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Instant Buildings - Just Add Water
lawrencekhoo writes "Wired has an article about the newly invented
Building in a Bag. The structure is made from cement impregnated fabic, that is sealed in an easily transportable plastic bag. You literally just add water, and then inflate. Twelve hours later, you have a ready to use building. Possible uses include shelter for disaster areas, and instant field hospitals."
If we're just talking about instant structures for specific needs, why not fiberglass? 3M makes a casting material (as in, for setting broken bones) that is fiberglass with a resin that is activated with water and sets very rapidly. Why not use something just like that? You can then spray it with an epoxy to make it watertight. It wouldn't be as rigid as a concrete structure, and you would have to anchor it somehow, but it would also be a whole hell of a lot lighter and easier to customize (by cutting holes in it with any kind of saw before you sprayed epoxy on it.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
While the product is innovative and interesting, the comparison (cost-wise) with other "portable" structures is not correct. This looks to be (from the article) a non-portable semi-permanent structure.
BP http://www.card-central.com
Why not dispense with the concrete and just make it inflatable? I doubt the concrete will make it all that much more permanent of a shelter than it would otherwise be. Besides, if it's good enough for space, it's good enough as a temporary shelter. Check out the inflatable space habitats
How much do you reckon the instant building would cost if it was manufactured in China?
I am thinking it would be a great way to help poor people in Third World countries have a cheap roof over their heads that is actually high quality. I can imagine a slum in Mumbai filled with thousands of these instant buildings. What are the economics and advantages of an instant building as replacement for flimsy shelters in slums across the world?
"agencies" maybe, but the military already has a way to erect shelters quickly: lots and lots of man power. Ever watched how quickly soldiers setup and take down a camp?
How we know is more important than what we know.
Sorry, but I can't help myself...
The English language has some rules about the correct placement of commas in a sentence. It's not a case of "Instant grammar just, add commas!!!1"
May I take this opportunity to recommend Lynne Truss's "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" to the author of the above summary?
Oh, and the word you were looking for was F-A-B-R-I-C, fabric; not fabic. Fabic sounds like an eastern-european football player.
</rant>
I guess today is a passable day to die.
I would hardly consider '12 hours' to be 'instant.'
It's a cylinder, come on everyone knows it comes with a giant who picks it up for you and when you're inside he puts it back down!!!! :-) Geez silly questions!!!
People will use them after the aid agencies leave. Probably not for themselves, mind you, but they'll find *some* use.
I've seen several pictures of those mass-built concrete houses that various aid agencies have built in earthquake-hit parts of Iran to provide shelter and make it so that the locals won't get killed in the next quake. Nobody was living in any of them - instead, they used them to hold their livestock. Apparently they were a lot more uncomfortable to live in than traditional housing in the climate (in addition to being an eyesore).
"Here's a fun fact: the moon has turned to blood!" -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
It's a shell that's strong in compression. Pile earth on it, and you've got your sound and thermal insulation. The one issue I can see is the small size; 172 square feet isn't much. You'd need a lot of them for any kind of refugee situation, and at $2100 each (about $12/square foot) it's probably as expensive as local housing in most of the world if not more so.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Why oh why does slashdot not have a "Didn't read the article -1" moderation option?
There are whole towns in Michoacan that are built of not much more than sticks. They're not much for privacy, but the breeze goes right through (a must for life in that area). If a Chubasco comes through, you just pick the sticks up, jam them back into the dirt, slap the tin siding back up as your roof, and you've rebuilt your house in a day.
The concrete dwellings down there don't fare nearly as well.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
Unfortunately, there's this stigma of "prefab housing" being small, low-quality, one-design "housing for the poor".
It all depends on the finishing contractor. Modular housing is built to the same standards as regular housing, but if you have a crappy contractor come in to do the finish work, you might as well have bought a trailer. Just like regular construction, you have to really stay on top of the process (e.g., visit the site, double check things after important milestones, etc.)
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
There is also the issue of wind. I'm sure concrete structures don't blow away as easily, and many disaster areas are going to have lots of wind and water. Plus, concrete doesn't need to dry to set. Apparently it sets up quite nicely underwater.
My father has been building unique houses for about thirty years. One was an earth-covered house ("underground" is a bit misleading, but that's what I would normally call it) and he's been looking into a very modular building material called 3-D Panel which is basically styrofoam between wire meshes. After you assemble the building, using rebar or something to connect wire meshes together, you spray it with shotcrete, and you're done. I mean, if we're allowed to have a spraying apparatus, why not? The specs for this panel system are impressive. They say the insulating value is R-18 to R-33--better than the new homes they throw up these days in my neighborhood.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
Problem with the Binishell is that it looks like a half-buried helmet. I can imagine a brigade of stormtroopers standing around it, singing "Share and Enjoy".
The Domtec construction isn't all that bad, but it can't be done with just a fire hose. If you're hundreds or thousands of miles from the nearest contractor, you need something that will do that work for you.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Well, it so happens I had reason to read the standards used by humanitarian organizations some months ago for a project I had. You generally site your camp near a water supply. The problem is decontaminating the water so it can be used to drink and wash with. If the water source isn't contaminated to start with, ifyou put a refugee camp next to it, it will be.
