Slashdot Mirror
Top Gadget of 2006 — The HurriQuake Nail
eldavojohn writes "Popular Science is naming its Best of What's New of 2006 and the one at the top doesn't have much to do with circuitry or computers. Instead, it's a nail. Not your average nail though, the HurriQuake nail [flash] spent six years in development." From the article: "As the Bostitch team tweaked the head-to-shank ratio, Sutt and metallurgist Tom Stall worked on optimizing high-carbon alloys, trying to find the highest-strength trade-off between stiffness and pliability — the key to preventing snapped nails. 'Meanwhile,' Sutt says, 'we were focusing on how to keep the nail from pulling out.' The team machined a series of barbed rings that extend up the nail's shaft from its point, experimenting with the size and placement of the barbs. 'You want the rings to have maximum holding power,' he says, 'but if they go up too high, it creates a more brittle shank that shears more easily.'"
The issue is not that the structures can't handle the winds. It is that the construction codes are not being followed by the builders. Construction is so poor because of cost-cutting by contractors and/or unskilled labor and cutting corners. This was true with Andrew (Miami) and continues to be true. If contractors built to the code and inspectors held them to it, alot of the damage seen would not occur. I have a house that was only 5 miles from the eye of Hurricane Charlie (140+ mph winds) and suffered minimal damage (a few pieces of soffet blown off, no shingles or other damage). But ... we watched the contractors and ensured that they did everything by the book. Neighbors saw their (oftern much more expensive) homes literally blown to the ground. Older structures (60's/70's) also saw little damage.
... just make sure the builders build to the code. Adding a better nail won't cure sloppy cost-cutting construction.
So
I don't think any house is built to standard these days. If the standard says 3 nails per stud, you're lucky to get two nails per. The resulting house is so flimsy that you can literally grab a house by the corner post after the framing in done and wobble the entire structure back and forth. Sometimes even after the sheathing in put on. Sheathing isn't supposed to be the main factor in structural stability, it's there for insulation. Housing inspectors aren't a help here. They're incredibily corrupt.
IIRC, a lot of the damage from hurricanes was to houses not built to existing code. So unless they use these nails on the builders themselves, I don't think they'll do that much good.
They are marketing these nails as superior fasteners that will withstand a high wind environment. However, they are only fasteners, and the rest of the structure is still just as vulnerable to threats such as fire, water, termites, and so forth. For a truly robust, energy efficient, and long-lasting structure, the obvious solution is concrete.
Insulating Concrete Forms are basically like Legos made out of an insulating foam. You stack them together, insert rebar, and fill with concrete. The cost is estimated at 5% more than standard wood frame houses, and are superior in every way.
As the earth warms, storms will continue to become stronger and stronger. "An Inconvenient Truth" goes into more detail, and if you haven't seen it, you really should. In any case, it is about time that we started building more durable structures.
I am not trying to annoy anyone here with this comment, just sharing an opinion. A house made of wood feels somehow un-solid (and unsafe, given the strictly positive probability of a fire that is always present). Plus, immediately after arriving in Canada (my first encounter with N. America), I was struck by the fact that all houses I visited (I was looking for a room to rent in Victoria, BC, Canada, and visited quite a few houses in my first several days there) had a strong, pungent, "chemical" smell. First I thought it has to be some commonly used cleaning substance. Later I decided that it has to be some chemicals that the wood had been treated with, probably to repel wood-eating insects or to prevent the wood from decaying. Interestingly, after having lived there for months I stopped feeling the smell -- but going back to my homeland for a vacation and then back to Canada, I would be struck by the peculiar smell again.
I realise wooden houses are cheaper and faster to build, but, IMHO, they are a poor substitute for brick-and-concrete ones.
Normal screws the size of nails tend to fail in shear at much lower stress. This is not bullshit.
Larger screws made out of stronger alloys don't, but are typically too big to usefully stick a 2x4 to another 2x4, or hold a sheet of plywood into a 2x4 with typical installation accuracy. And require a pre-drilled hole, which at least doubles the time to install. These screws are not useful for typical building construction tasks. Cracking the wood all to hell installing oversize nails or screws incorrectly is far from the best solution.
Wood is a hard material to join really well. You can do all sorts of half-ass methods and get two pieces of wood to stick together adequately, but doing a really good job is a lot harder. Because it's got grain and fiber, you need a lot of bearing surface to avoid the connector pulling out. Screws do great at that, but have less shear resistance, and lower cost screws are too brittle and crack right off in shear (and sometimes in tension). Nails are great at shear and are made out of alloys that rarely crack, but can pull right out. Boat nails, ring nails, other stuff is out there, but this seems to be a pretty big advance in balancing the shear and tension capabilities, ease of installation, etc.
For absolute optimal strength, pre-drilled carefully sized screws work pretty well. This nail should be about as strong, but about 10% the effort to install, and probably a tenth the cost for the fastener.
There was a time that it was safe to assume that people at least had built a treehouse or some such and had a clue about basic woodworking techniques. Apparently that time is now past.