Space-Age Houses

An anonymous reader writes "The dream of building the Jetson's Skypad Apartment may come to true because technology designed for space could become the basis of the new German Antarctic station. The same ultra-light composites that ESA uses onboard its spacecraft for antennas and solar panels, will be used to make a self-supporting lightweight shell-like structure able to withstand severe earthquakes. This approach is in sharp contrast to many contemporary design solutions that use ever more steel and concrete..."

Comments

Sounds perfect for Florida...

[BerntB]

Should be perfect for Florida and other places with "high winds", using ultra-light composites... :-)

Re:Sounds perfect for Florida...

[Guppy06]

"As the air passes over it, the structure is pressed down rather than tipping."

Tipping isn't the main problem. The problem is when one or two windows are broken, allowing airflow through the house. Once that happens, you start to generate lift, which rips roofs off of houses. This is why you're supposed to shutter your windows in a hurricane.

And as for "How often do you see 220 km/h winds?" angle, Hurricane Charley hit Florida with sustained winds over 230 km/h, with recorded gusts over 290 km/h on land. Don't forget that hurricanes are categorized by sustained windspeed; even weaker storms are capable of gusting over 220 km/h for brief periods.

Back when I was evacuating from Floyd, I promised myself that if I'm ever able to have my own home built it will be out of concrete and steel. Even after seeing this I still feel that way.

Re:Sounds perfect for Florida...

[AKAImBatman]

Tipping isn't the main problem. The problem is when one or two windows are broken, allowing airflow through the house. Once that happens, you start to generate lift, which rips roofs off of houses. This is why you're supposed to shutter your windows in a hurricane.

While this is true, you need to keep in mind that shaping the windows as part of a sphere makes them far stronger than those on a regular house. In addition, the aerodynamic shape allows airflow to pass over the structure instead of bearing the full brunt of the force.

And as for "How often do you see 220 km/h winds?" angle, Hurricane Charley hit Florida with sustained winds over 230 km/h, with recorded gusts over 290 km/h on land. Don't forget that hurricanes are categorized by sustained windspeed; even weaker storms are capable of gusting over 220 km/h for brief periods.

I didn't say anything about "how often do you see 220 kph winds". Actually, I thought the structure looked slightly underwhelming based on their specs. A 7 on the Richter scale may *seem* high, but it wouldn't survive 10 seconds in a major California quake.

Back when I was evacuating from Floyd, I promised myself that if I'm ever able to have my own home built it will be out of concrete and steel. Even after seeing this I still feel that way.

The design seems sound. It strikes me that the model they're building is designed to be slightly weaker because of where it will be used. I see very little reason why the structure couldn't be reinforced with more materials.

Re:Sounds perfect for Florida...

[LWATCDR]

"these are probably more resistant than mobile homes"
Oh that is a good baseline! Not.

Actually the safty of the those buildings in Florida would have more to do with how well they are tied to a good foundation. 3 meters of flooding is a lot of water. There are two problems with them for normal houses.
1. Cost Carbon fiber is expensive compaired to concret block and wood trusses. Not to mention no one knows how well they will stand up to UV for the long term. Houses should last for at least 100 years.
2. Looks. Good greif think of what a sub divsion of those things would look like! It would be like war of the worlds.

Re:Sounds perfect for Florida...

[Rei]

I agree that they'd probably handle storms quite well. And I agree about the cost issue. However, as for "length of lifespan", you don't get much less durable than wood and concrete. I'd be incredibly surprised if carbon fiber was somehow less durable. Not to mention that this is carbon fiber reinforced *plastic* - plastics have notoriously long lifespans. You'd probably have more of a concern with making the house recyclable so that it need not last forever as it might in normal circumstances.

I think "Looks" is the number one problem. People have been predicting plastic houses for ages; few have touched them. People feel comfortable in a shelter that "breathes", that feels "solid" and "heavy", etc. It just makes you feem more comfortable. Even people who opt for "nontraditional" houses (such as dome houses, like my aunt owns) have them built out of conventional materials. Plastic in general feels a bit too alien to live in; perhaps the carbon fiber reinforced plastic isn't as bad - I don't know.

