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Agreed. The technology is available that there's really no excuse for not building a proper house in areas affected by these things.

In fact here is an early overview of a house FEMA gave a grant for, specifically because they reviewed the design and determined that it was likely not to require emergency assistance despite being directly on the Florida coast. Cost on structures built on the principle used (concrete/"shotcrete" dome) is often estimated at very near equivalency per square foot with more typical wood-beam structures. The only thing you have to do for a tornado is use polycarbonate window fixtures (or shutters). Additionally, the energy efficiencies of the way these are built is such that the pilot light can go out and you may not notice your water getting cold for a few days in sub-zero weather. There's at least one documented case of it.

The only problem that remains to be solved is getting insurance and mortgage lenders onboard with this "unconventional" construction model, as they're inexperienced with it and tend not to want anything to do with it for no better reason than ignorance.

At the very least schools should be built tornado proof in tornado alley. http://www.monolithic.com/topics/schools

A square house made of sticks does not stand up to high winds. For that you need a concrete dome made by the folks at Monolithic.

A monolithic dome has been on my to do list for awhile now . . .

See how easy it is to get a building permit and bank loan for a dome.

These guys seem to get by, plus they built a cool space-ship type dome.

The Washington Coliseum in DC has a thin-shell concrete roof supported by an odd concrete exoskeleton. The construction method is known as the Zeiss-Dywidag process.

The method was somewhat popular in the early 20th-century, but seems to have fallen from favor after WWII. That said, the Coliseum is still standing, despite a great many years of abandonment and deliberate abuse. That said, it's a prime target for historical preservation, given that it's an architectural oddity, has a rich history (the Beatles played there!), and is in dire need of repair.

I took that to mean that rebuilding another house just as vulnerable to bad weather as the first one was is a bad idea. See, for instance, monolithic domes for tornado-proof construction methods (that are incidentally incredibly energy-efficient due to sky-high insulation factors).

bullshit. if schools can build em so can the feds.
http://www.monolithic.com/stories/october-2008-geronimo-school-builds-fifth-tornado-proof-building
most on /. are IT but there is a large subgroup of engineers. i find it hilarious one idiot questions a bunch of engineers on slashdot with qualifications across multiple technical industries while accepting the validity of a study done by the GAO, which presumably has a bunch of accountants who dont know what they're talking about.

These things: http://static.monolithic.com/
when built properly, are supposed to stand up to earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes.

Some of the designs are pretty neat, I think

When you say "from the ground up", do you mean literally? If so, you should start with a building that's not only fireproof but disaster-resistant, is energy efficient, low-maintenance and yet attractive, and costs little more than a standard structure while being faster to build. You want something like the building shown here: http://www.monolithic.com/gallery/commercial/office/index.html

Different design (with floorplan and site layout) here: http://www.monolithic.com/gallery/commercial/stardome/index.html

Plenty more commercial structures here: http://www.monolithic.com/gallery/commercial/index.html

I'm in no way affiliated with Monolithic, I've just seen their work and know they can give you what you need. Oh, and they're better at building structures than they are at building websites. Really.

When you say "from the ground up", do you mean literally? If so, you should start with a building that's not only fireproof but disaster-resistant, is energy efficient, low-maintenance and yet attractive, and costs little more than a standard structure while being faster to build. You want something like the building shown here: http://www.monolithic.com/gallery/commercial/office/index.html

Different design (with floorplan and site layout) here: http://www.monolithic.com/gallery/commercial/stardome/index.html

Plenty more commercial structures here: http://www.monolithic.com/gallery/commercial/index.html

I'm in no way affiliated with Monolithic, I've just seen their work and know they can give you what you need. Oh, and they're better at building structures than they are at building websites. Really.

When you say "from the ground up", do you mean literally? If so, you should start with a building that's not only fireproof but disaster-resistant, is energy efficient, low-maintenance and yet attractive, and costs little more than a standard structure while being faster to build. You want something like the building shown here: http://www.monolithic.com/gallery/commercial/office/index.html

Different design (with floorplan and site layout) here: http://www.monolithic.com/gallery/commercial/stardome/index.html

Plenty more commercial structures here: http://www.monolithic.com/gallery/commercial/index.html

I'm in no way affiliated with Monolithic, I've just seen their work and know they can give you what you need. Oh, and they're better at building structures than they are at building websites. Really.

