Here at Wastebusters we see the problems that are associated with building and demolition waste. According to some figures I've read, this could take up possibly 50% of landfills. Many people say that it's just too hard and way too costly to de-construct a house and separate the waste into streams.
When I was in the UK this Christmas I noticed that they are putting a lot of effort into sorting their building site waste. From what I could tell their landfills are filling up pretty quick and councils have chosen this way to reduce what goes in.
So when I read an article on TreeHugger this morning about a ladies mission to recycle and entire house I was hooked. There is a fantastic video on YouTube showing how she does it. This is very reassuring that we can indeed deal with demolition in sensible and responsible way. The flip side is that this lady claims she has even saved some money.....
Showing posts with label eco-hut challenge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eco-hut challenge. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
Eco Hut at Makarora
This week is all about going to the outer edges of my district. Fully inspired and motivated by Glenorchy I now find myself heading off to Makarora to spend some time with those guys working on their Eco-Hut.
We had a couple of sessions last year, as regular readers will remember. We came up with some pretty cool ideas and also built some models to see how different shape structures determine their strength. During this process Ti came up with a fantastic idea of building a hut around the concrete pipe buried in the pile of earth around the back of the school.
As we all spoke about this hut idea, it seemed like the perfect solution to this design would be to find an old water tank to form most of the structure of the hut. Low and behold, the day I got back from Makarora, what had turned up in our yard at Wastebusters? Yip, two water tanks. With one of them now delivered to Makarora school the time has come to really shift up a gear.
We started the day with a good old reflection on what had been done last year. Once up to speed it was time to go and survey the tank and the proposed area.
We soon found out how big the tank was. Drawings were made and measurements were indicated.
As we were looking at the site we soon realised that if we were to get a really good idea about what the hut would look like it needed clearing. With all hands on deck this didn't take long at all. We were mostly clearing a few years worth of fallen leaves. Gorgeous material for the compost heap. And well done everyone for remembering about the brown and green layers we need to put in the compost for it to work well.
With the ground clear we could peg out some string to show the width of the tunnel through the earth and also how wide the water tank would be if it was placed at the end of the tunnel furthest away from the school.
Back inside the classroom we all worked on a list of actions that needed to be done. The first is to enlist some help from Gwilym. A local guy who has worked on designing a fair few sustainable structures and all round industrial design guru.
As we speak questions are being typed, photographs gathered and a package created to send to him. We want to know about strength of the structure, what we could do to make a good escape hatch, what could we support it with, how successful would it be to lay turf on top......
Great work everyone, this is going to be an amazing place to hang out.
We had a couple of sessions last year, as regular readers will remember. We came up with some pretty cool ideas and also built some models to see how different shape structures determine their strength. During this process Ti came up with a fantastic idea of building a hut around the concrete pipe buried in the pile of earth around the back of the school.
As we all spoke about this hut idea, it seemed like the perfect solution to this design would be to find an old water tank to form most of the structure of the hut. Low and behold, the day I got back from Makarora, what had turned up in our yard at Wastebusters? Yip, two water tanks. With one of them now delivered to Makarora school the time has come to really shift up a gear.
We started the day with a good old reflection on what had been done last year. Once up to speed it was time to go and survey the tank and the proposed area.
We soon found out how big the tank was. Drawings were made and measurements were indicated.
As we were looking at the site we soon realised that if we were to get a really good idea about what the hut would look like it needed clearing. With all hands on deck this didn't take long at all. We were mostly clearing a few years worth of fallen leaves. Gorgeous material for the compost heap. And well done everyone for remembering about the brown and green layers we need to put in the compost for it to work well.
With the ground clear we could peg out some string to show the width of the tunnel through the earth and also how wide the water tank would be if it was placed at the end of the tunnel furthest away from the school.
Back inside the classroom we all worked on a list of actions that needed to be done. The first is to enlist some help from Gwilym. A local guy who has worked on designing a fair few sustainable structures and all round industrial design guru.
As we speak questions are being typed, photographs gathered and a package created to send to him. We want to know about strength of the structure, what we could do to make a good escape hatch, what could we support it with, how successful would it be to lay turf on top......
Great work everyone, this is going to be an amazing place to hang out.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village
Imagine a whole village built from old bottles......wouldn't that be cool? Well that's exactly what Grandma Prisbrey thought, so she built one. Check out the website
about this amazing village made out of old discarded bottles.
The colours are amazing, especially as the light shines through and I'll bet the walls have a really
high 'R' value. All you have to do is plug up the gaps and hope there are no earthquakes.
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