Recycled 5 Gallon Bucket Wall

A working experiment in reusing 5 gallon buckets as low-tech structural building units.

Let me start off by saying that I'm only involved in this project in the design and tech side, no real labor yet. I hope that doesn't ruin this instructable for you, if I missed anything you can check our project website for extra details.

Visit any new construction, remodel, large painting project or stucco job and you will find 5 gallon buckets. Some of these may be reused for a short time but the majority will quickly find themselves in the local landfill. Each 5 gallon bucket uses approximately 1 cubic foot of landfill (a little less when compressed, but not much) so removing the quantity required to build this wall will reduce the landfill by many thousand cubic feet. This Bucket Wall is already attracting a lot of passer-by attention and it is expected that some new walls and other projects will be inspired by this technology, removing even more buckets from future landfills.

The Bucket Wall has a lot in common with building methods that incorporate straw bales, cord wood, bottles, and earth, in that it reuses existing products that might otherwise become landfill.

The ultimate hope for this project is that the methods perfected here will be structurally sound enough to use in ecologically friendly house construction and landscaping.

Step 1: Collect Materials

This project needs to be looked upon as an ongoing snail's-pace sort of thing. Unless you're very lucky you'll spend a lot of time waiting for buckets. You might want to warn your family that the yard will not be pretty... for a long while, even the tidiest stack of old buckets looks bad.

If you have thousands of buckets already and want to work fast forget the above and start calculating:
The basic structural unit that we used was a stack of 25-30 5 gallon buckets. The widest part of the bucket is ~1 foot in diameter and a stack buried 3-4 feet in the ground is around 7 feet high. Each stack is wrapped in wire and stuccoed but this doesn't add much to the dimensions.
So for each foot of wall you need
~30 buckets
1 foot x 14 feet of wire mesh (old chain link, chicken wire, rebar, remesh etc.) + enough for overlap
wire for "sewing" above wire onto bucket stacks
a 1 foot x 1foot x 4 foot deep trench
enough cement to stucco it
the lids from your bucket stack to fill in gaps and level top of wall
time.... (again skip this if you're not "normal")

I'm not going to break it down any further, let's just say thousands and thousands of buckets are required, and it might take a while, think of the planet, and if you get sick of it try pricing a chain link fence.

Comments

[digitalhawkeye]

While you would be using more buckets up in making the wall as it is planned, perhaps you could spread your buckets out farther by using spacers to help with the height of the wall. In other words, put some sort of spacer on top of each bucket before stacking the next one on top. I figure you could roll corrugated cardboard and tape/tie it into bundles of equal lengths, you could use wood, heck you might even be able to do something with the lids.

I do realize that this might reduce some of the rigidity of the wall if pressure was applied to the uppermost section, however if you're just looking to fill volume, you could always reinforce with rebar through the buckets or something to that effect.

[porcupinemamma]

Ingenious! Way to go!!! :0) Growing ivy to cover the wall to would soften the look if that interests you Here are some examples.


http://www.customgardendesigns.com/gr_vines.htm

[cylonics]

I REALLY love the idea of recycling with creative building materials. One concern I have been struggling with is that if the plastics manufacturers of these buckets (and other such manufacturers) can claim their products are enviro friendly or "green" because they can be reused in this way, they will continue to justify and strengthen the initial manufacture of SO many of them. It may even become a sales pitch to sell more. Do you have any concerns that your idea could end up being the impetus for MORE plastic buckets? Can the wall be recycled when it reaches end of life? (Sorry to rock the boat, with all due respect, I like the idea, but am getting alarmed that the enivro movement is starting to be based on , or depend on, enironmentally unfriendly output from businesses to be the input for such green projects. )

[moonchylde]

They're going to make more buckets regardless of whether we recycle them or not, so why not recycle them?

[riverreaper]

as the plastic will out live even you , perhaps it will become a wall els were in life or perhaps filled with other unwants/ nonrecy.`s it could bebome a foundation to a building , freeways are another thing it could be recycaled in to once grond/sherd into little matters : to many play on word`s just recycal them .

[lorajean]

I have re-used buckets from laundry soap, cat litter, paint. The problem with them is that after year or so they become weak and brittle and start to disintegrate. It would be a bummer to go to all the trouble and then have it start collapsing! It's a fabulous idea 'in theory'!!

