65% of the tyre width which is  215mm *The letter R means radial but we can ignore this letter because it does not affect  our selection criteria when using the tyre as a brick. *The third (in this case 15) and last number we need to consider when choosing  our tyres is the wheel diameter the tyre is made to fit (basically the hole in the  ...

Know your building Materials: Cob Cob is a mixture of sand, straw and clay, it is a natural concrete without the  embodied energy and chemicals. Cob has been a building material for hundreds of years all over the Earth.   Cob is  low tech,  easy to use and safe to handle without gloves, in fact working  with Cob directly with hands and feet feels great. Generally Cob is mixed by at least two people by foot, (music helps). A standard concrete mixer can be used to mix Cob but I prefer the old fashioned  method because it is community based and less noisy! The ratio of the three ingredients will vary from site to site depending on the  soil conditions but a general recipe is: One part clay to one part straw and three parts coarse sand. The coarse sand acts as a binder, the clay is the glue and the straw provides  tensile strength.