Now, That's Recycling

Run time: 02:40 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIx6f1DrQIo   Posted on YouTube: January 27, 2010 By YouTube Member: ecoideasnet Views on YouTube: 3043   Posted on DU: March 06, 2010 By DU Member: lame54 Views on DU: 333

 
http://www.infrastructurist.com/2010/03/05/innovative-building-idea-of-the-week-houses-made-from-beer-bottles/

In Quilmes, Argentina, a town of 500,000 people in the province of Buenos Aires, artist Tito Ingenieri decided to build his house using a unique form of recycled materials: Used glass bottles. He began collecting bottles from trash dumps, and pretty soon local residents and merchants were saving their discarded bottles to give to him. He then used his booty, which eventually totaled over 6 million bottles, to construct a house. The cement base gives it strength, and the house itself has grown to a mini-compound with a built-in weather service — when a storm is coming, Ingenieri says, the bottles make whistling noises to alert him. Not exactly the modular mansions of notoriety for upper-middle-class Americans — but it’s certainly easier on the planet.

There have been a few in the US, built either before building codes were enacted or in places that escaped statewide codes: http://www.agilitynut.com/h/dochope.html

Unfortunately, the codes that keep builders honest and prevent them from cutting too many corners are also stifling creativity when it comes to owner built structures.

from a wonderful series we are watching called Victorian Farm.

Back in the 1800's, people made a layer of empty glass bottles ( wine bottles, usually)
at the bottom of a pigpen ( in the case shown), then covered it with a layer of cement.
Apparently the bottles trapped some heat, from the sun during the day,
and kept damp from rising into the cement floor.