Not to mention, imagine how much static electricty you'd build up scuffing along the floor/walls... ;)

Re:Sounds perfect for Florida...

[IvoryRing]

You are right, because old wood tools and concrete structures are impossible to find.

The main problem with most plastics is that they have no part in the natural recycling process. That doesn't mean they are structurally intact for ages. Just take a peek at an old car with a cracked plastic dashboard if you think that all plastic is always long lived. Mind you, when you get specific, there are plastics that have a long life - but in and of itself, "as used in construction, plastic is more durable than wood or concrete" is not an open and shut case.

By the way, I want to watch you shuffle on the walls!

Re:Sounds perfect for Florida...

[Uggy]

What kind of poor concrete house do you live in that can only withstand a category 3-4? When Georges passed over Puerto Rico in 1998, we didn't lose a single concrete house. Not a one (well except for mud slides in mountainous regions, but there's no helping that).

The winds that hit my house were 140+ and in other areas in a direct path with the eye got even worse. San Juan metro area looked like Hiroshima afterwards. I never realized how many buildings there were with all the trees gone. But we don't have mobile homes where, and very little wood construction. Everything is concrete boxes.

Don't know what sort of building codes you have over there, but I'd pit my house against a category 5. Not like I'd like it, but I think we could handle it.

I guess since we live on an island, there's no place to evacuate to, so we've got build our houses tough.

Re:Sounds perfect for Florida...

[LWATCDR]

"Not to mention that this is carbon fiber reinforced *plastic* - plastics have notoriously long lifespans"
In landfills they do. If you live anywhere in the south take a piece of plastic and set it outside in the sun for several months. A lot of them will get brittle and discolor.

As making a carbon-fiber house recycleable... Reuseable is better than recycleable. A house is a house is a house. You need walls, a roof, windows, and doors. Someone pointed out that dry wall and plywood only last so long. Well plywood can last for a good long time. OSB is another story. As for dry wall. That is one of the the things you can replace when updating a house.
Don't get me wrong I live in FL and part of me would like a poured concret home with welded steel roof trusses! A welded steel plate roof would be nice as well but probably overkill. Not to mention the problem with rust.

You would not really need to worry about static from the walls if they are carbon fiber. You can make it conductive so you could make the house one big Fariday cage if you really wanted to :)

Carbon fiber for home construction is interesting but not likely to happen anytime soon. Heck Buckmeinster Fuller built a house out of AL in the 40s and no one rushed to buy them :(

What's cooler?

[bobhagopian]

"The house is designed to be autonomous. It uses energy-efficient solar power as well as advanced systems for recycling and cleaning water. Another idea, now on the drawing board, is to include a system to remove pathogenic particles in the sub-micron range from the air."

I think this is the coolest part about the house, not the ultra-light composites. Think about never having to pay an utility bill again! Sure, you can do that for just about any house, but one that's built with self-sufficiency in mind is nice.

Re:What's cooler?

[Woody77]

California and PG&E have programs for net-0 houses. Houses which pull from the grid at night/in the winter, and feed back into the grid during the day.

It helps the utilities by lowering their production costs, and it helps the home-owners by decreasing their usage.

The deal is that if you produce as much in a month as you consume, you pay nothing for service. Over the year, this is very unlikely, due to cloudy days and wintertime lack of sun.

Houses with electro-mechanical meters will literally spin backwards and production negates consumption.

The other big benefit is that hot summer days, the days with the most solar power generation capability are also the days of the highest use due to air conditioning loads.