[riverreaper]

your became brittle due to the other cemicals you introduced to the plastics , if you used friendly save launder D. they would last longer ...about getting your cat to pee in a bucket im still scaching my head on ill have to get back on that one

[CYCLEGUY55]

The reason the buckets become brittle is because they break down over time when exposed to UV radiation. When they're encased in stucco they're protected from UV, so they will last a very long time.

[lampajoo]

What's wrong/ungreen with making walls out of plastic? if the hdpe really lasts "forever" and if the wall is being put in a place where people will want it for a long time then it's more environmentally friendly to make a wall out of hdpe then clay bricks or wood. Personally i love trees and I'd rather they not get chopped down to make walls, and most trees get cut down with gasoline chainsaws and the wood is shipped with ICE trucks.

[markbyounger]

I'd love to think this idea was good enough to absorb the number of buckets being produced but until it gets close I don't think the manufacturers will even notice. Did I mention that this project is UGLY as sin until the smoother coats of stucco have been applied, I don't see many spouses allowing these walls to go up in their yards. As to the recycling of the wall after the fact I think that would be possible once the stucco was broken up the buckets would probably come out with no more concrete and dirt than they had before they went in. Having said that, with even minimal maintenance we expect this wall to last a long long time. With no UV hitting the plastic I don't know how it would break down and the stucco is pretty thick because of the irregularity of the surface... so I'd estimate it might be 100- 500 years before you'd need to think too much about recycling. This might be a good time to suggest a bit of location planning, you probably want this to go in the right spot the first time you build it.

[ProfessorJWN]

(removed by author or community request)

[markbyounger]

There's a couple of reasons, both will probably not apply to your situation:
- The owner of our wall wanted something to blend in with the existing adobe house
- our chemistry friends, and some commenters on this posting have mentioned that HDPE (the plastic in 5 Gal buckets), while having great resistance to alcohols, acids and bases, has poor resistance to UV radiation.

[bananafred]

I chuckle at the idea of plastics manufacturers stooping THAT low. I am sure they could come up with many, many, reasons that their products are green that are at least *more* reasonable (but still completely unreasonable). If you look at everything that way, nothing is "green".

[Wicken]

Could this be used somehow to make a low wall that was also a raised garden bed? I am thinking that in some areas, keeping children in a yard (or keeping the chicken in) would be well-balanced by having gardening space on top of the wall. The buckets would reduce water-loss and root-damage from animals and insects. I really like this idea. Urban areas are encroaching on subsistence farmers in developing countries, and some urban dwellers over here are looking to do a little subsistence farming.

[tristan993]

i was gonna say thats supa ugly, but then i saw the finished product. nice job! u could withhold the stucco if u were going for a post-apocalyptic-survivor look though

[Lokisgodhi]

Sure, if you want to get lynched by your neighbors. Or maybe they'd do 'The Cask of Amontillado' thing but with bucket masonry. ;-)

tristan993 wrote:
 
"u could withhold the stucco if u were going for a post-apocalyptic-survivor look though"

 

[bornon511]

bucket house would be cool.

[markbyounger]

Using the bucket stacks as a house wall has been discussed... but is a much larger proposition (esp. from a engineering and permit standpoint). My initial idea is to build a wooden framework using existing building practices and infill with the buckets. I read that this was how a lot of the early strawbale houses avoided code issues, but that doesn't really use the buckets to best advantage.

[Lokisgodhi]

I was thinking a bucket house would be nice too.

You'd probably have to go with poured concrete footings to put the buckets on. Also, you'd probably want to fill the buckets with some sort of insulation, like you'd do with the spaces between in cord wood masonry  construction.

[storeyc]

Nice work, looks like a big project. I would have been tempted to just erect the bucket stacks and then grow vines over them.

[Lokisgodhi]

I'd think that'd be grounds for justifiable homicide by your spouse or neighbors in most jurisdictions. ;-)

Storeyc wrote:

"I would have been tempted to just erect the bucket stacks and then grow vines over them." 

[ReverendSapp]

WOW, You should change your first pic. The first couple times I saw this I thought I would hate to live next to you, But then I looked on further. Now I must say very well done after giving a third chance at the entire Instructable. Very Good!

