Designing a plastic bottle island/floating platform

Instructables.com

I think I've seen a couple boats made from bottles on Instructables.com. It's a great resource. All these posts make it sound like you wish to put this boat in the water and just let it float away to the big plastic dump in the ocean.

 

No, i'm not interested in letting it float away to the plastic dump in the ocean. I would like to build it, live on it, go surfing, throw concerts, and travel... I don't really have a clear idea of what the whole thing is going to be about though.
I'm afraid i'll have to make it an environmental awareness thing to get social acceptance. I would rather just do my own thing though. I would rather people be drawn to it for a wide variety of reasons that way my days aren't spent talking about the environment 24/7. I'm open to ideas.

Oh, and thanks for the instructables.com tip. I'll check it out.

 

"environmental awareness" is one of the modern catch phrases. It usually means people polluting pristine land with gigantic "ranch houses" with fireplaces that produce all kinds of smog. As long as you dress it right, the social acceptance is already there.

 

Recycled plastic and making molds.

Does anyone have an idea about how i could make molds, throw some plastic in them, and pop out nice little buoyant containers?

It would be nice if i didn't have to heat the plastic up until its molten. I want it to be as simple as possible. Maybe throw random types of plastic into a hot mold, clamp it down under high pressure, then pop it out with some decent adhesion between the various types of plastic.

Anybody know about his type of stuff?

Update:
I think what i am asking about is called "heat compression" according to Wikipedia. Can I do this myself? Is there a lot involved?

 

if you set off an atom bomb in the plastic island it may produce the perfect mushroom
sad but true
it would contain it all in one hit
or you could dredge it
& dump it all in a volcano
& put it all back where it came from
irresponsible talk

 

Plastic recycling and mold making

Does anybody know about the "heat compression" method of recycling plastic? I couldn't find much about it on google, but maybe its known by a different name.

I'm trying to find a simple way to make buoyant containers out of various types of plastic.

 

just impossible!
Due to the many different sorts of plastic, and their extremely different technical properties, a mix is hard to achieve, brittle, and worth nearly nothing.
We have had some park banks in Germany made out of that crap. They did deteriorate faster than the weakest wood would.

 

ya we have had a lot of failures in the engineered lumbers that use a high percentage of post consumer plastics
I've looked at two jobs just in the last month that involved replacement of these products, I turned them down.

oh found this on the BBC today
I been saying this for years as one of my friends is a researchers involved with plastics chemical pollution

 

Canada has recently banned the use of PHTHALATES

If interested in the effects, Google CBC "The Disappearing Male"

It runs 44 minutes, with no commercials, in English. Then try and live

your life with no plastics. Very challenging, nearly impossible I'm afraid.

-Tom

 

I hate phthalates too, I prefer that she just take the pill . . .

 

Do you still play with trains?

 

in men these kinda of drugs tend to have two effects
makes your balls either not develop or under-develop and it alters the brain chemistry in some way to reduce the production of chemicals linked to testicle development

if your one of those who thinks its all some kind of crock to whittle more money out of you for some arcane environmental BS read this

http://www.dhushara.com/book/diversit/extra/sperm.htm

 

I noticed today, as i was going for a walk, that the recycled plastic lumber was indeed brittle and warping. It was lining a gravel side walk in the desert. I looked at a piece that broke off and it has tons of voids, air bubbles. They were so small that the strength probably wouldn't be effected much, but when the sun heats the lumber up the plastic is probably very soft and tears like taffy. It probably warps and tears very slowly in the sun.

I think i might use bottles afterall, but they need to be contained very well and off the radar of people 's minds. There can be NO chance of them getting lose.

HERE is the question-
What is the best way to contain plastic bottles for this plastic bottle island? By the way, the island HAS to be flexible so that it can survive rough waters from every direction. If there's nothing rigid its less liking to break. And it can always go OVER waves instead of bow crash through them like conventional ships.

:idea: Seal them up in cement blocks? And then link the blocks together to form a platform?

:idea: Put them in steal drums?

:idea: Put them into strong nylon or canvas bags? Double bag them, triple bag them, etc. Then make the whole island with strong nets, basically sewing a big floating rug.

:idea: Put them in blue plastic rain barrels. Somehow make a nice flexible platform out if that.



In my head there are only two good ways to make this island flexible yet stiff enough to stand on.

- The cube method. Where you have multiple cubes or tiles that are linked together that make a floating platform. The cubes can be held together by rope or mechanical hinges.

- Material/rug method. Where you basically weave a rug, sewing it together with plastic bottles in it. You start out with a net that's in the shape of a continuous tube and fill it with bottles. Then you wrap the filled net around itself into a spiral. As you create the spiral you sew each section to the next so that they are one continuous surface, just like a rug.

The problem i see with the cube method is how do you prevent dirt from falling between the cubes? Because as you remember this island will actually have dirt and plants on it. Another problem might be just making sure that the junction between the cubes does not wear out. It could be replaceable I suppose. Just swim underneath the island and inspect it for wear.

The problem i see with the material/rug method is it gradually deforming. Bottles will gradually collapse and break over time and therefore shift. You might end up with an island that is not very "plump" with bottles anymore. When this happens the island will sag in spots and water could end up making puddles in the surface where you stand. When this happens there would also be increased lateral movement. The island would squish together and contract quite a bit. The solution might be to either add more bottles and sew them into the the deflated areas, OR to tug on some lines to cinch the island up into it's center thereby increasing it's thickness and decreasing its diameter. I don't feel like dirt would make its way through the cracks with this design because it would get packed in pretty well and i could very easily lay something down like sheets rubber to prevent this from happening. By the way, the bottles may not collapse at all. One man has made an island out of plastic bottles already and he said they last a very long time. He said the organic matter or slime that coats the bottles provides lubrication. This sounds great, but don't you think barnacles will form too? I'm researching barnacle prevention (anti-fouling) via copper electrodes in the water because it would be impossible to scrape barnacles off of bottles. See my other post for that.

 

Check this out! This is a modular dock system. It flexes with the waves and I can keep adding more blocks to make it bigger and bigger. The blocks even connect vertically, which is nice because I can make it stiffer and more buoyant if needed.

http://www.molo-jetfloat.cz/admin/fotogalerie/images/31-o-JETFLOAT IN SHARM JUNE 2002 062.jpg

 

And a hughe watermaker to feed the plants?