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."

Comments

One drawback...

[bpuli]

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.

why the concrete?

[qwasty]

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

Spelling and grammar troll

[WillerZ]

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>

What's not to like? (The cost?)

[Tau Zero]

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.

Re:What's not to like? (The cost?)

[salec]

This is just a proof of principle. Later on, HMV garage probably will be designed.

Building sterility shouldn't be a problem. If you deliver it with precompressed gas in a bottle, no need to start a compressor either. Once again, armies will love that - silent construction.

I wonder if it could be placed directly underground thru narrow shaft (or, underwater, if attached to heavy anchoring weight?) and expand by supplying enaugh pressure from the surface? You get instant underground/underwater bases (i.e. on other planets as well)

Other modified uses for this technology I can think of:

• Military (these applications may pose certain preferences in choosing the right fabric - say, kevlar(R)?):
  • fast hard-hull boat manufacturing as needed (army forced river crossing)
  • light armour for trucks, for armored personel carrier improvisation.
  • additional, expendable, "skirt" light armour (well, deflector for cumulative shells) for tanks
• Civil (disaster relief):
  • fast manufacturing of wide crossection, low pressure pipeline (i.e. sewer system)
  • fast floodwalls manufacturing

Re:Time to advance.

[afidel]

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.