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

were did u get all those buckets?

[Sunbanks]

Wow! The end result looks nice, and you would never know that it's made out of buckets! 

[riverreaper]

what some say as waistfull ...how about one more thing you could do to minamize waisters ideas an make a new sorcer have hoses running threw the buckets bottums an bottum sides an leave the tops off the top row ,place old screens over the top too keep leaves from clogging the hose lines - an iether a cheap pump or handcranker pump outa any of the buckets were extra watering or watering of your yard an or garden is needed , then let mother nature fill them for you . also if any of your hose lines are exposed to the winer element use winter protection on them . course the main problem i first seen with it all was what your niebors are going to say with that monstrossity , painting all the buckets a grey or brick red might look as thou they were a cement or brick type walling at a distance insted of some goddy well you probley understand already lol

[XOIIO]

I'm very sursprised it took a hit from a backhoe and didn't move! Good work!

[mattyuke]

You need to paint awesome stuff on it. But it's pretty cool recycling

[BobCat]

A short wall made like this might be good for terracing or making raised bed gardens.

[nakigara]

Interesting idea, but I think one of the major flaws is that the buckets are designed to 'nest' inside of each other, and minimize volume occupied when stacked in such a manner. This may make for strong columns for some use or other, but it seems almost wasteful in a wall project.

since you are already using rebar, what if you put rebar spikes/posts spaced about bucket radius apart, and impaled the buckets on the rebar spikes/posts and filled them with earth/rubble. alternate the rows like normal brickwork, and if this isn't strong enough, maybe cut notches in the the bucket's rims so that they interlock slightly? this way the full volume of each bucket would contribute to the wall, instead of just the top ~3 inches or so, and would allow you to build a much longer stretch of wall with the same amount of buckets.

just to elaborate, if as you said the average bucket is ~12" diameter, stick a rebar spike in the ground every ~7" for the first course of buckets, impale a bucket on every even # spike, and fill them with earth/rubble. for the next course, impale a bucket on every odd # spike, fill, repeat.

*shrugs* just an idea to get your buckets to stretch a bit further...

[snauzinator]

I was thinking the same waste-of-bucket idea.. Even turning them right side up, filling them halfway with sand or something and stacking them like that and then stucco-ing would i think lessen the amount of buckets you need immensely!

[thecheatscalc]

At my house, we never have enough buckets! ;)

[MegaMaker]

I want to try making a fort out of "bricks" that are made out of paper bags stuffed with newspaper.

[MegaMaker]

But you would have to make it water proof somehow. Another way is just to tape/glue/epoxy some big plastic milk jugs together.

[incorrigible packrat]

Neat! For a long time, I've had the idea of making a bucket dome, by making a circle of buckets, then stacking more on top in a smaller circle and so on. I work at a household hazardous waste depot and get loads of scuzzy old oil buckets that the recyclers don't want. Weird, isn't it, that plastics are made from oil, yet the plastic recyclers don't want to recycle plastic with oil on it...

[gentry]

To get more buckets, post a viral internet story/chain letter that little Billy Bob is dying of cancer and his dying wish is to receive a world record number of used 5 gallon plastic buckets. You won't be able to shut it off (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Shergold), but you'll be able to build a castle first.

[tezzz]

Why on earth don't you fill them with dirt put the lid on and stack them up? Strap them hrozontally with builders strapping or wooden laths screwed in to each bucket. That's what I'm going to do. Thanks for your brilliant idea.

[tristan993]

that might be too heavy if theres only one bucket for the width.

[markbyounger]

The advantage of stacks our way is lateral strength. With the huge supply of buckets available (from construction sites, removed from landfills, and from local donation) this saves resources in this case. To make the same wall your way would use ~10-20% of the buckets we use but would require a stronger framework. Maybe once the mesh and stucco was put on it would be strong enough......... worth experimenting with.

[jtpoutdoor]

How do you get lateral strength- the buckets are just stacked- I would have thought they would be pretty unstable, I'd rather stack them on their side- with lids on, put a couple of pots in at each end to stop them rolling away. That way you can tie them in with each layer. O O O O O O O O O O O O O

[jtpoutdoor]

oops it has rearranged my diagram- they should be offset in each layer