Japan Creates Earthquake-Proof Levitating House System

An anonymous reader writes "Japanese company Air Danshin Systems Inc. has developed an innovative system that levitates houses in the in the event of an earthquake to protect them from structural damage. When an earthquake hits, a sensor responds within one second by activating a compressor, which forces an incredible amount of air under the home, pushing the structure up and apart from its foundation. The air pressure can keep the home levitating up to 3cm from the shaking foundation below. In the wake of last year's Fukushima disaster the company is set to install the levitation system in 88 houses across Japan."

Comments

Up

[Anonymous Coward]

*Balloons*

Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[Anonymous Coward]

eom.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[Penguinisto]

Depends... housing ain't cheap in Japan, and getting a new one may be hellishly expensive when compared to keeping your old one from coming apart.

Also, what's easier, saving the house (and everything in it), or rebuilding from scratch? It's not just the cost of the house you have to keep in mind, but the cost of all the stuff in it, and the expense + time spent living out of a hotel room (or with relatives) until your house gets rebuilt.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[Intropy]

And with the added benefit of not being crushed to death by rubble in the process!

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[siddesu]

Housing ain't cheap, but most of the price goes into the land, and houses are viewed as somewhat disposable, most people expect a house to last about the lifetime of a generation. There are some companies that run commercials about a "100 year houses", implying this is a long-life structure, so that should tell you what the general expectations are.

Also, I don't believe the "being crushed" argument will be really critical, except in marketing. Most people seem to die from the fires that inevitably follow the earthquakes, not under the collapsed structures.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[hawguy]

Housing ain't cheap, but most of the price goes into the land, and houses are viewed as somewhat disposable, most people expect a house to last about the lifetime of a generation. There are some companies that run commercials about a "100 year houses", implying this is a long-life structure, so that should tell you what the general expectations are.

Also, I don't believe the "being crushed" argument will be really critical, except in marketing. Most people seem to die from the fires that inevitably follow the earthquakes, not under the collapsed structures.

I'm living in a house that's nearly 100 years old now, and I'm pretty sure the landlord doesn't plan on tearing it down and rebuilding it any time soon. And this house has been through a number of San Francisco earthquakes since it was built in 1917.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[Anonymous Coward]

I would think that a weeble house would fare better-and be more entertaining.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[mrchaotica]

But on the other hand, houses in San Francisco don't tend to substitute shoji screens for walls.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[adawangping]

From visions of far-flung rainforests to travel back in time to the chanel wallets cheap Roaring Twenties, Milan Fashion Week has been all about escapism –offering a welcome respite from a mood of economic gloom in Italy.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[EdIII]

An awful lot of people died from being crushed to death in collapsed freeways in San Francisco in the large earth quake in the late 80's. Not so much from fires if I recall correctly.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[zedrdave]

> housing ain't cheap in Japan

Housing is very cheap in Japan (cheaply bought and cheaply built).

Land is expensive. Not housing.

The point here is not really to save the house, but saving the people inside.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[Anonymous Coward]

most people expect a house to last about the lifetime of a generation

You're building them wrong. Most people here expect their house to survive hundreds of years.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[adawangping]

Gucci and Ferretti kicked off the autumn-winter 2012 collections attended by the elite of the fashion world. Musketeers and seductive water nymphs sashayed coach outlet online down the catwalk at the Gucci show, which opened with a stunning array of velvet capes and see-through dresses.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[azalin]

But on the other hand, houses in San Francisco don't tend to substitute shoji screens for walls.

On the other hand being crushed by a paper wall is far less likely than by one made of bricks.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[psnyder]

It's the 21st century here in Japan. Any shoji screens still in houses are usually decorative or a just to give a little visual privacy.
We use real walls.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[chill]

Considering Japan was the nation that was pioneering 100+ year mortgages back in the 90s, I don't think those people are expecting a house to last only about the lifetime of a generation.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[The_Great_Outdoors]

The kids will have oh so much more fun with this... Picture this: A kid casually strolls up to your house, kicks a sensor a few times, and runs like h*ll while your house floats up off of it's foundation, and you wonder where the earthquake is.. That is pure childish fun there.. On a more serious note: The rigidity that this house will have to have in order to not break apart while floating, shaking with a real earthquake, and setting down, will make it very heavy and expensive to build. It is not a likely idea for the masses. I would also like to know what happens when the power line feeding such a generator fails, or are you also expected to buy a monster sized generator of your own, and possibly a battery bank, just in case the generator fails to start?

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[AmiMoJo]

Most people seem to die from the fires that inevitably follow the earthquakes, not under the collapsed structures.

This. I was in Tokyo when the earthquake hit and nothing collapsed. Some loose tiles and a lot of small items fell over, over there were no buildings falling down, ceilings caving in, vending machines tipping over anything like that. Japan is built to be earthquake-proof because anything that isn't won't last long. They must average a magnitude 5+ a month, and when it happens the trains stop for a few minutes and most people barely react.

Floating houses are not a new idea in Japan. Years back someone developed a system where the house was buoyant and would float if the area was flooded. It had foundations that could slide up and down (metal runners) so it wouldn't just drift away.

I'm not entirely sure what the point of this system is. Saving ancient historic buildings perhaps?

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[quenda]

We use real walls.

Not according to wikipedia, which says timber frames are popular.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[Anonymous Coward]

We use real walls.

Not according to wikipedia, which says timber frames are popular.

