Upcycled
builds.
Tell us the problem rather than the product — half the builds on this page started as somebody describing a nuisance.
Finished products, not kits of parts — built in our own shop from reclaimed totes, reclaimed cage steel and reclaimed pallets. Rain catchment banks, aquaponics stacks, compost tea brewers, wash stations, planters and stands, $420 to $1,340, three to fourteen days. Each build is matched to the grade its use demands.
Why we build instead of just selling
A reasonable share of what arrives on the yard cannot be resold as a container. The bottle is crazed, or the valve boss is destroyed, or the prior contents rule it out of anything we would certify. The conventional move is to shred it.
But a bottle that will not hold 275 gallons under its own weight will quite happily hold 60 cubic feet of compost, and a cage that is out of square is still 48 lb of good galvanised tube. Fabrication is how we push the reuse rate from the low 80s into the low 90s, and it is the most interesting work in the building.
What we build
Prices are ex-yard and include the tote, the fabrication and the fittings. Freight is quoted separately because it varies enormously by build height.
Three-Tote Rain Catchment Bank
Three 275 gallon totes manifolded with 2-inch bulkheads on a common header, first-flush diverter, leaf screen, overflow standpipe, two hose bibs and fitted UV sleeves. 825 gallons of storage that fits on a 12 × 5 ft pad. The manifold is unionised so you can add a fourth tote later without cutting anything.
- Price
- $1,180
- Lead time
- 7 – 10 days
- Tote grade
- Technical grade
Aquaponics Starter Stack
One uncut 275 gallon food-grade tote as the fish tank, one top-cut at 14 inches as the media bed, a gravity return, a bulkhead siphon, a stand welded from reclaimed cage steel, and both wash certificates. We do not build this from anything but documented food-grade bottles.
- Price
- $890
- Lead time
- 10 – 14 days
- Tote grade
- Food grade only
250 Gallon Compost Tea Brewer
Top-cut tote, 1-inch flanged air inlet, regenerative blower, manifold diffuser, 400-micron extraction basket on a removable yoke, and a 2-inch bottom drain. The cage stays intact so a forklift can move it full. Sized so a 10-gallon-per-minute pump empties it in under half an hour.
- Price
- $1,340
- Lead time
- 10 – 14 days
- Tote grade
- Grade A industrial
Field Wash Station
A 275 gallon tote on a fabricated 24-inch stand with a gravity-fed foot-valve tap, a soap shelf, a greywater catch tray and a hose reel. Built for packhouses, farm gates and job sites where there is no plumbing. Fills from a hose or a water truck.
- Price
- $740
- Lead time
- 5 – 7 days
- Tote grade
- Grade A industrial
Cage Planter Set, four
Four cage-only frames cut to 24 inches, lined with geotextile and fitted with a reclaimed-pallet base. Each holds about 11 cubic feet of growing medium. Galvanised steel, so they will outlast three cedar beds and cost less than one.
- Price
- $420
- Lead time
- 3 – 5 days
- Tote grade
- Cage only
Double Tote Stand, welded
A 30-inch stand in reclaimed cage tube that carries two filled 275 gallon totes side by side at gravity-feed height, with forklift pockets and cross-bracing. Rated 5,000 lb static. Built from steel pulled off failed cages, so the frame itself is a reuse product.
- Price
- $520
- Lead time
- 5 – 7 days
- Tote grade
- Reclaimed steel
Match a build to a grade
The explorer shows which grade each end use demands — including the combinations we refuse.
Rain Catchment Bank
A 275 gallon tote plumbed to a downspout holds roughly a half-inch of runoff from a 900 sq ft roof. Gang three of them with 2" bulkheads and you ride out a dry August without touching municipal water. We fit the leaf screen, first-flush diverter and a shaded sleeve, because UV is what kills HDPE, not water.
Full build guide- Grade
- Technical grade
- Typical build
- 3 × 275 gal, manifolded
- Outlet
- 2" NPT brass + hose bib
- Add-ons
- UV sleeve, leaf trap, overflow
Build questions
Are these made to order or in stock?
Made to order, in batches. Lead times are three to fourteen days depending on the build and how much cutting it needs. Rain banks and planters are quick; aquaponics and brewers wait on a documented food-grade or Grade A bottle coming through the wash line.
Can you build something that is not on this list?
