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Recycling Glass Bottles |
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Q: I work at a winery and I wish to use the discarded bottles from the tasting room to build a shed on my land. If successful, I would eventually like to build a small cottage as well. I've just started to research, but have not found a definitive source for building a glass bottle structure. Can you recommend a good source for this? A: You have asked the right person. I have experience with bottle walls. In fact the divider wall that I am looking at right now is just that. I made a trip to our local landfill and collected a great many wine bottles and also found some glass bricks. I used mortar mix as the binder and just started to lay out bottles and add the cement in between. I could only lay out about a foot high at a time because I used quite a bit of mortar between the bottles. I have seen other walls with a minimum of mortar and more bottles. I put together a documentary about The City of the Sun (available thru Dirt Cheap Books) that shows quite a few different bottle walls and homes. The larger the project, the more support you will want to have. Building a removable form from recycled tires or wood works great. Another innovative method is to mound up soil and build a bottle dome in the same manner as a wall and then excavate the dirt for a underground hidey hole. Q: I am designing a wall made out of half gallon wine bottles connected at the necks. These bottles will be placed in an existing barn. I would like to separate these bottles by using 3/4 inch polystyrene foam and some type of caulk type chinking, ie. Permachink, as the binder instead of mortar. What would be the best thing to use for a binding agent to hold them together? Can I insulate around the bottles, with sawdust, without connecting the necks with printers plate or even sheet metal? A: I have seen so many different ways of working with bottles that offering any advice would make me look stupid. It is all an experiment. You are only limited by your imagination and knowledge of what binding materials can or cannot do. I have been planning a water filled bottle wall for a while now. I think sealing the bottles with wax might work the best but then again maybe corks. I won't know until I try. I will say from my experience that working with bottles vertically is much more challenging. Alignment and balance seem to be the key issues. Patience plays a big role also. Let us know how your project turns out and we will add your information to our growing body of knowledge. Q: I have recently purchased a 1909 home with a redone foundation (1990). I'm wondering about using bottles as an insulating and soundproofing material against the cider-block foundation. The home is in Minnesota, and cold-weather/hot humid summer insulation is key. We also have a music studio in the basement and for the sake of roommates and neighbors it needs to be well soundproofed. I'm also hoping to use up some of the bottles that are piling up in my garage. So, I guess the question is how do bottles fair as an "add-on" to a home. Could I somehow mortar them to the existing block wall? Do I leave it exposed to produce a colorful glass "brick" effect? Or is it just a bad idea... Q: After bouncing a number of ideas about the skirting (I made a 2' crawl space), I decided the best thing would be to enclose it. I have been fascinated by glass (a glass artist for 20+ years), and specifically intrigued by a reproduction of a building from the desert which I saw at the CA state fair exposition a few years back. So, I thought, since I have all these posts coming up from and out of the ground all around the outer edge of the building (the farthest ones apart are 6', and most are closer), how about if, after putting down a level bedding of rock, I lay wine bottles in between the posts, wiring them into place, and to each other. It would insulate, the crawl space would receive light (cool for repair jobs), and it would be cheap, as I could get the bottles from the local restaurants. So, my question to you is this-would it be best to a)leave them empty (I thought not); b)fill them 2/3 with water(it doesn't freeze often here, but it can happen); or c) fill them with dirt (which would kill the whole light thing, but that'd be ok)? Q: Thank you for your reply. Good suggestion re the mortaring of the bottles. The reason I was thinking I should fill them was not so much for strength, but for insulation. I think, empty they will not insulate well. From that standpoint, what would you recommend? A: (Kelly) Actually trapped air is extremely good insulation, certainly better than water or soil that you might put in the bottles. You might put corks in the bottles to further isolate the air. Q: Do you know of any body who has constructed glass bottle walls of at least 20"? I would love to know of them. Essentially monolithic walls with incorporated bottles laid in all the known mortar types: earth mixes, sand, cement and so forth. A: (Kelly) I have not seen any solid bottle walls like you describe, but I did notice that there is one pictured in the new book called HOMEWORK, by Lloyd Kahn, where an older couple built a small cabin in Nevada that way. Otherwise I have seen bottles worked into walls as decoration mainly in many different ways. Rob and Jaki Roy, the cordwood advocates, have used bottles amongst the cordwood, sometimes placing them with their necks facing each other and jammed into a can cylinder, and then cemented into the wall along with the cordwood. A: I am the executive director for SOL International Foundation, a non profit organization doing work in the Bay Islands of Honduras. At a meeting yesterday there was a woman who is collecting bottles to build houses with. I thought this was a great idea. We are currently seeking land to build a multi-building community center. We had already considered implementing green aspects and are interested in some more options. Roatan, the island we are working on, is developing at a rapid pace. They need other options for building and we could be a model for that new way. A (Kelly): Using recycled bottles is a nice way to bring light into a building, and I have seen some fine examples of this with cordwood, and earthbag buildings. The best green approach usually incorporates whatever local materials are readily available. I have shown how a simple earthbag dome can be constructed here, but there are many other possibilities. Q: I have used old plastic bottles to connect like-sized jars. Soda bottles cut into sleeves are like cheap heat shrink sleeves. If you wrap the bottles in aluminum foil and then heat shrink the plastic over a bottle sticking into a jar you get an air tight seal. So why can't you make a rubble wall with glass bottles? A: It might make a great experiment. The factor to take into consideration would be weight. How much weight could the glass rubble wall handle before breaking up? If the wall was designed