Wednesday, February 15, 2017

A house made from Coca-Cola crates?


David the Good, over at his blog The Survival Gardener, brings us news of an interesting house he's found in Central America.

The entire structure, with the exception of the roof, was constructed from discarded Coca-Cola crates.

“I live humble,” the farmer told me.



I was impressed by his ingenuity. The indented portion to the left is his kitchen, the rest of it is his bedroom/living area. The door is just a stack of crates which he pulls in or out.

The kitchen has just enough space to walk into, with crates up to just over waist height as counters. To the back of the room is a gas double burner where he cooks.

Normally I wouldn’t put people’s houses on the internet, but he said “David, take a photo! Put it on Facebook if you like!”

I laughed. The man is proud of his work, as he should be.

I asked where in the world he got the crates. He told me that a local bottling plant lost their contract with Coca-Cola and were discarding piles of them, so he was able to help himself.

There's more at the link, including more details of the construction.

Thinking about it, that's a temperate climate where it never gets particularly cold, so the open structure of Coca-Cola crates wouldn't matter too much - insulation isn't a priority.  As for rain, it mostly comes straight down in those parts, and the roof is wide enough to provide shelter from that.

Ingenious!

Peter

7 comments:

Unknown said...

I'd want to wrap it in bug netting

Larry said...

Yes, mosquito nets needed.

bruce said...

that thing will burn hotter than a furnace if he isn't careful

Jon said...

Hmm... I used to keep all my worldly possessions in 3-5 of those. Of course, I was young. I'm pretty sure it would take a shipping container for all of my things now.

Anonymous said...

Great idea for tropical locales like that. Making do with what you have. And if you want to remodel, just take it down and restack your Legos . . .

Mosquito net and maybe something to keep out the mice / rats as well.

Anonymous said...

I suspect the plastic crates aren't nearly strong enough for this, but filling them with some locally-available moderately solid substance and using them for building blocks might be a worthwhile venture.

Tal Hartsfeld said...

Rent-free, yes, but no protection from burglary or home invasion.