Serving Boone, Blowing Rock, Banner Elk, and other towns of the North Carolina High Country
Founded 05-05-05

More Ways to Reuse Old Tires

Innovative Use of Processed Tires in Home Construction

Story by Sally Treadwell

Bob and Katherine Oelberg had already planned to build a certified NC HealthyBuilt home—one that would be not only beautiful but also healthier and less wasteful to build and run. But a chance conversation about the problem of old tires and an interest in the local Zero Waste effort led Bob to wonder whether they couldn’t do something truly innovative, too.

So he started researching. And what he discovered was that chipped tires would make extremely good backfill for the foundation of his home. They’re lightweight, making them cheaper and easier to haul; they put less stress on the foundation wall; they’re seven times better than soil as insulation; they’re cheaper than washed stone; they’re great for drainage. Tire chips are already successfully used in septic fields and, what’s more, as fill for highway retaining walls and embankments across the country. Because tire chips put less stress on the wall, engineers can design a thinner and therefore cheaper retaining wall. Dr. Robert Snyder, the head of tire development at Uniroyal, had even used tire shreds decades ago in the foundation of his home specifically to insulate it against frigid New England winters.

“The idea never caught on, though,” said Michael Blumenthal of the Rubber Manufacturers Association. “He was ahead of his time. But then, when you do something like that, at first people look at you like you have three eyes.”

He noted that people also thought a septic tank installer in South Carolina was crazy when he started using tire shreds in septic fields, but soon “virtually every new septic installation in South Carolina was using them.” The uniformly-sized shreds were cheaper than the usual river stone: comparatively light, enabling installers to get twice as much done, they could hold more water, they even promoted better microbial action. What wasn’t to like?

Nothing leaches out of tires even when they’re constantly wet, it seems; just a trace of iron and manganese from the steel in steel-belted radials. Even obsessed golf course greens managers are perfectly comfortable using ground tires mixed with compost to protect their beloved turf in high-traffic areas, so foundation plantings shouldn’t suffer.

Oelberg, who is the vice president of Planning and Natural Resource Management for Ginn’s Eastern Mountain Region, was sold on the idea. However, like any innovator, he had to jump through a lot of hoops that should pave the way for future tire chip users. He had to apply to the state for a permit, the first to be granted in North Carolina, and eventually received it with the proviso that an engineer must sign off on the project. He had to think it through—for instance, he started to worry that any exposed bits of steel left in the chips could puncture the plastic on the foundation wall, so he ended up putting up blue board as well. “If I had to do it over,” he said, “I’d just use the blue board and then seal it with tape.”

Then he had to actually get the chips. Each week Watauga County sends about two trailer loads of old tires down to US Tire in Concord, where they are processed. Oelberg had initially hoped that the county could bring back a load of the two-inch square chips in the otherwise empty trailer and sell them to him, but it wasn’t quite that simple, since the trailer wasn’t set up for loading or unloading that type of cargo. Eventually, he took a deep breath and contracted privately for a load of chips. That added to the cost. But “somebody’s got to get the ball rolling,” he said. “If people can see the benefits, then a market will develop.”

The Oelbergs have used many sound principles of conservation and reduction of waste in their new home. All the wood flooring and shelving has already been milled from the trees cleared from the property, and scrap wood has not only been used to fashion the porch columns but will also be used for the sleepers that create the space for in-floor radiant heating. Eventually a solar panel will heat the water for the heating, and a raingarden will filter storm water and help to alleviate flooding. “There’s no burn pile on this site,” said Bob. “One of the goals of a HealthyBuilt home is to keep stuff out of the landfill.”

Using tire chips as backfill is just going a little further than usual. Bob hopes that once people understand what a valuable resource tire chips are, someone can figure out how to get them or keep them here.

“I have no business interest in promoting tire chips,” he said. “I just think that the county could benefit from creating end uses in the county for the tires that come from our county.”

Could Tire Chips be a Money-Spinner for Watauga?

Before tire disposal regulations began to hit the books starting in 1985, old tires just went into landfills or the occasional spectacular—and highly dangerous—bonfire. Once regulations went into force, however, so did the markets. Now an astonishing 85 percent of scrap tires are reused or recycled nationwide. They’re used as fuel for high-heat applications such as the manufacture of cement, for civil engineering applications, in road beds and asphalt—even for golf courses. No, seriously. Ground-up tires are mixed with compost and spread on some of the finest golf courses in the country to protect the shaft of each blade of grass.

Part of what pays for all this is the tire disposal fee that we shell out each time we put new tires on our car. Some of that money goes back to the county, which uses it to haul the old tires down to US Tire in Concord for recycling. Currently, Watauga County pays out “easily” $50,000 a year in fees to US tire for taking the things, plus about $8,000 in gasoline to get them there, and then, of course, the cost of quite a number of manpower hours to deal with the whole process, according to J.V. Potter, the operations services director for Watauga’s solid waste and recycling department. Although right now the county isn’t set up for bringing back tire chips for resale instead of an empty trailer, said Potter, it’s not impossible that things could change “if there was a demand for it.”

How about purchasing a grinder/chipper for the area and possibly earning money while saving on fuel? Rocky Nelson, county manager, likes the idea but has reservations. “It’s not as easy as all that,” he said. “We support the green movement, but just because it’s a good idea doesn’t mean that the county will be able to do it. For one thing, there’s no land available at the landfill. Right now we grind our own mulch and DENR (Department of Environment and Natural Resources) is getting upset because we’re not getting rid of it fast enough—anything we do, there’s an extra layer of regulation. Sometimes it’s easier for private enterprise to do it.”

Scrap tires definitely have a market. Although North Carolina’s tire reuse/recycle rate is 75-80 percent, a little less than the national average, Pamela Moore, an environmental specialist with the state’s waste management division, sees it rapidly escalating even though we go through even more tires every year. She thinks that the rate will be 90-95 percent within two years because of increased demand for scrap tire products.

And “people generally aren’t going to risk being charged with felony dumping when it’s so easy to dispose of them,” she said. “We occasionally find small dumps now, but it’s usually where someone inherits a farm and discovers that grandpa had a couple of hundred tires out in the back forty. We’re not generally going to go after them, we just want them to call us so we can dispose of the tires properly.”

Tom Livingston, director of solid waste in Wilkes, loves the idea of some kind of cooperative effort between the counties. “Consciously or unconsciously, you’re just generating waste 24 hours a day—you’re wearing a little bit on everything all the time whether you’re driving down the road or living in your house or working or playing—we need to start looking at ways to reuse or recycle things before they get into the waste stream. We have to look at more options; we need to look more critically at our whole system.”

“It’s so much easier to get people to recycle if they can see the stuff being used,” said ASU’s Community TIES Project Director Stan Steury, who often hears about people not recycling because they think it’s all just dumped back into the landfill.

Tire chips certainly have a lot going for them—if contractors and county officials can find an efficient and cost-effective way to make the most of them.