In the Beginning... We had planned to begin building in May of 1999.  We took our architectural blueprints to the El Paso County Regional Building Department.  The initial response was "well, at least it's not drawn on a napkin."  After a quick review, the plan check official sent us to get the building approved by a professional engineer.  The engineering took much longer than we had anticipated: a total of 8 weeks.  Once we had engineering stamps we took the plans back to regional.  It was almost July.  The 3-week long plan review at regional took 5 weeks.  At the end of which we thought that we would get the building permit. Nope.  We were then informed that before the building permit could be issued, we had to obtain both a driveway permit and a septic permit. Both of which we could have done while waiting for the regional to check the plans.  Now its almost August.  The septic permit would have been easy, except that we had record rainfall this year and the ground water was very high.  We also wanted to use a non-conventional grey and black water treatment system.  More engineering.  Our soils engineer toiled over how to avoid a "mounded" septic system, which would cost more and look bad too.  Meanwhile we had to have two 8 foot deep pits dug in the ground to monitor that crazy groundwater situation.  All of this for a septic system that we hope to never use.  While the backhoe was out there digging the pits, we decided to have the land excavated.  Once the land was excavated (late September) we went to pick up our first load of tires.

You can fit about 150 tires in a 14 foot Uhaul.  If you are lucky, someone who knows what they are doing will help you load them.  If not, you might only fit 75.  Thank you to Gerrardo and Dave from the Tire Broker in Colorado Springs.  They gave us the tires for free.  The first tire dump I called wanted almost a dollar a tire. Yeah, right. The tires were free, the Uhaul cost us $60.

We didn't have a permit, but we had tires and a hole in the ground.  We were sure that the permit would come through any day, so we started "practicing."  There is a real skill in pounding a tire.  It isn't brain surgery, but you can mess it up.  Essentially, you fill the tire with dirt, hit it with a sledge hammer; more dirt, more hammering, dirt, hammer, dirt, hammer.  The dirt gets very well compacted and the tire starts to swell up.  It's finished when there are no soft spots in the casing: about 3 wheelbarrows full of dirt.

On the left, Ellen is pounding our first tire.  We just used the dirt from the site excavation.  Above the first finished tire.  Once the tire is hard, it is leveled and the center is tamped. (Get a tamper that does not have a wooden handle! We've broken 5!)

We pounded tires every weekend for a month.  Still no permit. One day someone attached an anonymous note to our sign post.  The note talked about the covenents of the area (as you can see we are in a rural sub-division).  Ultimately it threatened a law suit if "the problems" continued.  We had cleared our home through the home owners association, but we decided to quit pounding tires until we actually had our permit.

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