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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."
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.
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.
Well, the basic form of disposal is probably close to what we do with waste concrete pilings, at the prestressed concrete company where I work. We pile them on the ground near the water, and let them act as landfill that extends our land. No joke. It's not too bad -- as the concrete very slowly decays due to the freeze-thaw cycle, it pretty much doesn't pollute anything. Everything there is also found in natural rock that comes into the ocean with rivers.
However, if that's not good enough for you, you can do as we do with our waste wet concrete. Expose it to acid (muratic acid, for example), and it will break down faster.
But for me?
I rather suspect that this stuff would be good for burying in the ground, covering with dirt, and planting grapevines over it.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
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
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.