Usually. Send a sketch, a photograph of something similar, or just a description of the problem. We have built fuel caddies, sap tanks, dunk tanks, chicken waterers, calf feeders, dust-suppression trailers, mobile brine stations and a surprising number of bar counters. Our fabrication page covers how custom work is quoted.
Do builds ship, or is it pickup?
Rain banks and stands ship on a flatbed or in a van, LTL or dedicated depending on how many. Anything over 96 inches tall assembled gets shipped as a kit with a numbered drawing — it is substantially cheaper and it survives the trip better.
What grade of tote do you use in a build?
Whatever the use actually requires, which is the whole point of the grade system. Aquaponics gets documented food grade with no exceptions. Compost tea and wash stations get Grade A. Rain catchment and planters get technical grade, because nothing in those applications cares about a stain.
Every build, with specification and lead time
| Build | Price | Lead time | Tote grade | Key specification |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Three-tote rain catchment bank | $1,180 | 7 – 10 days | Technical | 825 gal, unionised bottom manifold, first-flush diverter, screened overflow, UV sleeves |
| Aquaponics starter stack | $890 | 10 – 14 days | Food grade only | 250 gal working water, 10 cu ft media bed, bell siphon, 30 in stand |
| 250 gallon compost tea brewer | $1,340 | 10 – 14 days | Grade A | Top-cut, 1 in flanged air inlet, blower, manifold diffuser, 400-micron basket, 2 in drain |
| Field wash station | $740 | 5 – 7 days | Grade A | 24 in stand, foot-valve tap, soap shelf, greywater tray, hose reel |
| Cage planter set, four | $420 | 3 – 5 days | Cage only | Cut to 24 in, geotextile lined, reclaimed pallet base, ≈11 cu ft each |
| Double tote stand, welded | $520 | 5 – 7 days | Reclaimed steel | 30 in, carries two filled 275s, forklift pockets, 5,000 lb static |
| Spent grain collection vessel | $225 | 3 – 5 days | Technical | Top-cut, 3 in bottom outlet, cage intact so a forklift moves it full |
| Mobile hand-wash bank | Quoted | 10 – 14 days | Food grade | Gravity-fed, multi-station, greywater capture |
Prices are ex-yard and include the tote, the fabrication and the fittings. Freight is quoted separately because it varies enormously by assembled height — anything over 96 inches ships as a kit with a numbered drawing, which is substantially cheaper and survives the trip better.
The physical fact the whole shop runs on
Crazing is a stress failure, and most second-life uses have no stress.
A bottle that will not hold 2,400 lb of water under a 40-inch hydrostatic head will quite happily hold sixty cubic feet of compost for a decade, or three hundred gallons of standing water in an unpressurised open-top vessel. The cracks propagate under hoop stress, and there is no hoop stress at zero head.
That single observation is why the fabrication shop moved our reuse rate from the low eighties into the low nineties. Without it, roughly one in six units would go to regrind. With it, the floor of our process is a product rather than a shredder.
Builds ranked by how marginal a unit they will accept
- Cage planter — needs a roughly square cage and a sound base. No bottle required at all. The largest absorber of marginal units in the building.
- Firewood crib and trellis frames — cage only, geometry can be poor.
- Compost tea brewer — top-cut bottle, atmospheric only, crazing acceptable.
- Wash station — needs a bottle that holds a low head, so light crazing only.
- Rain catchment bank — needs a sound bottle at a 40-inch head. Crazing excluded.
- Aquaponics stack — needs documented food grade. Never a recovered marginal unit, at any price.
The two rules of cutting a tote
Heat, not teeth
A sawn edge in HDPE is a field of torn ridges and micro-notches under any magnification, every one a stress concentration — in a material whose dominant failure mode is crack initiation at a stress concentration, the worst possible finish. Reciprocating cutting also leaves the material either side in residual tension, which is exactly the condition environmental stress cracking needs.
We cut on a heated-blade jig: a resistance-heated blade at a controlled temperature travelling along a fixed guide. It melts a path rather than cutting one, and the polymer re-fuses behind the blade into a smooth rounded bead that is sealed, in compression rather than tension, and safe to reach past without deburring.
Temperature control is the whole trick. Too cool and it drags and tears; too hot and it degrades the edge into a brittle brown line that is worse than a saw cut. The usable band is narrower than you would expect and shifts with wall thickness, which is why it is a jig with a controller rather than a hot knife and a steady hand.
