The dirt on glass bottle walls

Dale Hodgins wrote:About 15 years ago, I demolished the Glass Castle and mini golf. This touristy failure, was a blight on the landscape of Duncan, British Columbia. Bottles can look nice, in moderation. This place consumed years of the builder's life, in a fruitless effort to create a tourist attraction. The home was destroyed and the business never thrived. A decade later, I finally gave up on selling antique bottles. Only about 100 of several thousand, were sold. They went to the recycling depot.

Sandra Ellane wrote:Hi there,

I’ve been toying with ideas about bottle walls. There’s quite a few websites that have photos of various walls. (here’s a nice one: http://inspirationgreen.com/glassbottlewalls.html )

I’ve tried to find sites that discuss the properties of these walls- insulative properties, thermal mass, strength, R-values, yada yada and etc. This site comes the closest: http://www.greenhomebuilding.com/QandA/recycle/bottles.htm. ;

I know this is a pretty broad topic and could go in many directions, but I’d like to start a thread so others can offer input, perhaps sharing any experimental info you’ve done on your walls.

A thought that comes to mind: Most of the walls I’ve seen are built with the bottles laid perpendicular to the wall and the open end of the bottle facing inside the structure. It seems like this would eliminate the possibility of using those bottles as thermal mass/storage. Wouldn’t it better to close them?

Also thinking of using them in conjunction with a rocket mass heater or woodstove, but then I started thinking about how much heat the bottles can withstand. It’d be terrible if they shattered.

Just some things to tuck in the back of mind for mulling. Thanks for any input!

Sandra

Judy Heald wrote:We used the method of cutting the necks off the bottles and taping two ends together. Also that way allows you to get Taylor the size of them to fit your desired wall thickness. It's a shame I don't seem to have to option to add a photo. We uses a tile cutter with the water sprayer. I would highly recommend it for the amount of light you get in. You can also mix different colour bottles to create different colours.