Recycled Wine Bottle Building Wins Energy Grant
by Warren McLaren, Sydney on 03.14.07
An organic winery in Western Australia recently became the recipient of a $20,555 AUD grant from that state’s Sustainable Energy Development Office (SEDO). The money will be used to fund a thermal imaging monitoring program for a cellar-door outlet made from water filled wine bottles. The owner of the winery, Peter Little, a former architecture lecturer at Curtin University and long time passive solar design advocate, noted, "Water is probably, I think one of the miracle building materials of this century which nobody is using," he said. "From our point of view it can store more energy, heat or cool than any material we know.” It seems the structure will use about 13,500 wine bottles. The farmland on which the winery, Random Valley Organic Wines in Karridale, is sited is already the winner of a national recognised Banskia Award in ‘Environmental Leadership in the Rural Sector’ for its certified organic beef, native flowers, grapes and snails!
Building with bottles is not new, nor is filling them with water for insulation. What appears to be worthy of a grant is the thermal imaging monitoring that will occur. There are many eclectic buildings made with bottles. For example the pic above is of the famous Rhyolite 50,000 bottle house in Death Valley. See detail on it here - and follow the links at the bottom of linked page to even more. I remember a two storey one in Queenstown, NZ, too. Earthships, (1), (2), have long used bottles in their walls (as well as car tyres).
But my all time favourite, which I never tire of using as a case study for ecodesign students, is the bottle house envisaged by de heer Heineken, who once had his beer bottles designed as bricks. Once the contents were guzzled, the container could be reused as building material. They had a recess on the base to fit the neck of another bottle into. Alas, although the bottles, known as WoBo (short for World Bottle) were indeed produced, they were never sold commercially. Rumour has it they are sitting idle in a warehouse in the Netherlands.
Organic winery bottle building story via ::Media News Wire
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Can anyone expand on why/how a bottle full of water is a good building material? Specifically, what about it makes it such a great insulator etc?
Thanks!
It is not a good insulator, shawn, but it has terrific thermal mass. so if it is hot in the day and cool at night, it smooths out the temperature curve, cooling in the daytime and warming at night. Being a liquid in glass, it will convect in the bottle and should absorb much more heat than, say concrete or stone, which will only warm by conduction.
Pardon my ignorance but if a winery already has all those empty bottles why not fill them with wine again and reuse them? Why is is that bottles are only reused in the third world?
Also, water doesn't insulate as much as buffer heat transfer. Water has an extraordinarily high heat capacity. So it takes a large amount of energy to heat up a given weight of water by a certain temperature. If you have ever stood next to a south-facing brick wall (northern hemisphere example) after sundown, the brick wall should be radiating large amounts of stored heat. Water does the same thing.
Regarding the Heineken WoBo: My girlfriend and I went on the Heineken brewery tour during a visit to Holland 2 years ago. There was a display of and a wall bilt with the WoBo. It was explained that the bottles were disigned to be reused as an inexpensive building material by the poor. The idea was abandoned due to the majority of the worlds poor being located near the equator in hot sunny enviroments and a house bilt from the WoBo tends to act like a green house.
Regarding the Heineken WoBo: My girlfriend and I went on the Heineken brewery tour during a visit to Holland 2 years ago. There was a display of and a wall bilt with the WoBo. It was explained that the bottles were disigned to be reused as an inexpensive building material by the poor. The idea was abandoned due to the majority of the worlds poor being located near the equator in hot sunny enviroments and a house bilt from the WoBo tends to act like a green house.
According to the Heineken website, in 1963 Alfred ordered 50,000 of the World Bottles to be produced. As to the lack of roll out - they simply say he was 'ahead of his time.' Nigel Whitely, author of the book, Design for Society, however suggests the marketing department rejected the first prototype, which had curvy sides, saying it lacked masculinity and ruggedness, in short was too effeminate. The squarer bottle, pictured above, was a second attempt.
PS. some very nice pics of WoBo walls here.
Rafer said: "...The idea was abandoned due to the majority of the worlds poor being located near the equator in hot sunny enviroments and a house bilt from the WoBo tends to act like a green house."
In other words, we can't use this brilliantly simple design here where it would be most useful ... because we're not poor enough!
Alfred Heineken is Dutch, not German, that means he is not "Herr Heineken", but "de heer Heineken".
_________________
Writer's note: Ta. The grammatical slip has now been arrested.
Does anyone know a site that tells you how to build a bottle house?
I live on a couple of acres and would like to build a guest cottage with all bottle walls and recycled material.
Thanks
Kua
Hi Kua,
I am also planning to build a larger glass house and two smaller guest houses in 2009 or thereabout. I have been looking for such a site as well, but I believe that glass bottle building is intuitive and relatively simple. After you have dreamed up and built a propper foundation, I think you can do pretty much anything at all as long as the structure and form are soundly thought out. I think that the inclusion of wood or other material (as in creating a second floor or window and door frames), and a ventilation system need to be planned well. Besides that you just need some talent for mixing and slinging cement. The old bottle houses I've seen on the net are all very square and tidy, but I think that had only to do with the style of the day. My husband is giving me a helping hand with the design work on my larger house, and so far it doesn't have a square bit in it! I think I will build mine with the bottle necks outside, and a larger roof to protect caps and bottle necks from the elements.
I would enjoy hearing how your own design plans develope.
Good luck!
water expands when it freezes...if you build a bottle house in an area where it gets below freezing will the house fall apart as the bottles burst?
I would like to incorporate bottles into a cob house I want to build in Dominica. This is in the West Indies/Caribbean so tropical climate. Does that mean it will collect too much heat? Also, how do you seal the water inside? I was going to use wine bottles because of the thickness of cob walls.
Any help?
I am trying to figure out how to build a bathroom window using bottle bottoms. Does anyone know how or know of any resources???
Hmm...based on the above comments, it seems that pressure variations due to temperature changes might be of concern when constructing with glass bottles that are sealed.
What about the effects of the weight of the water and glass, combined with the strength of the glass, and how this impacts the structural/ load-bearing capabilities of the water-filled glass houses?
Hmm...maybe crushed glass mixed with other material would be an alternative?