Er, no not really. Yes, you can damage anything if you apply enough heat to it. But reinforced concrete buildings do not burn with normal fires found on the planet earth.

It's one of the main selling points of monolithic domes. The second is the insulated coating that makes it extremely fire resistant.

http://www.monolithic.com/gallery/homes/braswell_fire/index.html

People who want to build houses made of *wood* in areas that regularly have wildfires should be laughed at.

Wow. You could bury that Torus in the ground for even more passive savings, and geek style, too.

Thomas Edison saw the cast concrete home as working-class housing:

These 25x30 foot two story homes had 500 structural pieces and weighed about 250,000 pounds.

The ultimate test of the Edison process would be in mass production. After careful planning, the first large-scale development began, with forty houses planned to be built off Route 22 in Union, New Jersey, during July and August of 1917.

The street was named Ingersoll Terrace. Basements for the first eleven houses were dug with a steam shovel, and all the equipment and materials were put in place. The first few houses went up very slowly, as laborers struggled to learn the system and become familiar with the molds. Eventually the crew began to move with increasing speed and expertise. By the time the mold was broken on the eleventh house, the process was almost as systematized as Edison had predicted.

In the end the technical side of the monolithic concrete house was another Edison success story. But neither Edison nor Ingersoll had predicted the marketing nightmare they would encounter. Ingersoll decided, as a test, to put the first houses up for sale at the agreed price of $1,200 before building the next block. To everyone's surprise, despite the extremely low price, not a single house was sold in the first month. Ingersoll abandoned the project, and no more Edison concrete houses were ever built.

Some historians and Edison biographers blame the publicity and Edison's grandiose predictions for the demise of his most altruistic endeavor. No one wanted to live in a house that had been described as "the salvation of the slum dweller." People were too proud to be stigmatized as having been "rescued from squalor and poverty."

But there may have been a more important reason for the Edison monoliths' failure to catch on. The architect Ernest Flagg noted that "Mr. Edison was not an architect-- it was not cheapness that wanted so much as relief from ugliness, and Mr. Edison's early models entirely did not achieve that relief." From looking at them, it is hard to disagree.

Ten of the original eleven houses remain standing on Ingersoll Terrace, so the technology of the process has certainly shown itself to be durable. The original owners are long gone, but newer residents have generally positive opinions of the little houses. According to Mrs. Joseph Fila, who occupied an Edison house for half a century, "The twenty-four inch walls keep out the summer heat and provide good winter insulation." Joe Kearny says that the maintenance cost of his concrete house is "zero." Dolores Chumsky is less enthusiastic; her house is plagued by an elusive leak that defies detection. She adds that any prospects for renovation or improvements are doomed. "Just try and get someone to come and make repairs," she says. "They may come in once, but they never come back." Edison's Concrete Homes

> A monolithic dome is at the very top of what I'd like to build to live in.

The general impression can be that of a stage set for Star Trek. Catalog of Monolithic Dome Home Plans, Torus Something that even a geek may tire of very quickly.

Thomas Edison saw the cast concrete home as working-class housing:

These 25x30 foot two story homes had 500 structural pieces and weighed about 250,000 pounds.

The ultimate test of the Edison process would be in mass production. After careful planning, the first large-scale development began, with forty houses planned to be built off Route 22 in Union, New Jersey, during July and August of 1917.

The street was named Ingersoll Terrace. Basements for the first eleven houses were dug with a steam shovel, and all the equipment and materials were put in place. The first few houses went up very slowly, as laborers struggled to learn the system and become familiar with the molds. Eventually the crew began to move with increasing speed and expertise. By the time the mold was broken on the eleventh house, the process was almost as systematized as Edison had predicted.

