Special-Built Balers Help Create New Uses For Old Tires

Special-Built Balers Help Create New Uses For Old Tires BALERS Balers 25-4-32 Every year, an estimated 270 million passenger car and light truck tires are junked in the United States. Since 100 tires take up about 10 cu. yards, 270 million tires would make a pile between 25 and 30 ft. deep over a full section of land (640 acres). If Ed and Nancy Drews have their way, these tires will be put to a good use rather than buried. More than 15 years ago, the Grand Rapids, Minnesota, couple began researching tire recycling. They looked at producing fuel from shredded tires, but the startup and maintenance costs associated with this type of recycling led them to search further. They finally discovered a tire baler made by a Florida company. After researching uses for baled tires, they bought a machine and formed Encore Systems, Inc. Since that time, they've designed new tire balers that are more versatile and portable than the one they purchased at first. They've sold these balers all over the U.S. and around the world. ESI balers compact about 100 passenger and lightweight truck tires into bales that measure 30 by 50 by 60 in. Once compressed, tire bales are fastened together with five 9-gauge steel baling wires. ESI also makes balers that will handle truck tires and larger farm tractor and off-road construction and mining tires. Baling compresses tires to 1/5 their original size. Even if they are to be dumped into landfills, this reduces danger from fires, mosquito breeding, and saves space. The balers turn tires into solid blocks that can be used for constructing windbreaks, erosion control along streams, rivers and lakes, and even for building roads. Tire bales weigh about a ton, so once they're laid in place they generally stay put. Chautauqua County, New York, bought a tire baler to eliminate problems with illegal tire dumps and used some 400,000-plus baled tires as the base for several thousand feet of county gravel roads. After three years, they've found these roads hold up better than clay-based roads, particularly in the spring when the frost is coming out of the ground. A year ago, they successfully used tire bales for the base on about a quarter of a mile of asphalt in a low-lying area. The Drews say the tire blocks, when laid in place of traditional sub-base materials, are less costly and have high load-bearing capacity so roads stay firm, even in wet weather. One of the most unusual uses for tire bales so far has been the house Vernie Houtchens built near his tire recycling business outside Pueblo, Colorado. Houtchens has two ESI tire balers and processes more than 5,000 tires a day. He sells some of the bales for civil engineering purposes and some to cattlemen who use them to make windbreaks. But most, he says, end up in landfills. When he decided to build a new house, he opted to use tire bales for the exterior walls. With walls 5 ft. thick, Houtchens' 4,300-sq. ft. house (including the attached garage) is well insulated from both weather and sound. "The walls have an R-factor of about 100," he says. To make what Denver Post writers called his "house of discards," Houtchens stacked bales side by side and two high. He then capped the tire bales with concrete - not that they would have moved - to have something solid for rafters to sit on and covered the outside of the bales with stucco, giving the building a "Southwest ranch-style" look. The Drews say there's no limit to the types of structures that can be built with tire bales. They're available for consulting and other assistance. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Ed and Nancy Drews, Encore Systems, Inc., 585 NW Third St., Cohasset, Minn. 55721 (ph 218-328-0023; fax 218 328-0024; E-mail: encore@tirebaler.com; Website: www.tirebaler.com); or Vernie Houtchens, 19450 Midway Ranch Road, Pueblo, Colo. 81008 (ph 719 382-3019).

To read the rest of this story, download this issue below or click here to register with your account number.