At least in the West, "timber frame" means that the load bearing structures are wooden beams connected by joinery. This is supposedly a much stronger structure than the stud-truss that supports most residential housing. The walls inside are still made of studs and drywall or studs, lath and plaster. Sometimes, "wood frame" is used to distinguish from "steel frame," meaning that the studs that hold up the drywall are made of wood rather than steel. In any case "timber frame" in no way connotes paper walls, let alone fusuma.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[neonKow]

That has nothing to do with structures. You're correcting something he didn't say, and that honestly doesn't have much to do with whether or not one should bother levitating the house.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[Ogive17]

How else would you frame up a house if not using timber?

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[Ogive17]

I would agree, my wife's uncle's house is about a decade old. From the inside, it's basically indistinguishable from what you'd find in a new American home, except for the tatami flooring in a few rooms.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[nedlohs]

Steel isn't unheard of.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[The Grim Reefer]

It's the 21st century here in Japan. Any shoji screens still in houses are usually decorative or a just to give a little visual privacy. We use real walls.We use real walls.

Not according to wikipedia, which says timber frames are popular.

Only on /. would someone, in a different country, try to use Wikipedia to disagree with the reality of someone who actually lives in the country in question. Also, "timber frame" does not mean what you apparently think it does. The majority of homes in the US (and many other countries) are also timber frame.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[neonKow]

From TFA:

As fantastical as a home levitation system may seem, Air Danshin claims that the technology is not only effective, but also 1/3 cheaper than many other earthquake-proofing systems out there – and it requires little maintenance.

And this seems like it would be more independent of the type of building you have, allowing you to have, say, brick buildings that are still earthquake safe. Or jenga building.s

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[quenda]

How else would you frame up a house if not using timber?

Around here "real walls" are clay brick. Preferably double-brick with cavity between. So I took "real wall" to mean a solid wall.
Stone or concrete are acceptable alternatives, but more expensive.

I take it houses are made of wood-frame where you live?

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[JoeMerchant]

And, when you need it most (after a major disaster) construction materials and labor are at a high premium, as are habitable structures.

Avoiding destruction in a wide scale disaster is a very high value-add.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[quenda]

I need to use more smileys :-( . Just sayin', walls built of sticks or straw are not real walls as the GGP claims.
  Japanese houses, like American houses, are not built to last. But I understand that Japanese and Californians have good reason not to build solid walls.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[goofy183]

Most of the places I've been to in the US use wood frames for houses with maybe a few steel support beams for long open spans

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[neonKow]

1. Even if you needed individual seismographs on each house, there's no reason it needs to be exposed or even outdoors.
2. The point is that the house WON'T be shaking. How would you shake a floating house without touching it?
3. Based on how wind tunnels work, it's probably a better idea to just store the compressed air somewhere than to try to suddenly generate that much power. I can't imagine it would be cost effective to have that powerful a pump sitting around that it could work without an air reservoir.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[JobyOne]

You're unfortunately right about the expected lifespan of houses.

It doesn't have to be that way, though. Right now I'm renting a house that's 87 years old, and it would be nicer than any modern house if the landlord gave a crap. It's still structurally sound, the exterior is beautifully designed (if in need of a little TLC), and despite its exceedingly odd by modern standards floor plan, it's far more usable for actually living like a human being than most modern houses. Also, the fact that it's relatively small for the neighborhood means that we've got a much bigger yard for our dogs and garden than most of the rest of our street.

And this house is just a timber-frame with lathe and plaster on the inside and wood siding on the outside. I grew up in an old adobe house in rural New Mexico. It would be tough to say how old *that* house was, but I'd have to guess it was well over 100 years 20 years ago when I was a kid. I drove by it recently and it's been replastered and it has a new roof. It looks practically new. In England there are cob dwellings that are hundreds of years old. In Africa there are multi-story wattle and daub structures on rubble trench foundations that have been standing and occupied for thousands of years.

My childhood home was also much easier to work with than a lot of modern homes. All the plumbing and wiring was reasonably easy to access, and ran through conduits that went around the house on the exterior or pipes trenched around the outside of the foundation. My dad replumbed it and rewired the parts of it that weren't already to modern standards when my parents bought it. It cost him a few hundred dollars.

Meanwhile, one of my coworkers owns a house that's only about 20 years old in a big housing development, but she's already had to hire a whole crew to dig through the giant concrete slab that is under her living room to fix a leaky pipe, and she'll probably have to again. Some genius ran all the plumbing straight under the slab foundation when it was built, probably to save the $100 of extra pipe it would have taken to route it all around the house instead -- or to save the slight measure of fucking foresight it would have taken to just put the wet wall near the water and sewer hookups instead of on the opposite end of the house.

But when you're building houses and your goal is to build as many as you can as quickly as you can for as cheaply as you can, there's just no room for things like foresight, or spending a little extra to do it right, or even taking the slightest care when it comes to placing the house sanely on the plot of land.

I HATE modern tract-housing cheap-ass developer built "homes." They're sterile, they're shoddily constructed, and they seem to be designed by people who don't have a very firm grasp on the experience of actually...you know...living in houses like people.

There is no fucking reason to waste energy and resources to build a house that won't last at least a hundred years, unless you're a housing developer cutting corners on construction to rake in a little extra cash.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[Aeros]

Well if Wikipedia says timber frames are popular then you must tear down your 'real walls' and replace them!

