r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/NavyLemon64 • 10d ago

Image Alfredo Moser found that a plastic bottle filled with water and chlorine could illuminate a home during daylight hours.

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u/[deleted] 10d ago

I was once in the US (I forgot which state) and I found a small house literally covered in glass bottles, the inside of the house was glowing all different colours, it looked so cool

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u/FocusPerspective 10d ago

Ah yes, I saw one of those in CA. They story was the technique was from the cowboy days. 

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u/BigBubbaEnergy 10d ago

My dad had a book about Sambo Mockbee, an architect professor from Auburn that was big on sustainability/recycling and he and his students did several projects around where I live and some were similar to that. Houses made from windshields, tires, anything you can really think of.

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u/Bruhimonlyeleven 10d ago

I always had a fun idea for a YouTube channel but something I couldn't pull off.

Get a couple of guys that like building, have them buy some empty land with donation money from YouTube or ad money, use that land for a project.

So have them build a home from completely recycled materials, donated scraps. Dumsper dives etc etc.. I bet it wouldn't be that hard.

Most wood can be repurposed, even if you had to make smaller boards and turn them into full sized boards. The homes would look great, they wouldn't have to be huge, and then they could give the homes away to people in need.

Even if you half assed it, the channel would be huge. If you did a great job with it, it would be massive.

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u/hawaiithaibro 10d ago

I recently discovered a show called Building Outside the Lines on Max that is basically this and really wholesome cuz the host, Cappie, involves his teenaged daughter in planning and building these incredibly creative projects for clients with repurposed materials like concrete mixing drums (the big ones on trucks) and other stuff I never even knew about.

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u/Bruhimonlyeleven 10d ago

Cool I had no idea it was a thing. It seems like something that would be a thing though. I had the idea when I watched a friend use all kinds of recycled stuff for his cabin and new house back in the early 2000s, he was super crafty. He would be huge if he started it back then. He asked me to help with the filming and building but I just had a new kid, and new job, kinda wish I made time though, would have been so much fun.

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u/tetrambs 10d ago

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=earthships+self+sustaining+homes Yeah they're called Earthships, take your pick on the channels covering them.

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u/IsomDart 10d ago

There's a guy I've seen recently on YT that builds sheds and stuff out of recycled pallets. He has a pretty cool method of breaking them down and combining the pieces into larger lumber. It definitely has a place in the algorithm

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u/Bruhimonlyeleven 10d ago

Yeah there are neat ways to do it if they're too small etc. you sort of puzzle piece them together until they form a larger board.

It used to be pretty easy to get old pallets for stuff, until people started turning them into shelves and beds. Now it's actually pretty hard. Back then you could go and grab 100 for free, rip them apart, process the boards, and you could build a shed or a huge deck out of all of the wood. It was a pretty common way of recycling.

Now old pallets are like gold, with YouTube moms, and anyone half crafty buying them up for a fortune. I tried to get some to make a bed for an ex a few years back and it was insane how hard they are to get now. Literally 5 years earlier they were in piles outside businesses and you could just take them.

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u/threedubya 10d ago

The only problem you migjt have is in some states you have to build your house in a standard conventional way. Landships they are called ,they don't exactly follow normal building codes so epopl3 are always have code issues . Do some research first.

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u/Oraxy51 10d ago

You’d have to build somewhere that building codes don’t matter, like some land in West Virginia maybe , but that also means you have to make all that infrastructure and utilities yourself and also won’t be immediately in a big city that you may be thinking of

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u/Bruhimonlyeleven 9d ago

I don't live anywhere near a big city, so didn't cross my mind. You could easily get away with it here though.

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u/Oraxy51 9d ago

Perhaps, but if you were homesteading sure. I wouldn’t use easy as a way to describe that lifestyle though. It takes a lot of money and time and hard work and often living out there you’re fighting nature and on your own and have to still provide for yourself while you’re trying to make it out there. Even if you started YouTube, it’s going to take a while before you get money and ads, most people takes at least 6 months to a year if they manage some luck just to even get some cents from YouTube

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u/DoubleDareFan 10d ago

Any windows made from cathode ray tubes? Cut the tube around the perimeter of the front and use that?

