Hello everyone,I would like to inform you of a pavilion being made of recycled plastic bottles called Polli-Bricks. It will be the world's first that will be constructed in Taipei, Taiwan. You will be able to find more information on it at: http://www.greenerpeople.com/forum/greener-building-and-remodeling/897-plastic-bricks.html

Do any of you think that this will work? or will it fail?

I think its a great cladding material. I think it will work just fine for this climate. I wonder about a few things with this material though. How does it perform with high sun exposure? What about UV degradation over time? How does it perform as an insulator? I can't imagine that it has the insulation properties of glass.

I know that some people think that there are structural concerns, but really this material has little/no structural properties and is simply a cladding. It is lighter than glass so I assume that you can reduce the structural steel to hold the cladding.

I am happy to see someone trying to come up with materials like this. I don't know if it could be used in the US, but I think it could be used for many building types.

As far as insulation, plastics can insulate well. I have seen the application of plastics for exterior walls, but its usually not in the coldest of climates and usually in products specifically meant for exterior applications.

As for UV degradation, polli-bricks are made with a coat of UV protective coating. So they will not deteriorate under the sun. Polli-Brick actually has better insulation than double glazed glass. It is found that air is a very good insulator. So the Polli-Brick was designed to hold a large ammount of air to insulate the building.

It is usually used for cladding as Solar Hero said. EcoARK pavilion in Taipei uses a curtain wall system to hold them up. Polli-Brick also has a small size that is used for interiors.

Good to know about the UV coating but if that's on the exterior of the "brick", it will wear off over time. Its not unheard of to have to recoat an exterior surface, but it would seem to be a shortcoming of the product.

I do wonder about the comparison you mentioned to double glazed windows and if that's just standard double glazing or really comparing it to high performance glass with low-e coatings and inert gas fills. Air gaps are important in insulation. That I won't dispute, but it isn't really a primary strategy for insulation.

Don't get me wrong though, I do like this product and would love to have the opportunity to test it out.

These bricks will only be able to be compared to standard double glazed windows. Because high performance windows are a different thing. I think these Polli-bricks would just be an alternative green way for standard double glazed windows. HAHA me too! I hope to see more of this product!
You could possibly contact the company that makes this product and see what they think.

So its a give and take. You don't get the high performance of low-e windows with gas fills, but you are maximizing your usage of recycled content. I wonder if these bricks could accept low-e films or be filled with inert gas.

yes it would be possible but the production costs and pay off times would be way too high. Air seems to be enough for insulation for somewhere closer to the equator.

Posted By savetheplanet on 01 Apr 2010 06:02 AM
yes it would be possible but the production costs and pay off times would be way too high. Air seems to be enough for insulation for somewhere closer to the equator.

That last line confuses me. Insulation near the equator is still important but not exactly the same as in Northern climates. You want to keep cooled conditioned air on the inside. I am all for this product though. I don't think its a great insulator, but I do think that the air gap is enough to create serviceable insulation. I do think it would be really neat to see an installation that uses a double layer of the bricks with an air gap with lighting, preferably LED.

Hello everyone. I got a kick out of the photos of the Polli-Brick structure at greenerpeople. I looked at the YouTube videos too. The pavilion is either the one they are building in Taipei or in Singapore. Either way, come Summer, we can find out what sort of insulation the Polli-Bricks really offer. The photos show that the bricks already have LED and the videos talk about solar power too. I love the idea of a double row. But, I would like to know what this technology can do in very cold places because we should be able to find out the performance of this stuff in warm places very soon?

Sorry guys, I actually made a mistake in my last post. I was thinking if Polli-Brick was being compared to it's self -_- But it really wouldn't matter where the building is. Polli-Brick has a rather high R value=7. So, I think we will see how it preforms soon!

But if you use double rows, wouldn't you be wasting a lot of space just in walls to save for insulation?

R-7 is not high at all. Not when you are considering it as an enclosure system. Windows are measured in U-values typically. This would have a U value of around .14 which is great compared to any window, but as far as enclosure, it is low performing and will cause cooling loads to be quite high.

As far as your comment about wasting space, this is a problem with the building industry, putting a premium on square footage instead of building performance. I would rather loose 300-500 square feet of rentable space than lose thousands upon thousands of dollars on cooling costs because I chose a poor insulator.

With two layers and an air gap, I would guess you would get around an R16 which still isn't fantastic but will save a boat load of money over the life of the building.

Put an R7 enclosure in a region with seasons and the sizing on the HVAC systems would be ridiculous. The more I learn about this product, the more disillusioned I become. It is a low performance material for the applications they are promoting. It works for window type applications or limited exterior applications, but with it being plastic, low R value and other concerns, I just don't see it being feasible.

