And that's it!

Our second year is officially over - the house has been vacated and the cans have been stored away ready for our return sometime in September.

This place will be pretty quiet until then, but I will be posting some second year statistics and perhaps one or two other things over the course of the summer. The second half of the swing footage will be uploaded sometime at the start of our third year so keep an eye out for that, too!

Year 2 casualties

This year has seen various beer can towers kicked, driven and swung into, and as such we were always going to suffer some losses. In spite of all our efforts, however, we've only had to write off 8 of the former cans since the vast majority of the damage caused has been superficial.

We're taking this as a sign - if we've only managed to destroy 8 out of some 900 cans then we might just have to up the ante with the destructions next year!

Boxing up

Well, after several trips to IKEA we just finished boxing up all the cans for storage over the summer. It took 10 full boxes in all:

Each box contains between 80 and 100 cans, and we've counted 923 cans so far (one box is still open for last minute additions). This is the last time we'll have to store the cans for any great length of time - around this time next year we'll be crushing everything down for recycling!

Swing Video!

As promised, here's the first part of our video footage from the swing:

What happens...

...when you introduce a 560-can beer can tower to a make-shift swing? Well we've been finding out recently, and the answer is lots of destruction! Here are the before and after shots:

Videos to follow soon!

BCT16

BCT16 

(13/05/12 - 20/06/12)

Destruction : "Beer Mobile"

Beer Mobile

After the relatively unsuccessful attempt to destroy BCT15 with a mobile phone, we began discussing what other methods might be more successful. One of the most promising ideas that we had was to buy a toy car and drive it into the tower, which led to us buying a remote control 4x4 and ultimately to the destruction of BCT16.

And so the Beer Mobile was bought, and after much test-driving around our house we were ready to destroy the tower - but not before giving it some more appropriate decoration first!

 The destruction couldn't have gone better, and I suspect that this will not be its only appearance - expect to see more of it in the near future!

BCT15

BCT15 

(13/03/12 - 05/05/12)

Destruction : "Mobile Phone"

BCT14

BCT14  

(18/01/12 - 13/03/12)

Destruction : "Heffalump"

(No video available)

Looking back: The Ocado Shop

The start of Term 2 brought with it an incredible stroke of luck which led to our most outrageous bulk order of beer to date. Supplies of beer in our house were running low, and whilst we wanted to order more online none of the standard supermarkets seemed to be offering any deals.

This all changed, though, when we received an Ocado gift voucher from WHSmiths and decided to check it out. In so doing, we stumbled upon a mistake on their website where they were offering £12 15-packs of Carlsberg on 2-for-£10.

Needless to say we capitalised and ordered 14 boxes (210 cans-worth), which combined with our £10-off voucher cost us a grand total of £60. That works out as £2 for every 7 cans of beer!

The Ocado Van arrives (25/01/12)

When we checked back on their website the next day we discovered that the pricing had already been corrected to 2-for-£20. Not that it mattered to us though - we'd already bought 92 litres from them!

The Ocado Tower

Cheers, Ocado!

Looking back: Year 2 Term 1

With the summer behind us we found ourselves moving into our new house in Coventry and beginning our second year. It took us some time to get the cans out of storage (read: back from Jon's grandparents!), and the cans drunk during this period combined with the small number we collected over the summer meant that by the time we got the first year cans back we had enough for 11 storeys.

Things were not all plain sailing though. The carpet in the new house was particularly uneven, which ultimately led to us buying some big sheets of thick card to form a base. Finally, on the 6th of October 2011 the beer can tower was reconstructed in its new home.

BCT9 - 165 cans

BCT11 - 286 cans

BCT10 - 220 cans

After this the cans came flying in - we had 237 cans in total during this term which beat our entire first year of university. By the christmas holidays the tower was comprised of 13 storeys and was an impressive 2.16 metres in height. Its construction marked the first time we had needed a chair in order to complete it, which was an achievement in itself! We also experimented with a beer can 'castle', comprised of a 10 storey tower with two 7 storey towers attached.

BCT12 - 364 cans

BCT13 - 455 cans

Castle - 388 cans

Sometime during this term it became clear that our original 15 storey target was going to be smashed. We also realised that the tower's new home could only last for one more storey before it extended out too far into the corridoor, and so it was going to need to be moved elsewhere...

Looking back: Year One

Our first year of university was where it all started. It was in October 2010 that we all arrived at Warwick University, although the tower itself did not begin until mid-way through our second term.

The earliest record that I have of it comes from the 28th of April, 2011. By this time the tower was already at 7 storeys, although in actual fact this only represents 84 cans. The tower continued to grow slowly during this time, until we eventually reached what would be our peak of 9 storeys sometime in June.

28/04/2011

11/06/2011

15/05/2011

This isn't quite the full story though. Not long after building the 9 storey tower, I returned to my room one evening to find it scattered all over the floor - I can only assume that it fell victim to a vaccume cleaner one morning. In fact by the end of our first year we had enough cans to build a slightly more impressive 10 storeys, but with the tower in pieces we decided to leave the construction as something to look forward to at the start of our second year.

Cleaner Strikes!

At the end of a rather uneventful first year, then, we boxed and bagged up 233 beer cans, ready to recommence construction when we returned to uni the following October. Back then I remember us deciding that 15 storeys would be a respectable target for the end of university - however as I'm writing this we are nearing the end of our second year and have already constructed one better than this!

Introduction

The aim of this blog is to track the progress of the Beer Can Tower - an ongoing project between an otherwise innocent house of Warwick University students.

It all began over a year ago during our first year, when I decided to start building a beer can tower to rival the one my older brother constructed during his university days. By the end of our first year we had built a 10 storey tower which comprised of a then-impressive 220 cans. Not satisfied with this, however, we decided to have the cans moved into storage so that we could continue it this year. As a result of this it has developed into something of a monster - in fact as I'm writing this we have 912 cans of almost 50 different varieties.

This blog will be a place for us to upload our photos as the tower progresses; and together with our youtube channel we hope to share our antics with everyone as we build increasingly outrageous towers and destroy them in ridiculous ways!