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unreinforced masonry sucks in a quake. Buildings constructed that way often have small warning signs affixed here in the San Francisco Bay Area. New commercial construction uses cinderblock with steel rebar going up through the blocks. There is either a wood or steel frame under the block walls.

In the event of a quake, I suspect that the cinderblocks would crack but be held in place by the rebar. If the attachments to the frame failed catastrophicly it seems likely such a wall would hold together and fall outward from the frame. That's why you want to stay inside and go under your desk or a table. Odds are you'll just crawl out from under a desk covered with little bits of rock and dust.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[Ogive17]

For a residential home?

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[The Grim Reefer]

I need to use more smileys :-( . Just sayin', walls built of sticks or straw are not real walls as the GGP claims. Japanese houses, like American houses, are not built to last. But I understand that Japanese and Californians have good reason not to build solid walls.

That's actually pretty funny in context. It's a shame how poorly sarcasm translates in text. Particularly with the abundance of it on /. ;-)

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[NeutronCowboy]

Steel? Masonry? Stone? Cement? Transparent aluminum? There are more building materials than just wood, you know....

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[Transkaren]

As someone with 12 years of structural experience, currently studying for their Structural Engineering exam: You're full of it.

A "stick built" home - that is, one built with sawn lumber and plywood - is generally better than a steel or concrete structure. A properly designed wood structure is much harder to permanently damage during a seismic or wind event than a concrete structure, and is generally easier to repair than a steel structure. The problem comes in that our older homes and buildings are *not* designed properly.

Speaking personally - If I'm in an earthquake, I would rather be in a stick-built structure built in the last twenty years than in a Concrete building built within the last five.

This isn't to say that there is *no* damage - there is - it's just that it's primarily cosmetic.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[jandrese]

I thought the guy was making a dig at how temporary houses made of "sticks" are. Generally they are the guys who want cinderblock walls all through the house, forgetting that big heavy stone construction materials like that are often more dangerous in earthquake prone areas than more traditional 2x4s.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[EdIII]

That has nothing to do with structures.

A double decker freeway is not a structure?

You're correcting something he didn't say

He said collapsed structures were not as responsible for deaths as the resultant fires were. Most deaths I have ever heard about were about collapsed structures crushing and trapping people. San Francisco is a really good example of that.

and that honestly doesn't have much to do with whether or not one should bother levitating the house.

Really? Levitating the house is done so that it does not collapse, or otherwise get destroyed.....which would result in people dying.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[Anonymous Coward]

For a residential home?

This is unheard of in the US, but quite common elsewhere.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[Transkaren]

Yes. I've done steel stud construction design for a handful of homes. Insulated Concrete Forms are also popular for exterior walls - they're set up like Legos, and then concrete is poured in them. Still, the use of wood outweighs concrete or steel by far more than 9:1 for home construction.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[Nehmo]

Unless you quote the person who, in your opinion, is "full of it", it's difficult to determine whom you think is full. You seem to be disputing someone who advocated steel and concrete construction, and you hypothetically put your own life on the line to attest.
Really, regarding the ability of a structure to endure an earthquake, to make a judgement, much more information is needed beyond the type of construction employed. One steel structure is weaker than another, for example. And, in construction, there is a size division between single-family and multi-family dwellings that must be considered. But anyway...
I'll clarify some terms.
Most houses today (post WWII) are built using a wood construction system called "platform framing". Colloquially, this is called "stick built". However, stick build is a more general term just meaning using 2x4s and can include systems that are not platform framing.
In platform framing, one story is built after another. This is opposed to obsolete balloon framing which uses structural members that span more than one story. Platform framing uses the familiar stud and plate (top or bottom horizontal member) wall arrangement.
Timber framing usually means post & beam construction, which is also called post-frame construction. Large pieces of wood spaced a few feet (a couple meters) apart form the structure. In this thread, some seem to be using "timber" to simply mean wooden.
Steel-reinforced concrete is a very strong method of construction. The Japanese buildings using this method did well in the recent earthquake. And we must remember, earthquakes aren't the only possible hazards. Nowadays, a larger building should also be able to withstand small bombs, high winds, and vehicle impacts.
Another method of single-family dwelling construction is SIP (Structural Insulated Panel). The walls are made with SIPs, which are composed of thin plywood exteriors encasing thick polystyrene foam in-between.
Sure, wood platform framing is economical and sufficient for small structures, like single-family dwellings, but it's not suitable for larger structures.
And in terms of a single-family dwelling contest for ability of withstand to withstand an earthquake, a mobile home on beam (rather than discrete "jacks") supports wins.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[maxwells_deamon]

plus everyone else close by powering up pumps as well. And getting reliable power in a quake,

Has to be compressed in advance

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[nullchar]

Transparent aluminum [residential house]

Pics or it didn't happen!

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[neonKow]

You can pick apart individual sentences and words, but since you're taking them out of the context of the posts, you're misrepresenting what people are actually saying, so that doesn't mean you're addressing anything anyone is talking about.

In case it's still not clear: He is talking about housing. Nobody is talking about levitating freeways. Whether or not the majority of deaths in an earthquake happen because of crushing doesn't matter if your statistic also shows that the majority of deaths are completely unaffected by modifications to HOUSES.

