CD/DVD Roofing Concept

Intro: CD/DVD Roofing Concept

I needed a use for old CDs and DVDs. My friend runs a website selling media items (mediamad.co.uk) and he gave me a stack of CDs and DVDs that he couldn't sell for a project of mine that never reached completion. To use them up I thought up this, and after not being able to find it on the web or instructables, I felt obliged to follow Kiteman's zeroth law.

This method of drilling, arranging and nailing disks works great for any roofing that has wooden board underneath. Structures like sheds, dog houses, lean-tos and porches are easy to cover and it makes a great hard-wearing, long lasting (I hope), cheap and most importantly.... green, method of roofing.

CDs and DVDs are readily available if you scrounge around. Ask friends, post on local sites like freecycle or craigslist, ads in the free local paper; these ways soon add up to thousands if you're happy to do a little walking/cycling around your town to pick them up.

Using this method, you need as few as 120 disks per square meter, and the method of drilling and arranging used means no water runs through the holes in the CD!

STEP 1: Pros and Cons

This method of roofing is a great way to use old and unwanted CD/DVDs. In a lot of places recycling facilities exist, but disks are not an item thrown away often enough to warrant curbside collection and so often they just get thrown away.

If you've got old disks you want to get rid of, first think whether there might be someone able to reuse them before drilling holes in them and tacking them to your shed roof! Software, music and films might be of interest to your friends or families and are often accepted by charity shops as a good product to sell on.

For junk mail CDs and badly damaged or scratched CDs/DVDs, it is better to reuse them than throw them away or recycle them. If they can be of use for another 5 years before needing to be replaced then that's better than transporting them to a recycling plant to be melted down and MUCH better than them just taking a trip to landfill. Landfill is a dark, scary place!

STEP 2: Disk Arrangement

Disk arrangement is critical to ensure that only one hole per disk must be drilled, one nail per disk used and to make sure no water gets through.

It may look complicated at first but once you grasp how to arrange them, it's pretty easy! The animated gif below should help. The second picture illustrates how the drilled hole aligns to the disk below, it narrowly misses the disk, covering the hole below. The third picture is my first correct attempt at arranging them on my living room floor (without the nails of course).

STEP 3: Drilling Jig

For speed, you need to be able to drill a hole in the same place in the CD consistently, for this I designed and built this jig. It has to be the ugliest conglomeration of wood and nails I've ever thrown together.

I found that the hole should be drilled anywhere on the ring where the central clear area meets the foil. This will allow you to nail through the CD without the CD below it needing a hole in it. The pictures should explain better than I can.

A stack of disks can be push into the jig once the drill bit is centered on the cross, at which point 10 or more disks can be drilled at a time, tipped out and then another load done. Easy!

If you don't have a pillar drill, build the same jig then screw a baton across the top with a hole in it in the right place through which to stick your bit. This should be equally quick. I ended up using my Dremel with a plunge attachment and a 3mm metal bit.

STEP 4: Drilling

The amount of disks you can drill at once will depend upon the thickness of the jig you've built. I found if I didn't fill the jig the bottom of my plunge router attachment wouldn't press on the CDs and they'd rattle as I drilled. My jig fitted 14 disks at a time.

The loose block of wood you can see in the photo is to knock all of the disks into the correct alignment.

Once aligned correctly, drill through the disks quickly, in several plunging motions. Once all the way through all disks, remove them from the jig as soon as possible. They will have melted together slightly from the heat of the bit. Separate them from each other with a twisting motion. Before I worked this out I tried to prise them apart and cracked a few.

STEP 5: To Shine or Not to Shine?

To help you make your mind up whether to nail your disks shiny side up or down, here are some pictures of them both ways up. I personally think the shiny side up looks nicer.

Some advantages to shiny side up:
- Might keep your dog house or shed cooler in the summer months, always a plus!
- The CDs might last longer if they reflect some of the UV rays, we'll see!

Some disadvantages of shiny side up:
- May annoy the neighbors when the sun's low.
- Some might think it looks silly!

STEP 6: Nailing

To hold the disks in place I chose 16mm tacs. They have nice wide flat heads to hold the disks in place without splitting them. The shafts were about 2.5mm so perfect for the holes I had drilled.

For the first layer at the bottom, lay the disks out first before you start nailing to make sure you get the alignment right.

To avoid crushed fingers I found I could push the tacs in to start with then once they stood up unaided, hammer them home with a couple of taps of the hammer. I expected splitting of the disks to be a problem, but it didn't seem to be.

Start at the bottom and work your way up, being careful to cover the holes as explained in step 2.

To nail all 135 to the board took me only 50 minutes. A lot slower than roofing with roofing felt, but a lot cooler and greener too!