Using contaminated water in a concrete structure is probably not going to be a problem, because you aren't going to ingest it. Drinking even very slightly contaminated water is a huge health risk.
In any case, I can't see the humanitarians going for something heavy,expensive and inflexible like this. It might be a better permanent structure than a tent, but it isn't going to be good as a regular structure. In a pinch, they do temporary repairs to existing damaged structure. These guys pretty much use plastic sheeting for everything.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Bill Moss was one of the founders of Moss tents and the inventor of the modern dome tent. I met him about ten years ago through a guy I worked with.
Anyhow, he showed me this invention he had, it looked like one of those tiny bicycling or backpacking tents, but it was made of cleverly prestressed and folded cardboard. Basically it folded flat, then instantly popped up into a small shelter. It bulged in the middle and had a small hole in one end you crawled through. It wouldn't be much of the shelter, but it could make the difference between freezing to death and surviving. He had designed it to address the problem of homeless people dying of hypothermia on cold nights in the city. You could pile hundreds of them in the back of pickup, and since they were basically cleverly designed cardboard boxes it would cost next to nothing.
In any case, I don't think it ever went into production, possibly becasue it may not have made enough of a difference to be worthwhile. But it was an interesting idea, cleverly executed.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The problems with prefab housing are twofold, first and most importantly is that anything which is light enough to allow for economical transport of economically buildable subsections is going to be chinsy compared to a real timber and 3/4" plywood plus 3/4" hardwood floors. The second problem is that preparing the site and combining the pieces takes almost as much labor as rough framing an equivilant structure, and all of the labor besides the site prep and rough framing is done by skilled laborers that will charge about the same for their work whether it is done onsite or as part of assembling prefab blocks.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
www.yurtworks.com - an excellent, cheap, prefabbed house (cedar siding, no less)
stay frosty and alert
Better yet, let's just throw thousands of these bags in the ocean and create an underwater city instantaneously!
Excess water would probably yield very poor quality concrete and ocean currents would probably wash the concrete away before it set. Also, the baloons would need to be well anchored or they would float to the surface.
Another technique for this (although not as quick) is to just deploy a metal mesh (think window screen size). Then you apply electricity to the mesh and the minerals in sea water acrete onto the structure. This technique was described in article in the Mother Earth News 25 years ago although it apparently wasn't pursued enough. More recently, this technique has been used to restore coral reefs and one group plans to use it to create an underwater habitat .
There is some research at Standford and a Wikipedia entry . Apparently, there is some confusion about how much energy is needed to produce such structures and a structure similar in size to the inflatable one would probably use around $500 worth of electricty.
My dad designed the house based on one of their plans, and every time hed change something hed note it and fax everything to the builder....and it took him 3 months to get them to note all his changes...and some of them didnt even make it to the final build. They were very helpful in *fixing* the problems, but when you're building a house like this, you should get it right the *first* time, not the second. For the record he bought his from Professional Building Systems.
My aunt's friend built one, and the kitchen wasn't level on any counter, doorways were misaligned, the roof leaked (and *not* in places where the finishing crew was working on it like at joints, but in the middle of the roof) and some of the electrical outlets weren't even well secured as they should be. I do not know the name of the company that made his home.
Builder is just as important as the finishing crew. If you're building a modular home, work with a company nearby that has done homes in your area that you can check out yourself, or talk with the owners about.
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
From this article:
Janet Ginsberg: how many camps and average size? How long do they last?
Larry Thompson: 10,000 people is an average size. Some have up to 600,000 people. Some camps exist for around 15-20 years. In Palestine some have been there 40-50 years. We tend to put people in camps and forget about them. In Kosovo--UNHCR had plans on orderly return--the refugees all went home in a number of days. The thought is that many Afghans will go home this spring. But, unless there are demonstrated economic incentives to go home, they won't leave.
No. I'm sorry, but I don't think "fabric drenched in cement" gives you reinforced concrete - it gives you concrete, that happens to have fabric inside to save the setup crew from fussing around shaping it.
e d+concrete
The intention of reinforced concrete is that the tensile strength / structure of the piece is actually reinforced by something - http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A+reinforc
"Concrete that is strengthened by the insertion of rods of steel, wire mesh or strands of glass reinforced plastic or similar materials."
I agree that you've got more than concrete there, and it would stand up to a beating better than just concrete, but I question using the term "reinforced concrete". Damned generic term that has a specific meaning - my complaint is really more that the term is too loaded I suppose. Oh well.
cyn, free software and *nix operating systems enthusiast.
Why tear down what is worth keeping, especially when replacement buildings will take time to construct. :)
Now, to tents, in which I have a couple of years deployment time.
Tents get moldy.
Tents come apart.
Few tents have aerodynamic shapes, thus wind can hurt them.
Tents burn and melt.
Tents usually do not have efficient interior spaces.
Large tents are not viable storm shelters.
Military tents are expensive. Concrete is not.
Concrete attenuates shrapnel better than most fabric, and Kevlar tents would be too expensive to deploy in quantity.