Keep the shoulder
A bottle's hoop strength lives in its shoulder — the curved transition between vertical wall and top. Cut below it and you remove the structure that keeps the walls vertical, and a filled bottle will bow outward between the cage bars.
Where a build requires a cut below the shoulder — a media bed must be shallow, a brewer must be reachable — we fit a reinforcement band around the new rim. Our $65 top-cut price includes the band when the geometry calls for it, which is most of the time.
How a one-off runs, and what we have built
- You describe the problem. Not the product — the problem. Half this catalogue started as a customer explaining an annoying problem, and a sketch on a napkin is genuinely better than a CAD file because it tells us what you are trying to achieve rather than what you think the answer is.
- We draw it. Dimensioned drawing, material list and a price, three to five business days.
- You approve. Changes at this stage are free. Changes after cutting are not.
- We build and photograph. Progress shots on anything over a week.
- Water test. Anything that holds liquid gets filled and watched before it ships.
Things we have built from reclaimed totes and cage steel
Fuel caddies in fabricated steel, maple sap tanks, dunk tanks, calf feeders, chicken waterers, dust-suppression trailers, mobile brine stations, parade floats, a mushroom fruiting chamber, two bar counters, a mobile hand-wash bank for a county fair, and a tide-simulation tank for a university marine lab.
| Operation | Price |
|---|---|
| Top-cut, jig and heated blade, edge finished | $65 |
| Reinforcement band fitted | Included where geometry requires |
| 2 in bulkhead fitting, drilled and sealed | $45 |
| 3/4 in bulkhead or spigot fitting | $32 |
| Manifold, two totes on a common header | $290 |
| Manifold, three totes, unionised | $420 |
| First-flush diverter, plumbed | $95 |
| Overflow standpipe and screen | $78 |
| Air inlet flange, 1 in, for aeration | $70 |
| Spray bar, drilled stainless, in-tank | $165 |
| Cage cut-down to height, re-welded | $55 |
| Geotextile liner, cut and fitted | $38 |
| Welded stand, 24 in | $180 |
| Forklift-pocket frame | $240 |
Detailed questions
Can I supply my own totes for a build?
Yes, and it is often cheaper. Send us sound units and we fabricate to order at shop rates — a three-tote manifolded bank on your own totes is $420 for the manifold plus $95 for the diverter plus $78 for the overflow, rather than $1,180 for the complete build. We will reject any unit that is not suitable for the specific build and tell you why.
Do builds ship assembled or as a kit?
Under 96 inches assembled, usually assembled on a flatbed or in a van. Over that, as a kit with a numbered dimensioned drawing, which is substantially cheaper to ship and survives the trip better. Manifolded banks always ship as components because the plumbing is simpler to assemble on a level pad than to transport pre-connected.
Is there a warranty on a build?
Ninety days on fabrication — welds, seals, bulkheads and plumbing. The tote itself carries whatever its grade implies: an air-hold test result on Grade A and above, and the grade disclosure on technical. We water-test everything that holds liquid before it ships, which catches almost everything a warranty would.
Can you build to a drawing I already have?
Yes, though we will usually come back with questions. The most common problem with a customer drawing is a cut below the shoulder without a reinforcement band, and the second most common is a plumbing arrangement that puts the outlet above the sediment line. Both are easy fixes at the drawing stage and expensive afterwards.
What is the minimum fabrication job?
A single fitting — drilling and sealing one 2-inch bulkhead is $45 and takes a day. There is no minimum order on fabrication, although one-off work carries a setup charge that disappears above about six units.
Do you build in stainless as well as poly?
Yes. Tri-clamp ports, spray balls, sight glasses, dip tubes, jacketed sections and stands, TIG welded and passivated after fabrication. Passivation is the step that separates a tank staying clean from one pitting at every weld, and a lot of shops skip it because it is invisible.
Why is the planter set cheap if it is so useful?
Because the margin is thin and we keep it anyway. Its job is not margin — its job is being the floor of the process so that the floor is a product rather than a shredder. Judged on what it displaces, it is the most valuable thing in the catalogue.
Can you build something for a public or commercial setting?
Yes, and tell us at the drawing stage, because it changes the specification. Public-facing builds get sealed edges throughout, no exposed cut faces, bolted rather than clipped covers, and where water is involved a documented food-grade or rebottled bottle. The mobile hand-wash bank for a county fair was built to that standard.
Describe the nuisance, not the product
Most of this catalogue began as a customer explaining an annoying problem. Send us yours and we will quote a build.