STEP 7: Longevity

The pictures below show the finished concept board. Since I don't have a shed or a dog house I thought I'd demonstrate the concept and test how it holds out against the elements so that others can use this knowledge to roof if they wish to.

I have some concerns about the ability of CDs and DVDs to hold up against frost and UV. If you'd like to be kept up to date with how they're holding up, please subscribe to me. I will post a forum topic in April once the frosts are over and then again in August after it's been out in the sun all summer.

April Update: (remind me if I haven't posted it by May 2010)

August Update:

Comments

[ester123]

Update would be nice

[kshea1]

And it is 2020, how does the CD tile roof look now

[metzindustries]

I see the debate on UV and the shiny side.

For most resistance to UV you want the label side up. The shiny side is actually under the label. This means that the UV light enters the plastic and is reflected out.

HOWEVER...

The label itself is not very weather resistant. Especially those with poor quality label or no label over the data section. You will need to do a spray paint over the label to preserve it. (ideally a white acrylic)

Silver paint contains aluminum which in theory will reflect light, but it oxidizes easily unless clear coated.

White paint contains either titanium dioxide or Zinc oxide (in general) which is a sun screen.

Still it is a nice idea to re-use this obsolete media.

Sadly you can not use a CO2 laser to cut the old discs into new shapes (however you can cut with CNC router)

[peace, love, art]

 A possible con : I really don't know what sort of chemicals are used in the process of manufacturing cds, but using them in an outdoor way like this may leach chemicals into the environment. Just a thought.

[Shiftlock]

Not at all a concern.  No chemicals will be released from the polycarbonate that CDs are made from.  It's the same material plastic water bottles are made of.  There is some controvery about whether or not low doses of Bisphenol A can leach out of polycarbonate food containers, and then get consumed, but it's such an extremely small amount, it's really only a potential health hazard for pregnant women who drink out of polycarbonate containers that have been cleaned with bleach (which catalyzes the release of the bisphenol A).  It wouldn't be an issue at all in something like roofing tiles.  In fact, tiles made of polycarbonate CDs will leach far fewer harmful chemicals into the environment than traditional modern asphalt/tar roofing materials, so that's another bonus to using them for this purpose.

[GEOD998]

Shiftlock-First I apologize for being off topic-but you bring up a great point with the bleach catalyzing the BPA's release.Question-will  cleaning polycarbonate with peroxide also cause this reaction?-or is it only the chlorine from the bleach and not the oxygen?Thanks for the info

[Shiftlock]

It's actually the alkali property of the bleach that catalyzes the release of the BPA, so other alkali cleaners, like ammonia-containing solutions, should also be avoided.  This was first discovered when a lab tech used strong alkali cleaners on polycarbonate lab containers.  The containers were used in experiments involving rats, and endocrine disruption in the rats was observed.  They traced it back to the bisphenol A release from the cleaned containers.

With regard to your question about cleaning polycarbonate with H2O2, it's a mild acid, so it's perfectly fine to use on poly containers without fear of BPA release.  Alcohol-containing solutions are also safe.

[OolongJ]

H2O2 is alkali isn't it?

[GEOD998]

Shiftlock-thanks for the info-we have tropical birds and have switched over to stailess bowls-except for 2 and that has been a point of contention for some time now

[MillenniumMan]

Aaaand... you  won't get all those icky pebbles in your gutters either when you go up every two months to clean them.

What about the roof peak? How do you solve that? Are there 45 deg bent CD/DVDs? Even on a small scale like a shed, I'd like to see this done. Millions of these things are discarded each year in landflls and on sidewalks. This would be really cool to see as part of a recycled materials house.

[Jayefuu]

I will have an instructable about the peak coming as soon as I gather up more CDs. Subscribe if you would like instructables to send you an email when I publish it. :)

[Jayefuu]

Thanks, that's useful information :)

[Jayefuu]

CDs are made from polycarbonate, a material often used for roofing conservatories. Can't imagine it'll be a problem but worth doing some research on. Thanks

[22tpring]

Oh! Oh! You could use a wall of them in your mini-greenhouse this year to help warm up the vegetables.

Love dem shiny discs!

[OolongJ]

Black would be best for that, and latent heat capacity is what you want.
A wall of bricks or even better black barrels full of water works great.
You also benefit from the phase change of water resisting freezing in the greenhouse. Substitute the water for oil and you could taper the phase change to 20°or so

[JesusG33k]

What about hail? I'd imagine the discs would crack apart as soon as a quarter-inch ball hits it.

[Jayefuu]

CDs are made of polycarbonate which has excellent impact resistance.

[JesusG33k]

Really?

[OolongJ]

Yes

[MelanieK4]

I guess I don't understand how this works... I've left CD's shiny side up on the dash of my car to come back to a really destroyed CD....I would think that this being out in the sun would turn out looking nightmarish after about a week in the sun. Does anyone have any pictures showing longevity?