# Man (Re)Builds Mexican Island Paradise on 250,000 Recycled Floating Bottles



## Matt Derrick (Sep 23, 2008)

If you like the youtube clip, check out this full article for more pictures and the full story!

http://ecoble.com/2007/11/18/250000-bottles-amazing-recycled-mexican-island-paradise/


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## Bendixontherails (Sep 23, 2008)

fuckin great! 
but I'd start with an old steel barge and fill it with topsoil. sink a couple of telephone poles in concrete and rig it as a sailing homestead. you could plant veggies, fruit trees, dig an underground shelter house onboard for shade/storms. have a bunch of chickens and a couple of milk goats wandering around. hmmm.... i'm off to draw this up!


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## Matt Derrick (Sep 24, 2008)

that sounds like a good idea, but im not quite understanding the treepoles/concrete thing... could you go into more detail?


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## Bendixontherails (Sep 24, 2008)

set a couple of telephone poles in a concrete footer, along the centerline of the barge, one in the front and one in the middle or whereever. the telphone poles would be huge masts for sails. build up a set of rigging to hoist/lower the sails and steer with them. you'd also pretty much have to have a motor (like out of a bus) so that you could manuever in a calm, and get out of the way of other barges and shit. 

I'm talking about this on a commercial size barge, 
http://www.littleriverbooks.com/photos/BargeOnLevee112105McGrady.jpg

basically a huge sailboat farm. you could take it anywhere! all along the mississippi, the intercoastal canal system throuout the southern US, or take the damn thing out to sea, and just follow the coast down through the gulf to fuckin south america. 

Damn. I'm gonna be thinkin about this for weeks.


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## BrokeWhiteBoy (Sep 24, 2008)

Bendixontherails said:


> . . .



Sounds freakin' bad-ass! You can borrow some clay I got for the prototypes. As long as I can come chill on it on occasion.


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## Bendixontherails (Sep 24, 2008)

that'd be the best part. anyone could come chill, drift for a while, what the hell ever. tie up at random places and put on folk-punk concerts, invite bands, cook for the crowds from your local organic ship grown veggies, have a nice little still set up, both for distilling water to drink, and for makin' whisky. 

there's just so many possibilities.
well, I'm off to practice my Irish brogue.... "It's MY Island!"


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## elokupa (Sep 24, 2008)

thats a fuckin awesome idea

it got me thinking...offshore farming: it could be the future for self sufficiency, no need to buy land and its mobile

great idea dude!


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## finn (Sep 24, 2008)

One problem you might run into is the salt-spray hurting the plants, unless you have a greenhouse up on it, or salt-resistant plants. The next thing to consider is the amount of freshwater you'll need- basically the same problems you'd get on a stationary small island...


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## Bendixontherails (Sep 24, 2008)

after some research: a fuel barge would probably be the way to go. you'd only really need dirt 1-2 feet deep, so you could put it on top and still have the whole inside area for storage, fuel tanks, desalinization machine, engines, etc. a fuel barge has two large tanks, one at each end that can be filled with either water or air, or both to adjust how high the whole thing rides in the water. if one of them was full of water you've got months of water for plants and whatnot. 

You would have to have a motor, as the flat sides of a barge catch a lot of wind and would run you ashore. I thnk the best idea so far.... Paddlewheels, one on each side of the barge, like on the old steamboats. that would make it way manueverable. the biggest problem might be getting the coast guards approval. anyplace big enough for this project means you're somewhere there is freight traffic, big ass tankers and whatnot. if it could be done it would be a hell of a place to live.


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## ferretwakeup (Feb 10, 2010)

That was great


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## Wolfeyes (Feb 10, 2010)

I've actually thought about starting a community project like this. Get a bunch of people together to throw in money for a barge, turn it in to a floating island. Then eventually get a few more barges set up and weld them together, then a few more etc... Once it's big enough, float it off to international waters, and bingo! Instant new country. Sort of... There are other things to consider of course...

Best part about running the desalinization plant on board, Income. Salt production is a multi-billion dollar industry and mostly unregulated. Why is this important? You'll need fuel for the motor and the stills.


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## nivoldoog (Feb 10, 2010)

Hell yea.. i am soo stoked he rebuilt it.