What I'M saying is that, yes, the people crushed on the highways in OAKLAND, not SF, didn't die of fire. However, his point was that protecting your HOME from collapsing and killing you during an earthquake is a marketing ploy, so bringing up highways is completely irrelevant as far as whether or not earthquake-proofing a house is a waste of money. I obviously realize that levitating the house is so it doesn't collapse.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[EdIII]

I don't think I took anything out of context, and I think you are being a little pedantic.

However, his point was that protecting your HOME from collapsing and killing you during an earthquake is a marketing ploy, so bringing up highways is completely irrelevant as far as whether or not earthquake-proofing a house is a waste of money

Both are structures. To say "completely irrelevant" is quite a stretch. The reason why you earthquake-proof any structure is to prevent collapse. That is where you get the majority of the damage to the structure, and where fatalities start to rise considerably. Falling objects inside the structure are far less dangerous.

To say fire is the leading cause of death is just strange when common sense and news reports over the last 50 years say otherwise.

yes, the people crushed on the highways in OAKLAND, not SF

You're wrong. It was SF.

I know. I was there and saw bodies being carried out.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[alantus]

pick apart individual sentences and words

Ok!

earthquake-proofing a house is a waste of money

I disagree, preserving life will always be more important than money, after all you can always make more money if you are alive.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[xmundt]

Greetings and Salutations.
            I suspect you would be comfortable in my ICF Octagon then. It is 6" of extra strength concrete, re-enforced with #4 rebar in vertical sticks, and three, complete circles horizontally. The roofing system is engineered I-beams, bolted to 1/4" steel brackets that are bolted to the walls with 8" concrete screws. The guys building it with me rapidly started calling it "the bunker", amusingly enough.
pleasant dreams
dave mundt

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[quenda]

You might be in an earthquake zone, but termites and bush-fires are a far bigger problem in these parts.
Termites may not be spectacular, but can do massive damage before you notice them. And every house gets them eventually.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[quenda]

6" ICF definitely counts as a _real_ wall, especially if you assembled them yourself so getting extra real man points.
Definitely beats straw-bale, which I suspect is used mostly by quiche-eaters. No matter how strong, well insulated and vermi-proofed, you still have a house of straw, which is worse than sticks, as we all learned in childhood.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[Anonymous Coward]

Steel frame and double brick are common in Australia. I suspect the latter would not be very good in an earthquake!

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[Anonymous Coward]

"They must average a magnitude 5+ a month"

Very much depends on where you are. In Tokyo, perhaps, but here in Kansai (the second most populous area, including Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe) I haven't seen a quake that strong in the past year (going by either the JMA classification or the modified Richter scale).

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[Transkaren]

Worse than stick built? Yeah. Doesn't mean you can't get enough load resistance out of it to survive a quake. There's a paper on straw bale construction that I read that provides vertical & lateral failure information.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[Transkaren]

Actually, I suspect I'd feel less than secure there. While it sounds horribly overdesigned, that's more of a problem than you might think: Your octagon won't bend, it will shatter. That's why they design weak points in steel and concrete buildings: A bent beam can still hold up a floor, while a broken connection is useless. Sure, it'll take one hell of a jolt to do it, but once it's failed it's gone.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[Transkaren]

Unless you quote the person who, in your opinion, is "full of it", it's difficult to determine whom you think is full. You seem to be disputing someone who advocated steel and concrete construction, and you hypothetically put your own life on the line to attest. Really, regarding the ability of a structure to endure an earthquake, to make a judgement, much more information is needed beyond the type of construction employed. One steel structure is weaker than another, for example. And, in construction, there is a size division between single-family and multi-family dwellings that must be considered. But anyway... I'll clarify some terms. Most houses today (post WWII) are built using a wood construction system called "platform framing". Colloquially, this is called "stick built". However, stick build is a more general term just meaning using 2x4s and can include systems that are not platform framing. In platform framing, one story is built after another. This is opposed to obsolete balloon framing which uses structural members that span more than one story. Platform framing uses the familiar stud and plate (top or bottom horizontal member) wall arrangement. Timber framing usually means post & beam construction, which is also called post-frame construction. Large pieces of wood spaced a few feet (a couple meters) apart form the structure. In this thread, some seem to be using "timber" to simply mean wooden. Steel-reinforced concrete is a very strong method of construction. The Japanese buildings using this method did well in the recent earthquake. And we must remember, earthquakes aren't the only possible hazards. Nowadays, a larger building should also be able to withstand small bombs, high winds, and vehicle impacts. Another method of single-family dwelling construction is SIP (Structural Insulated Panel). The walls are made with SIPs, which are composed of thin plywood exteriors encasing thick polystyrene foam in-between. Sure, wood platform framing is economical and sufficient for small structures, like single-family dwellings, but it's not suitable for larger structures. And in terms of a single-family dwelling contest for ability of withstand to withstand an earthquake, a mobile home on beam (rather than discrete "jacks") supports wins.

Bah, I was replying to the person that said:
I need to use more smileys :-( . Just sayin', walls built of sticks or straw are not real walls as the GGP claims. Japanese houses, like American houses, are not built to last. But I understand that Japanese and Californians have good reason not to build solid walls.
Steel and concrete construction is perfectly fine, but so is wood - and, assuming I'm in a small building, I prefer wood construction over steel or concrete.

A few years ago, my area had a worst-case windstorm. We had a brief boom in business - mostly dealing with houses and other buildings with cosmetic or tree damage. Despite the fact that windspeed exceeded the design value by 20%, there was minimal permanent damage. This is despite the fact that 90% of construction in my area - logging country - is wood, and that a large percentage of it is at least thirty years old.