Good idea

[macshune]

These houses totally look cool and the design is awesome, but they use exotic materials that are probably only produced in huge quantities when large institutions have the money to get someone to cook up a batch. Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic (more commonly, just Carbon Fiber)? Can't buy that at Home Depot, last time I checked:)

It's a great exercise and it's exciting to the see the future take shape (literally!), but until regular folks can buy up some of this stuff to build homes out of, that's all it's gonna be.

snow

[spectrokid]

They say they want to use it in Antartica. As far as I know, a fresh layer of snow falls each year so that every building eventually gets snowed under. This is solved now by making 1 storage buildings which once a year can be moved on top of the new snow. How the hell will they be able to dig out these big leggs and move such a big structure? Anybody any experience with this?

Sounds familiar

[nytes]

Of course, you could also jump into your time machine and visit the house of the future at Disneyland, circa 1957.

It was made so well that the wrecking ball just bounced off of it when they tried to demolish it. They had to bring in a crew with saws.

no stairs?

[ColonBlow]

It's going to be tough moving in with just a ladder. How am I supposed to get my waterbed up there?

It would be cool to park under your house though. Then you can just slide down a pole to your car every morning, batman style.

Deja vu

[ptomblin]

It looks so much like a Buckminister Fuller Dymaxion House that it's scary. Not the one that's in the Henry Ford Museum, but a different design that suspended the whole structure from a central pole. It was also designed to be as self-sufficient as possible, and designed from light-weight materials so it could be air-lifted into place.

Re:Deja vu

[shis-ka-bob]

Yup, I was thinking that too. I never really understood why Bucky was so concerned about the weight of a house. For compressive loads, a good cheap concrete seems quite reasonable. If you are talking about an aircraft, then cost is a function of weight. But I don't buy that arguement for a house. You can already drive a mobile home to a lot and install it an afternoon, but mobile homes are not considered 'premium' because of their mobility. Can any Slashdotter explain why lightweight is an asset in a house?

I can understand the 'money as function of weight' argument for an Antartic station that is air lifted, but that is rather exceptional. I'm wanting to understand why Bucky's design never took off (pun intented.)

Re:Deja vu

[BelugaParty]

As the other poster pointed out, Buck was concerned with air dropping, if not the entire structure, then the materials. Also, one of his more wild eyed theories was to have geodesic spheres and domes held up by poles, like veggies on a skewer (or a sky city). He felt such vertical construction would limit the suburban sprawl of the time and still allow each family to have their own 'house'.

His designs never really 'took off' because they required a lot of change in habits and expectations from the consumer eg: his houses included water misters instead of water faucets and showers; and his target market was, in his own mind, people who need very basic shelter and very basic sanitary utilities, so he paid little attention to decor or style of the time. His designs also did not allow for easy expansion or remodeling.

I visited a geodesic dome, built on the same lightweight principles as the dymaxion house, and found it to be very elegant in design. From the living room and kitchen at the bottom floor, there was a beautiful spiral staircase that went to the top (about 4 stories up). The various rooms of the house were vertically staggerred along the walls, with the master bedroom overlooking it all. When you looked down from here, it was like being in cloud city or something. Three things to note though: its not a good place for privacy, it could get noisy, and the temperature at the top was considerably warmer than at the bottom. Still, I like some of his designs, but they are really for the spartan/stoic among us.

The Problem With Housing Innovation in the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with housing innovation in the USA is not a lack of ideas for cheaper and better ways of doing things, it is local and municipal building codes and the multitude of construction trade unions that support their enforcement and expansion. In many areas, housing construction work will -not- get the building inspector's apporval unless he is certain that it was done by union laborers, and they are not interested in anything [pre-fab] that drastically cuts down on their earnings.

Re:Antartic...Space?

[IvoryRing]

NASA developed Tang? That's funny, I thought General Foods developed Tang in 1957 (original USPTO trademark registration #0670697, filed Oct 16, 1957, renewal [current?] #1974439), and NASA was signed into law in 1958.

Re:Space Age Refrigerator

[Rei]

You've been inside a dome house before, haven't you?

My aunt has one :) It's a really pretty structure, very structurally sound, a beautiful view through the geodesic windows, etc.... and *most* rooms are pretty normal shaped. But, most notably, the outer rooms on the second floor have really weird shaped sloping ceilings, making the room taper off very notably.