In the end the technical side of the monolithic concrete house was another Edison success story. But neither Edison nor Ingersoll had predicted the marketing nightmare they would encounter. Ingersoll decided, as a test, to put the first houses up for sale at the agreed price of $1,200 before building the next block. To everyone's surprise, despite the extremely low price, not a single house was sold in the first month. Ingersoll abandoned the project, and no more Edison concrete houses were ever built.

Some historians and Edison biographers blame the publicity and Edison's grandiose predictions for the demise of his most altruistic endeavor. No one wanted to live in a house that had been described as "the salvation of the slum dweller." People were too proud to be stigmatized as having been "rescued from squalor and poverty."

But there may have been a more important reason for the Edison monoliths' failure to catch on. The architect Ernest Flagg noted that "Mr. Edison was not an architect-- it was not cheapness that wanted so much as relief from ugliness, and Mr. Edison's early models entirely did not achieve that relief." From looking at them, it is hard to disagree.

Ten of the original eleven houses remain standing on Ingersoll Terrace, so the technology of the process has certainly shown itself to be durable. The original owners are long gone, but newer residents have generally positive opinions of the little houses. According to Mrs. Joseph Fila, who occupied an Edison house for half a century, "The twenty-four inch walls keep out the summer heat and provide good winter insulation." Joe Kearny says that the maintenance cost of his concrete house is "zero." Dolores Chumsky is less enthusiastic; her house is plagued by an elusive leak that defies detection. She adds that any prospects for renovation or improvements are doomed. "Just try and get someone to come and make repairs," she says. "They may come in once, but they never come back." Edison's Concrete Homes

> A monolithic dome is at the very top of what I'd like to build to live in.

The general impression can be that of a stage set for Star Trek. Catalog of Monolithic Dome Home Plans, Torus Something that even a geek may tire of very quickly.

Woz: Simple design. Think about the right way to build something and take a lot of time to get it the best that can be done with the fewest resources used. No waste.

The answer to that is easy. concrete dome.

I actually have experience of Navy GPS units, courtesy of a retired senior chief father in law who built the things for the Navy as a civilian contractor.

Compared to a little pocket sized GPS unit, these things were huge. Their dimensions were actually constrained by one very simple requirement: They had to fit the standard ammo tin as the Navy had a butt load of storage that was designed to fit exactly that. It also had to have standardized power connectors, standardized venting connectors, etc. The extra ruggedization was less of an issue for the Navy compared to say the Army but they still had to handle being tossed on to ships buy guys who didn't really care too much about what it was they were moving, they just had to move it fast. It seemed ridiculous at first, to have such a huge box and pay so much extra for it - until you realize that the Navy would much rather than than have to search for a nice ergonomic unit that was small enough to roll off and get lost when they really needed it plus had turned out to have overheated and had a charger that kept blowing out on ship's electricity.

Illustrating much the same point, his company laid him and the other retired Navy guys off a few months later and replaced them with a bunch of freshly minted Master's degrees as they were "clearly" better. A month later the genius who made that call got fired. Yes, a Master's degree in all of the latest techs is very nice. It's completely useless when you have someone who gets lost on ships, who gets their car stopped every time they drive on base vs. the retired E-8 who gets a salute and waved straight through, and someone who pisses off the guys they have no idea how to speak to and thus gets absolutely no help whenever something needs doing. Sure, they designed great products back in the head office but the moment they delivered what the Navy "should" want rather than what it "did" want, they suddenly found it wasn't such a smart idea.

It's ironic: Anyone who's worked in IT for any length of time has seen that drawing of the swing requested by the marketing team, ordered by sales, designed by engineering, etc. And yet, every time DoD contracts get discussed, the supposedly experienced Slashdot crowd always has someone who says, "Consumer grade is cheaper, smaller and therefore better."

These seem appropriate

http://www.monolithic.com/pres/tree_swing/treeswin g.jpg

http://www.jroller.com/resources/behrangsa/softwar e-project.jpg

Like these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolithic_dome

http://www.monolithic.com/

Apparently it took a demolition team a week to knock one down with high exposives and a wrecking ball :)

Well no, you don't pour concrete over it. First you make a concrete floor, then you put the mold on the ground, lay out some steel bars and then you pour the concrete over it and put another layer of material above that, THEN you inflate the lower layer. Now you got yourselves a concrete igloo all you need to do is to release the air from inside and cut out a door. Rince repeat.

