The bottle wall is finished!

Posted by Carol Lopez on February 22, 2012, 9:39 am
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It's a shower enclosure, and was quite the project, with Israel first watching the video of the compound in Thailand, and then just using his Mexican building experience and intuition to figure out how to use bottles as bricks (Israel is a versatile handyman who welcomes a challenge). As you can see, he decided to build forms, to keep the wall plumb, and because it is located high up at the top of the stairway. Peter corralled all the donated bottles, and removed their labels. Paul, of Building Dreams, gave us some design ideas...so it was a good collaborative project. We used 60 bottles for this project. It took longer to build than a conventional wall, partly because of the forms that had to be constructed. There is a nice glow inside from the light of the bottles, and I am looking for a solar lamp to put inside to see how it will glow at night. Now that this wall is finished, I would like to build another one, and maybe a bodega - it would be interesting to see if one could do it without the wooden forms having to be used. If you see Israel around (he lives and does maintenance work at the Pepsi Hotel across from Yolanda's ) - you can ask him about the project... and if anyone else wants to build with bottles, we still have quite a stash of them here. For now, we won't collect any more, sorry! (I know people have appreciated not having to send them to the landfill.) And thanks, everyone who drank up and saved their bottles for us...

Link: A Bottle Wall Compound in Thailand

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