As for the manufactured home, maybe. Depends on if it's properly braced - a lot of them aren't. And they're really not good when it comes to wind loads.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[KingBenny]

if i could afford it i'd get it just to keep my pets safe ... or children, in the case of normal people i guess, least of all not to mention the emotional damage of seeing your cage turning into rubble

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[RockDoctor]

most people expect a house to last about the lifetime of a generation.

Speak for yourself and the society you're posting to (did you perhaps mean to log into slashdot.org.us instead of slashdot.org?). I'm typing in a house that is [calculates] 73 years old ; I grew up in a house that is (currently) 140-odd years old. I think the newest house I've ever lived in is now 46 years old.

Depending on who you ask, a generation is typically considered to be somewhere betwen 20 and 25 years (pushing 30 years in some societies, and generally rising).

A house that only lasted a generation would probably be described as defective (here), and may not have outlived of it's builder's warranty. Cue lawyers.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[siddesu]

You sound angry, but you're wrong -- I did not eat your breakfast.

Re:Might be cheaper to just rebuild the house.

[RockDoctor]

You're confusing a correction of your likely factual errors with an expression of anger. It's an expression of boredom at the repetitiveness of the situation.

You're right - I'm not the one who shat in your porridge. Look closer to home.

So

[maroberts]

The house is not firmly attached to the foundations except by this glorified airbag.

Don't they also get typhoons there?

I eagerly await the Japanese sequel to the Wizard of Oz.......

Re:So

[Anonymous Coward]

You aren't familiar with house or airbag construction, are you?

Re:So

[lloy0076]

"We, Kansas, in detail is not." - translationing "Toto, we're not in Kansas any more" into Japanese and then back again curtesy of translation.babylon.com!

LOL

Re:So

[Anonymous Coward]

Typhoons in Japan are not as powerful as in the US.
They are in general not that strong that they lift houses up.

Re:So

[Anonymous Coward]

"We, Kansas, in detail is not." - translationing "Toto, we're not in Kansas any more" into Japanese and then back again curtesy of translation.babylon.com!

Translation Party

Toto, we're not in Kansas any more
More information at no Kansas Toto, we
Kansas Toto, not about us
About us Kansas State toto
About United States Kansas, toto
About United States Kansas toto

Re:So

[TheLink]

I tried: the land of the rising sun

It looped...

Re:So

[drinkypoo]

What's even more fun is that they get tsunamis there. House on top of an air cushion, streets filled with water, what could possibly go wrong?

Re:So

[Ihmhi]

I eagerly await the Japanese sequel to the Wizard of Oz.......

Bizaardu avu Ozu 2: Za Ozuning?

Re:So

[Tharsman]

Don't worry, it's just a start in their baby step program to entirely avoid all land based disasters. Once japanese citizens are used to the idea of their homes not being stuck to the ground, they will be ready for stage 10 (there will be many more baby steps:) Flying Tokyo

Re:So

[Cyberia]

I am sensing a future MythBusters episode in the making soon!!!!!!

Re:So

[Amouth]

well considering that a Typhoon is the Pacific equivalent to the Atlantic hurricane .. Typhoon's are far more dangerous than the hurricanes we see in the US..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tropical_cyclones_1945_2006_wikicolor.png

Re:So

[cthulhu11]

The Winchester House in San Jose isn't attached to the foundations either. Three things struck me about this: 1) The damage that occurs before the thing fires up 2) What happens when the quake is serious and vertical displacement is more than 3cm 3) What happens when the power cuts out

uhh....

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see how this system is going to protect a home against the effects of serious earthquakes (landslides, liquefaction etc.), and it seems decidedly less robust than existing passive earthquake defences in the light of the more common, moderate (M3~5.5) earthquakes which plague Japan.

Re:uhh....

[Penguinisto]

Well, if the system is based on the same air curtain setup as a hovercraft, liquefaction is a non-issue. Now landslides OTOH may be a bit tougher to contend with...

Re:uhh....

[macshit]

Well, if the system is based on the same air curtain setup as a hovercraft, liquefaction is a non-issue. Now landslides OTOH may be a bit tougher to contend with...

A landslide just gives you some speed to make good your escape!

Re:uhh....

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are dealing with an earthquake large enough to trigger liquefaction, then odds are you have no power as any underground infrastructure to the house is done for. Not to mention power poles will come crashing down... Making the airbag system fail. If it has a generator backup, that's weekly maintenance... The system sounds as if it is an active system, requiring power and regular maintenance. Passive systems are better (base isolation foundations) as they do not require power, and are low maintenance. It's nice in theory, but there are simpler systems out there.

Dumbest fucking idea evar

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard some stupid ideas in my time, but this takes the cake.

Seriously, man. Don't you think there could be a problem with a house that is not actually attached to its foundations?

What's the deal with compressed air levitation. Is it good or is it whack?

Re:Dumbest fucking idea evar

[zippthorne]

What's the deal with compressed air levitation. Is it good or is it whack?

It's fun

Re:Dumbest fucking idea evar

[Ghaoth]

To move a large amount of air requires a large compressor. This is usually powered by electricity. Power often fails in earthquakes.....or does the system come with an instant start generator. You would have thought that they learnt from the recent tsumami. If the standby generators for the pumps of the nuclear reactor had been on the top floor instead of the basement, there may not have been a nuclear crisis. Generators don't like being drowned in salt water.

