Keep Glass Out of Recycling Bins … and In Your Walls
My interest was recently piqued by an article at Inhabitat about a temple in Thailand built from one million — yes, that’s right: one million — used glass bottles. Building with glass sounds so intriguing, but does it really make sense?
A little online snooping helped deliver the answer: it sure does.
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Building with glass bottles goes as far back as ancient Rome, according to Wikipedia, where structures incorporated glass amphorae to reduce the amount of concrete needed and to lighten the load on walls. And Nevada gets the distinction of being home to the first modern bottle house, built in 1902 from 10,000 of Jhostetter’s Stomach Bitters (90 percent alcohol, 10 percent opium — yow!).
While that house no longer stands (it was torn down in the ’80s), the U.S. is home to many other notable glass-bottle structures, including a whiskey-bottle shop at Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, California; a glass-bottle gift shop in Alexandria, Louisiana; the Wimberley Bottle House in Wimberley, Texas; and the Kaleva Bottle House in Kaleva, Michigan, now listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
Still have doubts about the value of building with glass bottles? Bill Sitkin of The ReStore in Crestone, Colorado, has a great FAQ at Green Home Building. Among the fascinating facts he offers about glass-bottle construction: bottles sealed with air provide better insulation than soil or water; bottles can be built up in a matrix of concrete, papercrete or cob, among other materials; and glass bottles are strong enough on their own (rather than filled with anything) to be used as infill in a structural matrix.
All very neat stuff. Check out Inhabitat to read more about the glass-bottle temple in Thailand or read more about bottle walls at Wikipedia.
