People in plastic houses
June 26, 2019 5:15 AM   Subscribe

600,000 recycled PET water bottles went into the making of this house in Nova Scotia, which borrowed techniques from the boat-building industry.
posted by clawsoon (23 comments total) 17 users marked this as a favorite
 
Interesting - I wonder how long it takes to off/outgass after assembly. And - how fireproof is it? (Dense plastic can be used as fuel, so... but then again a traditional home isn't exactly fireproof either). How does it stack against other techniques (concrete/cement)?

But, most importantly... What a massive "missed opportunity"... Couldn't they have made their sections more like bricks from a certain "children's" building/construction toy?
posted by jkaczor at 6:13 AM on June 26, 2019 [7 favorites]


Interesting idea but the article is pretty thin on details. I was hoping the article would go into more of the process of making the house. It seems like the house was built with structural insulated panels but were the bottles used for the whole thing, just the insulation, or just the structure? Also, as the house looks to be a single storey I'm wondering if there was any construction related reason for that.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 6:19 AM on June 26, 2019 [3 favorites]


Yeah, I kinda wished the video had shown some of the construction techniques instead of just the finished house which looks like any other finished house, basically. The one picture of a plastic slab doesn't really put it into context either.
posted by dellsolace at 6:38 AM on June 26, 2019


There's a bit more here, including some construction & interior photos. I was impressed that the material has a R-30 value without thermal breaks (because it gets cold out there). It is a pretty spot by the way...
posted by Ashwagandha at 6:46 AM on June 26, 2019 [8 favorites]


This Hants Journal article has a little more about the process. The slabs are PET foam with fiberglass exteriors. (on preview, the article is basically identical to Ashwagandha's link.)
posted by zamboni at 6:48 AM on June 26, 2019 [8 favorites]


I was so keen to see how they put it together too!

I know it’s presenting a home that a lot of people in which would like to live (ie homely, cosy, traditional/ Scandi-modern etc) and showing an adaptation of material that will speak to a lot,of traditional potential users. In time though, I’d love to see a development in the use of materials that works with the presumably elastic properties of the panel forms.

The biggest thing about this is transforming the awful waste of plastic bottles into something long lasting and useful.
posted by honey-barbara at 6:48 AM on June 26, 2019 [3 favorites]


From the Saltwire Network article:
He explains the process from mulch to pellets, and beyond, that was done at the Armacell plant in Ontario.
OK, so they're using ArmaForm Core, or maybe ArmaForm Eco as the central foam element.
posted by zamboni at 6:57 AM on June 26, 2019 [6 favorites]


Interesting - I wonder how long it takes to off/outgass after assembly. And - how fireproof is it?

They're using PET, which has a pretty high melting point (500 F) and burns slowly without giving off much smoke. Not sure about outgassing.
posted by clawsoon at 7:15 AM on June 26, 2019


Composite SIPs is a really neat idea for green construction, especially in cold climates. However I’m a bit leery of the vague “this is about equivalent to normal construction costs” claim. I used to work in prefabricated structures and this usually implies some sticker shock is due.
posted by q*ben at 7:22 AM on June 26, 2019 [6 favorites]


pretty high melting point (500 F)

Hmmm - well traditional drywall will handle up to 400 F, so... improved - outgassing is probably not an issue for the panels, if they have been made/stored for a few weeks before actual assembly. Maybe if adhesives are used, those would also outgass a bit - but traditional home materials, drywall, carpet/underlay, engineered or premade planking, paint, etc all outgass as well.

Considering the current situation we are facing with having to recycle our plastics actually within North America, instead of outsourcing to other countries - and - that it is highly doubtful in North America we would use baled/compressed plastics for energy fuel, this is definitely useful - a "local" growth business area.
posted by jkaczor at 8:01 AM on June 26, 2019 [3 favorites]


The article that Ashwaganda and zamboni posted says that the outgassing is mostly from the fibreglass, since the foam is completely sealed inside the fibreglass.

