Bottle House R-factor

Twenty years ago when they stopped issuing licenses we had about 16 bottle houses in town. After various police raids there are only 2 licensed bottle houses left. Since they are allowed to stay open all night most of the bartenders go there after work and drink until the sun comes up.

So what are you talking about? Empty beer bottles and concrete to make walls? Do the bottles get sealed? Is my lack of worldly knowledge causing me to be way off on my guess?

How to Construct Houses with Plastic Bottles !! - Instructables

Have you tried Googling your thread title? I get 1,770,000 results when I do.

With 1.7 million search engine results with lord knows how many different variations on this cacophony of themes, do you really think that it is poor judgement to politely ask for a clarification from the OP.

I don't know.

Why not try it and find out?

Oh and Mr. quick to search, would you please be so kind to at least guess the answer to the OP's question of the R-factor for one of these houses before you insight another argument.

I actually think the OP is talking about beer bottle houses, and I don't think anything will ever come of it anyway, except for peeing in the wind.

Let's see.

OP, oh, OP. What did you really intend to build your "bottle house" from?

redfred is curious.

Me, I just put my beer bottles in the recycle can.

Here is a simple way to work out the "R" factor.
We take glass and say that 100 units of energy will flow though the glass at a constant rate.
If we replace the glass with wood or plaster, the flow will be between 4 and 20 units.
In other words the wood is 25 times better at retaining heat.
If you make a wall of bottles and leave them empty (fill the end with glue), the wall will be better than wood or plaster because it is thicker. The cement has a conductive value but it is only 10% of the wall.
You then have to work out how you are going to face the inner surface and/or build a separate inner wall.

I don't have a good answer to the original question, but clearly you don't either!

The bottle wall will indeed have the advantage of thickness, but the biggest contribution to insulation value will be the trapped air. There will be some convection of air within each bottle, and the glass does indeed conduct some heat, so it won't be as good as a double wall of the same total thickness with say fiberglass fill.

Fredski's illustration does not show the best construction, at least as far as insulation value is concerned. If alternate rows of bottles were offset one half-bottle, the number of bottles required would increase significantly, but the amount of cement required would be greatly reduced, and the insulation value would be significantly increased.

The cost of fibreglass would be ENORMOUS.
You are making far too many comparisons that are not in consideration.

This is a bunch of guys sitting around, drinking beer and BSing about what to do with all the empties.

Now, having been there and done that many times, I think any attempt at actually building a bottle house will just end up with a ton of broken beer bottles to be cleaned up the next day, when they sober up.

I believe these bottle homes your refering to are of glass bottles. They were use as there were plenty laying around. Used do to the lack and cost of other building materials to be shipped in. Don't believe any one was concerned about R values.

If you are worried about R values use plastic 2 liter bottles and fill them with sand. Plastic does not conduct heat as well as glass. Sand gives plastic some support. The 2 liter bottle give more depth in the wall. The sand will also control convection inside the bottle.

You will just have to drink rum and coke.

Sand has a much lower R value than air.
Simply screw on the top of the bottle and use. The bottle will be sufficiently rigid to produce a wall.

Why not skip the bottles and go right to clay soil filled bags (as in sand bags without free-flowing sand), stitched together with barbed wire (as in cattle wire), and then mud the outside, or if for decoration still include the bottles as part of a wall? You can also go partly underground, but the dirtbag home (you can use gravel also if you do not like the term dirt bag), has a high R value, will probably stop everything short of a J-dam bomb, and makes a good fortress when TSHTF. Zombies beware!