Insulation of concrete floors with empty glass bottles

Somehow, in the comments to one of the articles, a reader wrote about pouring concrete floors in his bath using the method of insulation with empty bottles. Then I did not attach importance to this technology. Now I decided to see what it is like:

The technology is simple: bottles are stacked on the ground in two rows. A volume with a large air gap is formed, but at the same time with a solid base. The bottles work like semicircular brick arches in the openings of old buildings - they push each other apart and hold the load.

Yes, the thermal conductivity of such a technique is not like that of modern heaters, for example, like extruded polystyrene foam. Ideally, the floors should be insulated with them. But this method is expensive, and bottles are for those cases when you need to travel hundreds of kilometers to the city for a sufficiently large volume of insulation. Transportation costs are high. And the insulation itself costs a lot of money (by the standards of a villager). And here, you get free insulated floors.

The method is used in a strip foundation with backfilling. They catch, as they say, two birds with one stone: saving sand when backfilling the foundation and getting free insulation. In these examples in the photographs, the bottles were placed with their neck down. This results in a more reliable base than a bottle base laid on its side. But in this case, the bottles need to be thrust into the ground, otherwise they will do it over time and the floors will sag.

This technique can often be found in the construction of floors in baths. They wrote in the comments that the floors are very warm. And since bottles are free - cost savings are good too. But the main problem is where to collect so many bottles.

It is easier to collect such a number of bottles in the village - the amount of alcohol consumed there is higher per capita than in the city. Another question - if you don't drink, will you be collecting bottles? If you are a resident of a village and set the price of 1 RUB / bottle. and advertise that this is the price for any bottle, then a line will line up for you. And you, roughly speaking, for 1-2 thousand. get a material for insulation.

Video with an example of stacking bottles and pouring a screed over them.

The tie is reinforced for reliability. There is a well-founded opinion that this can be done with a fiberglass mesh. On industrial floors, customers experience millions in savings over pouring floors when using steel reinforcement mesh.

In villages in houses with wooden floors, old floors are also replaced with such a bulk insulated floor. Bottles are installed, sprinkled with sand and a concrete screed is poured.

Sand can be dung (if there is such a quarry). Cement is also sold in villages. But you don't need much of it. So that the floors do not crack when gaining strength, they can be poured using the semi-dry screed technology.

Some use bottles to save money in the basement of the bath. In climates without frost heaving of the soil, there may be an acceptable option. But in a climate with deep freezing of the soil and large heaving of the soil, this is a controversial method.

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Photos are taken from open sources, from Yandex. Pictures

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