Re:Dumbest fucking idea evar

[Jeremi]

Power often fails in earthquakes.....or does the system come with an instant start generator.

One likely possibility is that they keep a container of pre-compressed air on standby underneath the house. Then all the system has to do when the earthquake hits is open a valve to let the compressed air escape -- no power source necessary. (of course, this would mean you'd have to make trade-offs between container size, container pressure, and levitation duration... dunno if it would be practical or not)

Re:Dumbest fucking idea evar

[hawguy]

I've heard some stupid ideas in my time, but this takes the cake.

Seriously, man. Don't you think there could be a problem with a house that is not actually attached to its foundations?

What's the deal with compressed air levitation. Is it good or is it whack?

Many many houses in earthquake zones (like Memphis TN and surrounding regions) are barely attached to their foundations - often by a few rusting anchor bolts set into aging crumbling concrete. When a moderately big earthquake hits, many of those houses are going to fall off of their foundations, but unlike this Japanese house, they weren't meant to.

Re:Dumbest fucking idea evar

[mpe]

To move a large amount of air requires a large compressor. This is usually powered by electricity. Power often fails in earthquakes

Hope they remembered to add flexible connectors for all the utilities when they fitted this system.

.....or does the system come with an instant start generator.

Even an "instant start" generator is going to take several seconds to start. So you are going to need a big UPS.

Re:Dumbest fucking idea evar

[stephanruby]

How do the cars do it? With electricity? You could bottle up the compressed air in advance. You could generate the air with a chemical reaction. Either way, just like the cars it's probably going to be an expensive system to maintain.

Re:Dumbest fucking idea evar

[orzetto]

As an engineer that has to do with compressors fairly often (though mostly on paper), I think your idea is much more sensible than installing a compressor. Compressors are hellishly expensive, require regular and competent maintenance (which is also expensive), and are prone to failure (more so than, say, pumps or valves). And anyway, a compressor that can start up and fill that kind of volume in a second is just a pipe dream; the study in the FA probably had a ludicrously overdimensioned compressor idling, and if you have to ask for how much it costs to idle a compressor 24/7 for decades waiting for an earthquake, you can't afford it—that's before considering its noise and how it would make your house uninhabitable.

My bet, however, would be on something like airbag chemicals. They react fast, the principle is well known and only needs to be scaled up. Compared to a valve, it is easier to build a fail-safe solution, and a large high-pressure air tanks will have all kinds of regulatory issues (for good reasons).

Re:Dumbest fucking idea evar

[Anonymous Coward]

They could always keep the air-bag inflated and have suspension stilts that are retracted when the earthquakes strikes, lowering the house onto the airbag. Wouldn't it be easier just to have the house mounted on suspension springs like railcars?

Re:Dumbest fucking idea evar

[serviscope_minor]

As an engineer that has to do with compressors fairly often (though mostly on paper),

You're probably thinking of the wrong kind of compressor.

Imagine a house (10mx10m), i.e. 100m^2. 1000Pa pressure (1/100 atm) would lift 100 Tonnes, which is probably about what a modern house of that size would weigh.

To lift it off the gound by 10cm, you would need 10m^3 of air.

The device to do that could be called a compressor, but it's more of a big-ass fan, to be honest. With such a low pressure, the fan doesn't need to be made to particularly high tolerances, when it comes to the edge of the fan blades and the ducting.

You could also assist it with a 10l tank compressed up to 10 bar to assist trhe initial lift off while the fan is spooling. That would require a rather small, cheap compressor, or could easily be done by a hand pump if you really want.

Re:Dumbest fucking idea evar

[Seraphim1982]

Imagine a house (10mx10m), i.e. 100m^2. 1000Pa pressure (1/100 atm) would lift 100 Tonnes, which is probably about what a modern house of that size would weigh.

Ehh? A Pascal is a Newton/m^2. So:
100m^2 * 1000Pa = 100,000N
100,000N / 10m/s^2 = 10,000 kg = 10 Tonnes

Re:Dumbest fucking idea evar

[SuricouRaven]

That's how NORAD's earthquake/atomic-shockwave-proofing works. The structures are mounted on springs.

Re:Dumbest fucking idea evar

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait until the first earthquake hits - in the 1 sec. before these houses lift off, I imagine they'll have gained enough sideways momentum that they'll skate quite nicely on that skirt of air, and won't stop until they hit something solid (probably the ground... the moving ground). House-sized impromptu hovercrafts. What could possibly be a bad idea about that?

Re:Dumbest fucking idea evar

[Anonymous Coward]

OMFG! Thank you so much. That was simply amazing. I will now spend the entire day searching for local hover craft racing club events to take my son. I thank you. My son thanks you. My wife hates you. My boss is still up in the air on his opinion of you.

Re:Dumbest fucking idea evar

[serviscope_minor]

Yeah. Looks like I got my numbers out by a factor of 10. You'd need 0.1 bar pressure, rather than 0.01 bar. That's still a pretty low pressure and well within the capabilities of a fan.

Looking up random datasheets online, you can get an industrial 15kW centrifigal blower which can produce a static pressure of about 125mBar or a flow rate of about 0.5 m^3 / s. That would give a 20 second fillup time.

Also, at that power rate, a fairly standard car battery could provide 3 minutes of power (ignoring conversion losses). Also note that the power draw is the peak (i.e. high flow rate, low pressure).