Or you could do something like http://www.monolithic.com/plan_design/mdconst/inde x.html. But I don't know how good it would work on the moon.

"I live in Colorado. I don't give two hoots about houses being designed for earthquake surviveability . . ."

While Colorado is only a zone 1, compared to california's zones 3 and 4, it's still subject to earthquakes, and the construction code requirements that go along with that.

http://www.monolithic.com/plan_design/seismic/pict orial1.html

Columbus, OH had this method in place already. It has been an ongoing project for THE Ohio State University.

The the fact that waste "digestion" produces methane has been known for years.

What got in the way in Columbus was the environmentalists that think that producing our own methane to consume is hazardous to the environment. They stopped the process, and now the solid waste is mixed with mulch and topsoil to create a "Super Fertilizer", which citizens can pay for and use in their landscaping and gardens.

http://www.monolithic.com/gallery/airforms/dystor/ index.html

I guess fecal matter in your veggies is more appealing then producing your own form of unlimited energy to these environmentalists.

Maybe they have reinstated the plant, but it wasn't operational when I lived there 2 years ago.

in fact, the whole room, the floor, let's do away with flat.

Good idea, start here;

http://www.monolithic.com/

Some ideas are flash heater for hot water, or heat exchanger for used shower water to water going into a traditional water heater, or solar water heating of course. There's the usual thermal mass ideas to even out temperature swings, such as this green roof. Concrete has an undeserved reputation of being ugly, and cracking, and trapping moisture. People don't even consider it for residences, but somehow prefabricated concrete is ok for commercial buildings. Some concrete systems are tilt-wall, poured into molds (the most common, as that's the easiest to make look exactly like a conventional home), and the more radical "shot-crete" for domes. Another interesting site is Rocky Mt. Institute. Lot of ideas out there.

A lot of this stuff can be done for less money than conventional construction. I quite agree with the complaints about these contractors and builders who want to turn everything into a horrendous expense for the would-be homebuilder. Atypical = expensive, even when it's not expensive. The vast majority of "green" designs are put out of reach of most people by this sort of mentality. The sort of gadget-packed geek home that appears in, say, Popular Science is ridiculous. All the advantages of a solar water heater can be instantly negated for 3 times the expense by adding pumps, or the payback can be made longer than a century by using expensive metals, etc.

A thing I'd like to not have in a home is the fireplace. I know, I know, most people have a thing for fireplaces. I'd rather not have anything at all, but might settle for "fireplace ready", as in, a place to hook up a chimney. Let the next owners of the house blow $ on a fireplace if they just have to have one. I'd also like to lose the dryer. Have an indoor clothesline that also is a closet. But for those who just have to have a dryer, why in the world is all that hot air always vented to the outside? Be great to have that warm and humid dryer exhaust pumped into the house in winter.

I've also wondered whether rounding off exterior corners would be a good idea. As in, less surface area per interior area = improved thermal properties. Saw quite a few comments declaring a lvoe for the rectangular, so maybe not.

They built a church nearby out of this shotcrete/gunite over foam panel mechanism. It was really amazing to watch it go up. The only problem I'd see would be cracking over time... since the inside and outside layers of concrete are going to have quite different temperateure environments you may have the same kinds of differential cracking problems the Monolithic Dome people reported with the 2-layer concrete domes.

I KNOW that somewhere I've seen someone else constructing buildings with this inflation method

Not quite the same, but it's similar to gunite or shotcrete domes. Check out the Monolithic Dome website.

* Spray expansive foam insulation into your exterior facing walls.

Like this?:
http://www.monolithic.com/construction/foam/index. html

* Hang heavy curtains over your windows. Keep the curtains closed at night.

Why put windows in your house?
http://www.monolithic.com/gallery/homes/young/

* Spray expansive foam insulation into your exterior facing walls.