to spread the weight across a broad surface area it might work. Q: I live and work in Brazil and, as in many other places around the world, the need for affordable housing is imperative. I came across a site in Honduras call Eco Tech, run by a guy by the name of Andreas Froese. He is making houses and structures out of 1 and 3 liter plastic coke bottles. After studying his method on the site, I realized its still very antiquated and inefficient to produce even cheap houses for the poor. I have been building with styrofoam (which I don't like) but with the cost of crude skyrocketing, its no longer a viable material. What is the is reason for companies not using the PET bottles in say panel type construction and then covering with a structural plaster that would coat the bottles thus reducing any fire hazard or environmental pollution? God know we have a million bottles in any given dump that could be used. I know in these poor countries, codes are non existent. I see a lot of glass houses but not very many structures using plastic soda bottles. Is it prohibited? or what is the reason why more green guys haven't availed themselves of this method? A: Most of the reasons any builder prefers traditional building methods is money and ease of repetition. For those of us that prefer to pioneer into untraditional modes of building there will always be the experimental side of things that demand risk and constant reevaluation. I have seen plastic bottles used in various ways for building. Not much will be found on the net as the folks that utilize these materials may not be connected or are still experimenting. Commonsense says that any container that can be used to trap air can be used for insulation. It is easy to point fingers and ask why but a lot harder to just get on with your ideas and prove to yourself and others it can work. Let us know how things turn out. A: Yes, bottle walls are beautiful. Most are built using bricklayers mortar that can be purchased in 50# bags. Just start with a layer of mortar then lay in the bottles and then more mortar on top. Be careful not to over do it as too many bottles at once tends to get a bit iffy. Let it dry overnight then go for it again. There are other bonding agents from silicon to cob and adobe that can be used. There are no hard and fast rules. Use your judgment and experiment. Q: We are seeking to build a 2-3' retaining wall around our garden with old wine bottles. We live in Pennsylvania where it gets pretty cold and pretty hot so wonder if we should seal bottles with mortar? A: Good question. From my experience, and what I have seen others do, the bottles have been left open. The possibility of water seepage into the bottles and then freezing and expanding would be more likely to happen with a faulty seal of the bottles. If you want light to come through then do not seal them. For me, that is the beauty of a bottle wall. Q: I am thinking of building glass bottle retaining walls in the part of my basement which is dug out and has dirt walls (it also has a dirt floor). I HAD been thinking of casting a cement retaining wall, but then I came across bottle walls and now I am all excited about about casting bottle retaining walls against the dirt walls, since beer bottles are available to me. I could do it piece by piece and take as much time as I needed. The dirt walls are solid, almost like rock, although from time to time a clod of dirt falls off the dirt wall. What do you think? The walls as they are now do not go all the way up to the floor of the first story, but they are about 4.5 to 5 feet high and then there is a crawlspace between the first story floor and the dirt "shelf." I would love to hear your opinion! A: sounds like you have it under control. Just go for it. You will find inspiration as you play with the bottles and cement. Piece by piece is probably the best way to approach it. have fun. Q: My neighbors and I want to build a glass bottle wall division between our gardens, 12' width by 6' height. We have put in a foundation of around 1' x 1' but before we start the glass bottle cutting we wanted to take some advice as we have 4 young children between us and want our wall to be sturdy. We are going to tie the wall to our extension on one end and then we will place a concrete post at the other end of the wall to stabilize the structure. We were wondering, however, what would be the appropriate width for our bottles to be cut to. From our research we have seen that the two ends of the bottles can be duck taped together leaving both sides of the fence having the bottom of the bottle as our final finish. We are currently looking at a final width of 6" as our bottle unit length but were wondering if this would be too small for a 6' height. It will not be a load bearing wall but we want to be sure for the safety of our children. We are also considering a central concrete post hidden in the wall but would prefer not to have it as it will effect the final look of the wall we create. Any advice you could give us would be greatly appreciated as is this is the first time any of us have embarked on such a project. A: Quite the project! Six inches may be a bit narrow for what you have planned. I would go at least ten inches. Glass in the round is very strong because any pressure is distributed equally in a wall. Glass bottles break when there is impact from one direction as in hitting it with a hammer or rock. Depending on how you build it will determine its strength and design. You can stack the bottles with very little cement to bond them and gives the wall a very transparent look but is more apt to be damaged from thrown objects. I recommend using more cement between the bottles for stability and you can actually incorporate bottles that stand up as well as those glass bricks. I have even used glass globes that can be found at garden nurseries these days. Other than that you may want to save yourself time and energy by skipping the cutting and taping of the bottles and just place them by alternating the tops and bottoms facing in opposite directions. The bottles will be stronger this way. We had just decided to go to 10" and I love the glass ball idea that sounds fantastic! We are also looking at demijohns to create porthole style glass elements. There are 4 of us working on the project and my neighbor's hubby is designated glass cutter and has already cut 100 this morning. I think all of us want to maintain the beauty of the project on both sides of the wall but thank you for the suggestion. I understand that we will need to build the wall in several stages to allow the mortar to dry and prevent putting too much weight on the structure at one time. What height would you recommend us to build to in each stage. Would 2' 0" be too high for our first run of bottles or do we just gauge it as we go along? By the time you get to one end of the wall your starting point should be ready to go higher. Or 12 to 18 inches at a time. |
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