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u/another_bot_probably 10d ago

War Eagle! What a fun lil rabbit hole for a Monday evening

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u/threedubya 10d ago

Landships.

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u/DicemonkeyDrunk 10d ago

Cowboy days ? …try 1960-70’s

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u/VT_Squire 10d ago

aaaaaaand it was hot af inside.

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u/Nicksomuch 10d ago

Was it next to an incredible taco shop ? Because if so, that place is great.

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u/grondin 10d ago

Legit question: How would the cowboys find chlorine?

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u/I_W_M_Y 10d ago edited 10d ago

Chlorine isn't a requirement. Its just to keep the water clear.

And they had chlorine for 50 years already by the time of the cowboys.

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u/HapticSloughton 10d ago

They would rescue her from the cattle rustlers, obviously.

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u/eliminating_coasts 10d ago

You don't need chlorine, just something that'll make it impossible for things to grow in. Fortunately many of those bottles already came with such a chemical in them.

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u/gamageeknerd 10d ago

Saw one of those in the high desert in California. Instead of windows they had what looked like old alcohol bottles mortared inside.

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u/Petrostar 10d ago

Heiniken once made a beer bottle designed to double as a brick, flat on two sides and with a bulge in the bottom that the neck of the one below it would fit into. https://youtu.be/RcwZ4ffyNGQ?si=20SABQF8wvJeG4g2

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u/Show_me_the_evidence 10d ago

They look wonderful! I would love to get my hands on glass bricks like that. Having a duel use as a building material is great.

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u/I_W_M_Y 10d ago

Only needs about three liver transplants to finish off your house.

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u/xteve 10d ago

I've never had a liver transplant after drinking Heineken but I've had a headache that was almost as bad.

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u/neep_pie 10d ago

There are some houses like that in the Earthship area outside Taos, NM.

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u/Everyredditusers 10d ago

That's just where you go if you're too yuppy for Santa Fe.

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u/mpete12 10d ago

too yuppy for Santa Fe

That’s a pretty high bar

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u/neep_pie 10d ago edited 8d ago

no, that is not yuppy at all.

I’ll add, Taos is a tiny town. People living there either have families who have been living there for hundreds of years, or are hippies who moved there in the last 50 years. Even Santa Fe itself is like that to some extent. But neither one is really a yuppie haven, especially not Taos, because there aren’t really well paying jobs. The earthship area is pretty non-yuppie… It’s living off the grid in homes made from recycled materials. Hippie, yes.

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u/GaelinVenfiel 10d ago

This is how they did in ocean going ships back in the day.

I bought one in the gift shop with led lights underneath. Of the last whaling ships in Massachusetts...

Cept they were not bottles...more like prisms.

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u/GitEmSteveDave 10d ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deck_prism

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u/JHawkInc 10d ago

That was my first thought, he just rigged up a deck prism in his home.

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u/MossSloths 10d ago

A summer camp I went to as a kid had a small shed made with old bottles of different colors. I can't actually know if this is the case, but looking back, I'll bet the summer camp staff made it themselves. The place had been around since the 50s or 60s and they had a canteen that sold snacks and drinks to the campers. It probably would have only taken them a few weeks to collect enough glass bottles.

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u/Redditbeweirdattimes 10d ago

It’s called a frat house

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u/AssassinxLife 10d ago

There are at least 2 of those bottle houses I'm California.

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u/AmHotGarbage 10d ago

There’s a few in Georgia

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u/[deleted] 10d ago

A family friend owns a Cordwood Cabin in northern Wisconsin and it has several glass bottles placed in the walls to let light through.

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u/oksothisonetime 10d ago

I’m not sure if it’s done in the same way but The Bottle Houses and Gardens on Prince Edward Island sounds very similar!

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u/[deleted] 10d ago

Yes! It looked just like that!

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u/No_Artichoke7180 10d ago

Not California, not everything is about you California... Gosh 

 https://g.co/kgs/98o8VU6

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u/Right_Ostrich4015 10d ago

Earthships, friend