Still not outlandish numbers.

Re:Dumbest fucking idea evar

[Neil Boekend]

You'd have to calculate the resonant frequency for each house and make sure it falls wel beyond the expected frequencies in the earthquakes.

Re:Dumbest fucking idea evar

[GreatBunzinni]

Seriously, man. Don't you think there could be a problem with a house that is not actually attached to its foundations?

There is absolutely no problem with "a house that is not actually attached to its foundations". In fact, it's one of the main principles behind a set of technologies employed in retrofitting important structures and also in recent structures whose integrity is fundamental to society. I could point you out to wikipedia on this one, but wikipedia's article on this subject is rather poor and useless. But to just give you a headsup, the principle behind this technique is to separate the superstructure (a frame, bridge deck, etc...) from the infrastructure (foundations, piers, frames, etc...) and then, depending on the technology, either prevent the earthquake energy to be transmitted to the superstructure, transfer it through a flexible connection or even transfer it through dynamic dampeners.

By the look of this article, it appears this technology fits in the 2nd category (transfer earthquake energy through a flexible connection). Yet, I really doubt it will go anywhere, as it is much simpler to resort to passive systems which are already widely deployed, tested in the real world and proven to work incredibly well, such as base isolation through neoprene bearings. So, probably this was the first and last time anyone will ever hear of this.

\\me is a structural engineer

Re:Dumbest fucking idea evar

[delt0r]

And dampers... don't forget the dampers..

Bullshit

[spiffmastercow]

In other bews, 88 Japanese people just got scammed for a lot of money.

Re:Bullshit

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Know-it-all Slashdotters chuckle from their parents' basement.

Re:Bullshit

[crutchy]

dunno why this was trolled. its true, apart from the "bews" bit. its like those crackpot natural remedies for various terminal illnesses; they can't guarantee your survival, but they "may" help.

air cushions under homes may well be what kills the occupants in the end, and it could be a malfunction or effects from an earthquake (static forces exceeding design limits, or dynamic effects like resonance).

a more practical solution might be to just incorporate shock absorption (dashpots) in your piers or stumps.

Re:Bullshit

[crutchy]

a more practical solution might be to just incorporate shock absorption (dashpots) in your piers or stumps

to account for side-to-side vibration, pin all the connections and support side loads with dashpots as well (so the entire house is supported underneath in all directions by pinned dashpots).

depending on your budget, you could also go dashpot-crazy and build them into studs, joists, rafters, purlins, girts, etc.

you just need to ensure the natural frequency of the system is higher than expected earthquake frequencies, which would be part of your dashpot design criteria but the house as a whole should also be modeled

Re:Bullshit

[arisvega]

You better believe it. it was about time Japanese started levitating stuff- after all, it is the 3rd millenium.

How big is the compressor?

[the_Bionic_lemming]

Add up the weight, washer, dryer, fridge, stove, counter tops, toilet, sink, water heater, computer, bed, my fat ass, a couple of dogs, , wife, some fat kids - what's going to lift all that plus a few tons of house?

Re:How big is the compressor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, if you're so damn smart, why don't you even try to calculate it?

Force = pressure x area
or
Mass (in kg) = pressure (in Pa) x area (in m^2) / g (9.8 m/s^2)

Just 1/10th of atmospheric pressure over 100 m^2 can support 104 tons. So basically, get a clue, or shut the fuck up.

Re:How big is the compressor?

[hawguy]

Add up the weight, washer, dryer, fridge, stove, counter tops, toilet, sink, water heater, computer, bed, my fat ass, a couple of dogs, , wife, some fat kids - what's going to lift all that plus a few tons of house?

There's a huge surface area under the house. Figure a house and contents weighs 80,000 lbs, and is 20x40 feet (or 115,000 in^2). So you only need to sustain .7 psi of pressure to float the house. A person can generate that much pressure from their lung - if the house was sitting on a airbag, a person could lift the house just by blowing up the airbag (though it make takes weeks or longer to fill the airbag). But without an airbag, since the air is constantly leaking out from around the house, it takes a huge volume of air to keep the house suspended. A 3cm gap around the perimeter is a huge gap and will require large quantities of air to sustain the pressure.

Re:How big is the compressor?

[camperdave]

A house doesn't sit on the entire square area of the floor space. It sits on maybe an 8-12 inch wide concrete or block wall around the perimeter of the house. So your 20x40 house is sitting on about 11,264 in^2 of foundation. This yields a figure of over 7psi.

Re:How big is the compressor?

[hawguy]

A house doesn't sit on the entire square area of the floor space. It sits on maybe an 8-12 inch wide concrete or block wall around the perimeter of the house. So your 20x40 house is sitting on about 11,264 in^2 of foundation. This yields a figure of over 7psi.

My house wasn't designed to float on a cushion of air, but I'm certain that if you filled the crawlspace with 0.7 psi of air, it would float by the buoyancy against the underside of the floors. If I were designing the house to float, I'd give it a flat bottom.

Re:How big is the compressor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, they need to add a skirt like hovercraft

Re:How big is the compressor?

[mpe]

My house wasn't designed to float on a cushion of air, but I'm certain that if you filled the crawlspace with 0.7 psi of air, it would float by the buoyancy against the underside of the floors

More likely you'd break your house. Since by doing so you've completly changed how forces are acting on the structure. Instead of an air cushion it would be better off to apply thrust only to the parts of the house usually in contact with the foundations.