Like this?:
http://www.monolithic.com/construction/foam/index. html

* Hang heavy curtains over your windows. Keep the curtains closed at night.

Why put windows in your house?
http://www.monolithic.com/gallery/homes/young/

Pyrolytic graphite is the main structural material in these pebbles. It melts at 3000C, more than twice the design temperature of most reactors. It slows neutrons very ably, is strong, inexpensive, and has a long history of use in reactors. Its strength and hardness come from anisotropic crystals of carbon. Pyrolytic graphite is also used, unreinforced, to construct missile reentry nose-cones and large solid rocket nozzles. It is nothing like the powdered mixture of flakes and waxes in pencil leads or lubricants.

http://www.monolithic.com/ has already constructed many inhabitable earthly structures using this technology.

They inflate a large plastic dome, and then they start building - from the inside. They first spray 3 feet of polyurethane, which provides excellent insulation. They use the polyurethane as a support for an inner shell of steel reinforcement bars. Once the bars are in place, they spray 3 feet of concrete.

So, by building from the outside in, they can keep building no matter what the outside temperature is. The plastic dome that gives shape to the structure remains as the outer skin. The building has the strength and thermal capacity of concrete, the incredible insulation of polyurethane, and has the strongest shape known to man.

This is better than geodesic domes. A bit more expensive, though.

For a truly awesome construction alternative, check out http://www.monolithic.com/gallery/homes/ Energy efficeint, structurely superior, and highly affordable. Not to mention one helluva conversation piece!

I didn't notice any exterior pictures of the Monolithic Dome Institute. I've driven by it many times (on I-35E between Waxahachie and Hillsboro, south of Dallas). I've always thought that is looked more like a low-rent trailer park than any kind of upscale community.

Note that there is one home for sale at the site:

http://www.monolithic.com/gallery/homes/italy-spec /index.html

The original listing is dated 1/30/2004. It promises "We will have exterior photos soon". Nine months later, there are still none.

Includes lots and lots of pretty pictures. Check out the galleries of Homes, for example, among others.

Of course, domes are exceptionally well suited for construction underground (link has lots of usefule tips)

Includes lots and lots of pretty pictures. Check out the galleries of Homes, for example, among others.

Of course, domes are exceptionally well suited for construction underground (link has lots of usefule tips)

This reminds me of the concrete domes that you can build for a house. Basic dome form with poured concrete. As the structure is made with concrete, it will last a really long time. The Monolithic Domes are really cool. A simple inflatable form holds the concrete: You pour and BAM! 48 hours later you have a completed structure!

But that's precisely why home insulation, no matter how much you put in it, is essentially worthless.

Here's an article to shed some light on that.

To summarize, insulation can be completely defeated if the building isn't airtight.

It's sad that so many people are not homeless. It looks like a really beautiful place to live too. If they survive this they should treat this as an opportunity to do it right the next time. The island should seriously consider using Monolithic concrete dome structures. Due to their shape they are not as effected by hurricanes and clyclones and have a good track record of surviving them. They are also cheap, and well insulated.

OHOH I really don't know the availiblity of concrete in Niue. It may be prohibitive to build these structures if the concrete has to be imported.

Actually, all you need is monolithic.com. Can't believe I've refered to that site twice in recent comments, though ;)

timothy

"It's like if a company wanted to tear down a bunch of beatiful old stone buildings (which by and large would be far too expensive to build today) to get the stone, and justified it by saying they'd build some tacky prefabs to replace them. Well, great, there's still a roof to protect you from the rain, but wouldn't you feel a bit cheated?"

Yes.

It's fairly disingenuous (but understandable, predictable, etc) for Weyerhaeuser to act as if "trees is trees" but you're right, there is a difference between a tree farm and a nice old forest.

Even people who are not opposed to large-scale logging (like home builders or potential builders who don't want to double their lumber costs and have not seen the light that wood is not the only material with which to build a house) can agree that logging is even at best beautiful in the cauldron-of-creation way rather than the sculpture-of-beautiful-woman way.

Still, they plant 'em :)

timothy