Chris Chmiel’s basement is made out of almost 500 tires.
A composting toilet does what it sounds like it does — captures human feces for use elsewhere instead of letting it go to waste.
He built the house — which is meant to be an incredible collection of environmentally friendly technologies — largely on his own.
“I can’t change the world, but I can change my life,” Chmiel, an Athens County Commissioner, said. “The house is a huge part of that.”
Chmiel’s Albany house, which he calls a “tire house,” was built to promote environmental sustainability by building with reused materials and using alternative energy sources such as solar power.
And because he found Ohio has a particular problem with people dumping scrap tires, Chmiel said it’s noteworthy that the walls of his basement are made of about 480 tires.
To build the two floors above ground, Chmiel and his wife, Michelle Gorman, bought lumber from local sawmills, cut down trees from their property and used bricks from a building that had been torn down at Ohio University.
The two began building in 1996 and were finishing up the house in 2001 when the couple had their first child.
They considered different ways to incorporate energy efficiency and alternative energy sources when planning the design of the house, such as the composting toilet, an energy-efficient washing machine and a “passive solar design,” which is essentially the use of windows to collect sunlight to allow for less mechanical heating and cooling.
The house has other quirks, like an indoor climbing wall and a lot of crawlspace areas that make it fun for the couple’s two children, said Gorman, who studied magazine journalism at OU.
Houses such as Chmiel’s benefit both the homeowner and the environment by cutting down on materials and fuel, said Greg Kremer, associate professor of mechanical engineering.
“An additional benefit is that reuse of tires or other low-value materials keeps them out of the waste stream and reduces the use of wood or steel framing materials,” Kremer said in an email to The Post.
When asked what encouraged him to build his own house that fit his needs of sustainability, Chmiel pointed to experiences in his childhood and life as a student at OU.
“When I was a kid in the 1970s, there was a lot of focus on this stuff,” he said. “And then when I came to OU and lived in a crappy rental house, I wanted to have something nicer.”
The house is based on models called Earthships, but Chmiel said his house is a little different from those because his house has two levels and most Earthships have one.
So he decided not to pay to for his home to be considered a “sanctioned” Earthship.
Chmiel and his wife decided to build their own version of an Earthship after seeing different models while traveling after their college graduation.
From figuring out insurance to finding the building materials, Chmiel said it was an intimidating endeavor to tackle.
“Different things came together, and it just made sense to be something to try,” Chmiel said. “We decided to go for it. It made me a lot stronger of a person.”
But, he added, “It was scary.”
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