Construction begins on crèche built from plastic bottles

[RichardG]

IDUTYWA – Construction has started on a crèche in Idutywa in the Eastern Cape, in honour of a murdered 19-year-old.

The Samarpan Foundation, a charity, is using an unusual building technique to make a young woman's dream of a two-storey crèche in a remote area a reality.

They're using plastic bottles as a building material.

Every day Zine Zito drops her three-year-old son off at the Matolweni Crèche.

She is unemployed and relies on this one-roomed nursery school to look after her child.

Source: http://www.enca.com/south-africa/co...witter&utm_term=Autofeed#link_time=1479648072

Video available on link

 

[genetic]

The journalist should check his or her facts.

Idutywa changed names to Dutywa 12 years ago.

 

[C4Cat]

The journalist should check his or her facts.

Idutywa changed names to Dutywa 12 years ago.

Wow, you took away a lot from that article didn't you?

 

[access]

thats pretty cool, im just worried about the structural integrity of it.. kids need to go in there..

 

[Zoomzoom]

thats pretty cool, im just worried about the structural integrity of it.. kids need to go in there..

Question is answered in the video.

 

[konfab]

Question is badly answered in the video.

A couple of things that concerned me:
1) PET bottles are smooth and non-porous whereas clay bricks are rough and porus. Unless if they are adding a compound to the cement mixture to make it more sticky, there would be a substantial drop in sheer strength between the bricks and mixture.
2) They mentioned using Nylon nets as the tensile component in the 1st floor slab. This is worrying to me. The tensile strength of Nylon rope is about 78 MPa. For steel, it is about 500 MPa. Since they are still using cement mixture, the loads will probably be the same. Which means that they will need about 7 times more net than steel in order to get the tensile strength needed to hold up a structure.
They would be better off building the second story slab from wood.

 

[Hemi300c]

Interesting concept.

I saw a lodge once that had square bales of have gunnited with cement and used to build the walls. Insulation was great and haven't been back to see integrity.

 

[access]

Question is answered in the video.

yeah i heard they said it has gone through many tests..

still bothers me though.


edit: konfab raises some things i was thinking about..