This is a cool conversation with great detail. We now know the answer to Solar Hero’s question. Polli-Brick has better insulation properties than glass. Archdesigns and lili are asking the right questions about cold weather and total insulation, though. Having seen the photos and the online videos, I think that we need to ask other questions about Polli-Brick. Like any potential building material, and particularly green building material, you have to weigh options and benefits. This idea, Polli-Brick, should, I suspect, be thought of as an exterior cladding that is translucent. That’s nice. It lets light in, and, hopefully, gets reduced lighting costs. It looks like it offers higher R values (or U) vis a vis glass curtain wall material. It also looks like it does NOT offer the insulation that many current traditional/green non-translucent enclosure methods offer. But, at some point, you have to look a carbon footprint and related issues. The pictures show that they are using Polli-Brick as an interior surface as well. C footprint wise, that’s an interesting avenue to assess too. Sounds like Polli-Brick is should be judged as a viable eco-friendly alternative to office tower exterior surfaces that might have as-good-as or better insulation than those two (‘my-golden-parachute-is-bigger-than yours-glass’ and ‘have-a-cigar-Bob-marble’). So far, okay. But, let’s talk carbon footprint and monetary cost for the rest, including Polli-Brick’s use as an interior surface material. Agreed that, based on what little is out there, the jury should be out on all season geographies. Still, I want to get myself to that building they built on a really hot day in Taiwan. Put on a suit coat and drink a fresh-brewed Starbucks. As they don’t have any cooling in that building, I had better not get hot and bothered! What do you all think?

There are other options for translucent exterior cladding though. Kalwall for example. It is a superior insulator and when you spec the high end of their product line, your wall will outperform most cladding systems, opaque or translucent. And I don't think anyone discredited all windows. Some of the high performance glass that can be used on a high-rise building with reflective coatings can come much closer to the R7 of Polli-Brick and provide views and the ability to open for localized climate control.

You say the building doesn't have any cooling? While I am not familiar with the design of the building, I am assuring you that they are probably using passive strategies such as natural ventilation, thermal mass and stack ventilation to handle the cooling loads of the building. It may not have a mechanical system which is what most people think is the only way to cool a building, but it does have the ability to cool itself.

there's been a sudden boom in media about Polli-Bricks.
The building that is using polli-bricks is close to completion.
http://inhabitat.com/2010/04/14/eco...c-bottles/
http://www.treehugger.com/files/201...taiwan.php
http://intransit.blogs.nytimes.com/...ark&st=cse



I guess we'll see how this thing preforms pretty soon.

Thanks archdesigns and savetheplanet. Great pics and videos. Kalwal is interesting and the info/stuff in inhabitat and treehugger were cool. With Polli-Brick and other exterior cladding options, we've just got to do a head to head on what's most important: cost, insulation, level of translucency, carbon footprint, aesthetics, environmental impact/benefit, etc. (Obviously, 'important' is a relative term based on any individual project) Then, you've got to decide how to score the benefit of embedded LED lighting in the Polli-Brick and the solar power integration. Let's break these out and see what information is out there to allow for such a dialogue/comparisson? I guess we can only do this if really nitty gritty specs are somewhere online?

Lets really look at this for a second. Miniwiz, the maker of Polli-Brick claims that it is producing the product from a plastic recycling process that takes PET bottles (polyethylene terephthalate) which have been reported to have possible health effects due to the leaching of antimony and phthalates. This leaching is especially high during periods of high heat. That alone says that this product is questionable as a green product, but I go on.

There is no process which can take a PET bottle and turn it back into pellets. Miniwiz claims such a process. If you mix the flakes with chemicals and virgin pellets, then yes the recycled PET, now polyester, can go back through the process, but the final product is different and not a pure PET bottle and not 100% recycled.

I want to address this comment that integration of LED lights is somehow a unique characteristic of Polli-Bricks and therefore a green trait. This is a greenwash. The use of LED lighting is a green choice and if you use it with Polli-Bricks does not change the sustainable nature of Polli-Bricks. This is just not how it works.

Solar power integration??? What are you talking about. The building integrating solar technologies once again has nothing to do with the sustainability of the Polli-Brick product. This is again a greenwash attempt to take one this that is sustainable and attach its value on another product.

People keep saying that we will be able to judge this materials when we have X or when this building is up. Open your eyes people. This material and the company that produces it are not forthcoming. Their website has pretty pictures but no specs of any kind. I can go to any website for a construction product and find spec information, but not this one. Its all show. I would love to read the spec that tells me that a downcycled plastic bottle has real structural integrity under real life live and dead loads. The website does claims it to be structural, but this is a twist of the term structural.

You don't need a head to head comparison. Judge the material on its own merits and you will see that it isn't all that people are saying it is. Then compare it to other materials on the market, making sure to compare only the intended characteristics of the material. Polli-Bricks are an attempt to get in on the green craze and take advantage of people's lack of knowledge about the materials and the processes of creating it.

People, everyone seems to be missing a salient point here. This Eco-Ark that everyone is raving about is a temporary, movable pavilion and not a permanent structure. If not permanent and only an exhibition of a fledgling building material, then why are we arguing its real world applicability when obviously its not there yet.

I personally like the innovative spirit. I am not sure if it really lives up to all the claims people are making for it, but I do know that the idea is good. I don't know if I would want to live or work in a plastic building though. Plastics are inherently a burden on the environment and known to cause health problems. I know that we need plastics to live in this modern world, but do we really want to live inside a plastic bottle?

This is getting a bit heated. I like it. People need to be exploring the options in their materials and really looking at all the facts.

well yes, EcoARK is a temporary pavilion but isn't it still going to be moved somewhere else? It will still be used and become a permanent structure somewhere else.