Recycling Vinyl Records & CDs into Roofing Tiles
Round, flat, thin, durable and uniform in both shape and size … it is no wonder more than one person has thought to turn old vinyl records and music CDs into a new (not to mention bright and variegated!) material for tiling rooftops. For better or worse, these are apt to stand out a bit more than your average-type metal, asphalt and clay varieties.
There is a point where a CD/DVD or record simply becomes too scratched to play, landing them largely in landfills due to the difficulty of recycling them by conventional means in some places – hence these projects from Jayefuu and Matt Glassmeyer. Not sure if you are a CD or vinyl tile fan? Consider their respective solar heat-gain/loss properties: CDs are intensely reflective while black records are bound to absorb a great deal of heat.
While the central holes in each music-playing format may lend themselves to a more clever attachment solution down the line, for now these projects do involve additional drilling for more conventional nails and screws (as directly hammering can cause unwanted cracks or breaks). Despite low material cost, repairing these could also turn out to be a pain given the fragility of the elements involved.
Perhaps the next step is a likewise simple hardware-store solution to allow for easier installation, and local or regional collection drives to gather enough CDs/records in a given place to make a project out of. As yet, this concept is also not well-developed enough for anyone to have used them on top of a home, though for porch overhangs, garden sheds and other semi-enclosed shelters they appear to work like a (musical) charm.
Want to give it a shot? Check out the CD/DVD roofing project on Instructables. “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!”