I'm thinking about those hurricane-force winds. This house seems like it would both survive the wind and be light enough to be blown away by it. With any luck, it flips upside down and turns into a boat.
posted by clawsoon at 8:35 AM on June 26, 2019 [5 favorites]


So often these things (or rammed earth or whatever) focus on the walls because they're big and important to a house... but it's not where most of the effort in a house is.

And then the problem is that it's prohibitively expensive to integrate the electric, plumbing and sheetrock or other wall systems and it never gets used. Because you put up the walls and high-five everyone and say how cool it is... then the work begins.

When I built homes our rule of thumb was that once the sheetrock was hung but not taped, we were HALFWAY. Our crew of three would frame a 2000 ft + house in under a week - then there were two months of work left.

It's cool but needs to get practical.
posted by windowbr8r at 8:41 AM on June 26, 2019 [5 favorites]


Curious about how much safer this building material is compared to, say, asbestos. I mean, sure, it's great to recycle the plastic and all, but is it safe to live in for 20 years?
posted by Chuffy at 9:05 AM on June 26, 2019


PET (basically) doesn't outgas. Have you ever bought polyester clothing that has that new car smell? We've been living in world of polyester plastics for decades. While the asbestos based precedent of corporate America trying to kill us is a good thing to remember, we'd know by now whether or not PET is going to kill us, other than by simply existing. (The biggest danger is toxic smoke from fire)

While the idea of recycling bottles into homes is laudable, the construction industry is highly resistant to innovation. Codes, construction liability, specification based material selection, competitive bidding, and the overall business model of general contracting make new things utterly terrifying to anyone in the business. There is a lot of innovation in interior finishes, because it's just going to be thrown away in 5-10 years. But exterior envelope stuff doesn't change much. The general sensibility among sustainable architecture types is to build something that will last, and be generic enough that it can be useful for the life of the building.
posted by Carmody'sPrize at 10:08 AM on June 26, 2019 [4 favorites]


I wonder if the plastic would photodegrade from sunlight exposure and what that would mean over time for the structure?
posted by jason_steakums at 10:20 AM on June 26, 2019


I wonder if the plastic would photodegrade from sunlight exposure and what that would mean over time for the structure?

They say that they're dealing with UV degradation via paint. (Also via the siding that they've put on it, I imagine.)
posted by clawsoon at 10:25 AM on June 26, 2019 [2 favorites]


Not sure where they got the bottles and what it cost, but the lost opportunity cost in the US of not returning 600,000 bottles is at the low end, $30,000 (600k x 0.05) and the high end $60,000
posted by AugustWest at 10:25 AM on June 26, 2019


the construction industry is highly resistant to innovation

This, times a million. Maybe a billion, at least in the US. The industry is profoundly fragmented, adversarial, and oddly enough under-capitalized. It's a huge industry, but most participants don't have a lot of money stockpiled, which makes it difficult to engage in really serious research. Since participants are adversarial, it's difficult to get them to pool their resources and since there's not a whole lot of serious research going on it's difficult to get a sufficiently large group of researchers dedicated to the field (you end up with a lot of dilettantes).

Moreover, most participants are interested in refining their existing practices, not making large conceptual leaps. Research projects frequently boil down to "can we use a slightly smaller exponent in this foundation anchorage equation?" and the like. A four year project might have a budget of $200K on the high side, which doesn't get you much in the way of innovation, especially if you need full-scale testing (because holy shit testing gets pricey fast -- I've seen entire research projects dedicated to testing one configuration of one possible joint, because that's all anyone could afford, and there's only one lab that has the gear to run that test so it's not like you're gonna go elsewhere to play. And so, you have a joint were only one specific configuration is permissible, even though everyone knows it should be more widely applicable and would save everyone money if it were. Fifteen years later, hey look, we now have three configurations! Wooo!).
posted by aramaic at 10:47 AM on June 26, 2019 [6 favorites]


Aramaic, you are completely right, but there is some important context to this situation, which is that the construction industry is extremely risk-adverse, and for good reason. There was an explosion (NPI) of new building technologies 60-70 years ago and there were a lot of well-publicized building failures that became foundational history for the industry. In some ways we are only now figuring out how to properly build the modern structures invented in the 30’s and 40’s. Things are slow to change, but the counterpoint is that buildings are safer and more efficient than they have ever been. Having been on both ends of this argument I’m not sure what reform is going to look like.