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## JungleBoots (Feb 23, 2010)

back in my home town there was a guy who built a house boat, basically a big pontoon boat with a house on it. he never sailed with it it just sat in a marina. he didnt have to pay property taxes at all. Instead just a minor marina charge and lived like anyone else. just on the water.


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## ferretwakeup (Feb 23, 2010)

smart for not having to pay the taxes for land


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## trotsky (Feb 23, 2010)

1. 3 telephone poles won't be enough for masts on a boat that big- probably not tall enough either. Even if you do have fore, main, and mizzen masts you're going to need hella big sails, which telephone poles probably can't support. also steering would be a bitch, you'd need multiple rudders unless you tried steering with centerboards a-la _Kon Tiki_.

2. I now realize above argument is irrelevant as you seem to have switched to diesel.

3. You don't need a desalinization "plant" onboard, really. Or at least one that would use fuel at all- just make a Solar still. Of course it would be a bit slower but you could either (a) make a large array of these in one corner of the barge or (b) just scale up one/a chain of these floating ones and tow the still/stills behind the barge.

4. I've been thinking about something like this myself, and got to thinking that just filling the whole thing with dirt is a waste. You'd want lower levels for storage, machinery, bunks, etc.... and even if you DID fill it up all the way you would have 100+ feet of dirt going straight down. Getting rid of the top decks and leaving the upper bit of the hull as a high wall to protect the dirt section would work, you could leave some of it all the way up at its original height for steering and such. (you'd also want gantries/ladders around the rim of the lowered section)

5. "weld them together"? Yeesh. Have you ever seen one of these in person? You could EASILY support 50+, maybe 100 or more people on one of these.

a bit long-winded, but yeah...


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## ferretwakeup (Feb 23, 2010)

a long time ago one of my friends was talking/fantasizing about taking over an abandoned oil rig in the ocean. This was years ago so i cant remember everything, but he thought up of having those floating gardens all around the rig, fishing, smaller floating platforms around the area for living or just more ground space. thought it was a neat idea back then


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## Wolfeyes (Feb 24, 2010)

trotsky said:


> 3. You don't need a desalinization "plant" onboard, really. Or at least one that would use fuel at all- just make a Solar still. Of course it would be a bit slower but you could either (a) make a large array of these in one corner of the barge or (b) just scale up one/a chain of these floating ones and tow the still/stills behind the barge.
> 
> 5. "weld them together"? Yeesh. Have you ever seen one of these in person? You could EASILY support 50+, maybe 100 or more people on one of these.



I hadn't thought of solar stills, but you would still have salt as a by-product, which as I said, isn't a bad thing.

I was actually thinking of starting with a smaller barge to start off with. Easier to acquire and set up. I couldn't imagine more than 30-40 people living comfortably off one. When you factor in food and water, and the creation thereof, space becomes a luxury.

Then again, I'm imagining more of a hedonist, semi-anarchic, "Harm none, do as thou will" kind of thing.


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## trotsky (Feb 24, 2010)

Wolfeyes said:


> I hadn't thought of solar stills, but you would still have salt as a by-product, which as I said, isn't a bad thing.
> 
> I was actually thinking of starting with a smaller barge to start off with. Easier to acquire and set up. I couldn't imagine more than 30-40 people living comfortably off one. When you factor in food and water, and the creation thereof, space becomes a luxury.
> 
> Then again, I'm imagining more of a hedonist, semi-anarchic, "Harm none, do as thou will" kind of thing.


I figure anything that saves on fuel is a good thing- you'd need positively massive amounts of diesel just to get anywhere. One thing being tested on oil tankers and other cargo ships is a setup of giant kites to help propel the boat. Kind of like a scaled-up version of the ones used for kite surfing. But again, steering is going to be a problem. The paddlewheels would definitely help (assuming you can change direction independently both port/starboard), but even modern barges with thrusters and such need tugs to help them maneuver. 

ah, that makes sense. Someone said something like "fuck yes, oil tankers!" and I assumed that was the general plan. Even at that, 30-40 people is a LOT. dunno. I kinda think you might be better off with a cargo ship or something a little easier to steer.


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## Psylock1045 (Aug 19, 2015)

So logically, if I wanted to build my own plastic bottle island, how would I go about trying to enlist the help of StP to do it? The original one the dude built was made in 2 1/2 years. I want to do mine in 1 year.


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