More relevant question- are these panels glassed together? If so could be an awesome new building component for stressed skin construction.

Between this and mass timber it’ll be exciting to see what happens in component- based prefabrication in the next few decades.
posted by q*ben at 11:53 AM on June 26, 2019 [1 favorite]


A rather notorious example of leading-edge materials failure occurred recently at Oregon State University.
posted by sjswitzer at 12:31 PM on June 26, 2019 [3 favorites]


A rather notorious example of leading-edge materials failure occurred recently at Oregon State University.
Paul Barnum, former executive director of the Oregon Forest Research Institute in Portland, said the CLT movement is delivering on its early promise.
P. Barnum? Hmmmmm.
posted by clawsoon at 1:00 PM on June 26, 2019 [2 favorites]


Having been on both ends of this argument I’m not sure what reform is going to look like.

Normally I'd say something like "we need to form cross-industry alliances" except that it's all Game of Thrones in the conference rooms. Fire guys being paid as "consultants" to sandbag mass timber, USDA and Forest Service guys trying to sabotage precast, people trying to combine steel and wood being attacked from both sides because they don't use "enough" of either material, and so on and on and on. There are entire companies that exist only because they have weird niche products that address a "problem" that hasn't existed in the real world for decades, but which still appears in standardized job specs around the country. The problem was solved, the solution is no longer needed, but they still manage to move product because nobody wants to pay attention long enough to remove the spec clause, the company can afford consultants to backstab most removal attempts, and it's easier to just pay them off by buying the product.

I once spent quite a while doing the math necessary to show that the exposed weathering steel elements of a footbridge on Park Service land would not pollute the stream with rust. Rust. In the Iron Range they were "worried" about the possibility of A500 HSS polluting a stream with runoff. Naturally, they were never actually worried about the rust, someone just wanted the bridge to be entirely wood, so that they'd get the contract to replace parts of it every Spring. Shot down on the A500, they fell back to "worrying" about the welding consumables -- without quite realizing that the welding guys actually know quite a lot about exactly how their materials behave (thanks for the assist Lincoln Electric!) The basin the stream was draining had several orders of magnitude more rust and related compounds in it than all of the runoff from the A500. You could have completely dissolved the steel components and it wouldn't have raised a single threshold beyond existing background levels. Like worrying about a lightbulb when there's an atom bomb going off nearby, but some stooge convinced well-meaning people that they should be worried about that rather than the eight hundred zillion other things they should really be worried about.

Meanwhile, random idiots cheat left right and center on the age of the concrete in the mixing trucks, installers routinely seem to ignore anchor rod embedment length, reinforcement gets skimped or set wrong even if enough was placed, and on and on and on. It's Peavy Hall, everywhere, all the time.

Sigh. Maybe the solution is an Outside Context Problem. Something from an orthogonal field swooping in and upsetting all of the apple carts at once. Or that just my accidentally-acquired Silicon Valley Disruptor ideology speaking? I dunno any more. Trying to avoid big accidents, we've just made sure a billion small accidents happen instead. The same number of people (or even more) get killed, and vast sums of money is wasted, but nobody notices so it's OK. Amortizing disasters.
posted by aramaic at 1:47 PM on June 26, 2019 [11 favorites]


the lost opportunity cost in the US of not returning 600,000 bottles

Armacell isn't rummaging through trash cans on the sidewalk for redeemables. They're one of the places a bottle goes after you get your nickel.
posted by zamboni at 6:09 PM on June 26, 2019


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