If I were designing the house to float, I'd give it a flat bottom.

With a slab foundation and designed to distribute its weight evenly over the base.

Re:How big is the compressor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, if you're so damn smart, why don't you even try to calculate it?

Force = pressure x area
or
Mass (in kg) = pressure (in Pa) x area (in m^2) / g (9.8 m/s^2)

Just 1/10th of atmospheric pressure over 100 m^2 can support 104 tons. So basically, get a clue, or shut the fuck up.

Houses don't bear their load evenly across the entire floor. The load is transferred to the foundation, so you need to calculate the surface area just of the foundation walls where the load actually rests. So I would suggest it is in fact you who ought to "get a clue or STFU".

Now, I suppose you could retro-fit the house with a new frame underneath so it does bear the load evenly. But if you're going to go through all that trouble to jack up the house and build a new base-frame for it, why not just use an existing technology, for example one which uses hydraulic shock absorbers, instead? Cheaper, proven, uses common machinery, and can provide a lot more than 3cm of tolerance.

Re:How big is the compressor?

[stephanruby]

Add up the weight, washer, dryer, fridge, stove, counter tops, toilet, sink, water heater, computer, bed, my fat ass, a couple of dogs, , wife, some fat kids - what's going to lift all that plus a few tons of house?

It's Japan. The houses are made of wood and paper. The tatamis floors are the beds. The water heaters are just-in-time. And the dogs are rented (you give them back the same night, or you pay a late fee).

Re:How big is the compressor?

[stephanruby]

There's a huge surface area under the house. Figure a house and contents weighs 80,000 lbs, and is 20x40 feet (or 115,000 in^2). So you only need to sustain .7 psi of pressure to float the house. A person can generate that much pressure from their lung - if the house was sitting on a airbag, a person could lift the house just by blowing up the airbag (though it make takes weeks or longer to fill the airbag).

How long would it take for a vaccum cleaner to fill it up? May be, having the air bag constantly inflated could be one way of assuring that it's deployed when there is an earthquake (or may be, it could be deployed through some sort of chemical reaction). In any case, would a 3 cm gap really be enough?

Re:How big is the compressor?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just want to point out that if they use rubber airbags that have some elastic stretching in the sidewalls. Then they wouldn't actually have to float the house so much as just jack it up on the airbags. You would still get movement in the house but the amount would be massively reduced.

P.S. in our factory just up the road we regularly move 500T transformers with airbags.

Re:How big is the compressor?

[crutchy]

Houses don't bear their load evenly across the entire floor.

re-enforced floating slabs are quite popular for new homes (where I'm from in Australia at least), and also apparently seem to fair well in earthquakes
http://www.earthquakescanada.nrcan.gc.ca/info-gen/prepare-preparer/eqresist-eng.php#The_Site_Factor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shallow_foundation

as for piers or stumps, i agree that shock absorbers (hydraulic or pneumatic) are definitely the way to go

Re:How big is the compressor?

[demonlapin]

Depends on the house. In areas where the the ground never freezes, a very common construction technique is to build on a slab, in which case the weight really is pretty evenly distributed. And don't most basements have support pillars? The ones I've been in do.

Re:How big is the compressor?

[Overzeetop]

The problem with 0.7psi is that it's 100PSF. 100PSF is about 2.5x the live load that house floors are designed to carry (it's actually an assembly load - think theater exits and dance clubs).

Re:How big is the compressor?

[the_Bionic_lemming]

A 3cm gap around the perimeter is a huge gap and will require large quantities of air to sustain the pressure.

Yes, before the coward jumped in this is what I was asking - How big of a compressor is he going to need to get that much air in as an earthquake is hitting?

Re:How big is the compressor?

[rdnetto]

A 3cm gap around the perimeter is a huge gap and will require large quantities of air to sustain the pressure.

Does anyone know how long the system can actually maintain the levitation for? The article had nothing on it, and it seems like the key weakness of this system: if you're house runs out of air before the quake is over, you're in trouble.

Re:How big is the compressor?

[Anonymous Coward]

And the dogs are rented (you give them back the same night, or you pay a late fee).

Note: you need not return the dog to the same vending machine you got it from, like RedBox, you can return them to any affiliated vending machine.

About one inch?

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't seem like much. Am I wrong?

By the way, wouldn't underground houses be better for earthquakes than something sitting on top of the soil?

Re:About one inch?

[zippthorne]

Aren't skyscrapers already better for earthquakes than shorter buildings?

Re:About one inch?

[hawguy]

That doesn't seem like much. Am I wrong?

I thought it sounded like too much - you only need to lift it high enough to let it float side to side above the foundation. A few mm would probably be sufficient and wouldn't require as much air to compensate for leakage around the perimeter of the house.

Though maybe building it on teflon skids with breakaway support structure would accomplish the same thing at much lower cost - the support structure keeps the house steady in normal times, and during an earthquake, it breaks away to let the house slide back and forth. After the earthquake you just need to push the house back into place and rebuild the support structure.

By the way, wouldn't underground houses be better for earthquakes than something sitting on top of the soil?

I think I'd rather be on top of the soil in a wood framed (i.e. flexible) house than under ground where there are enormous ground forces trying to cave in the walls.

Re:About one inch?

[leuk_he]

It needs more than a few mm.. There are vertical movements in a quake you will need some room for. I think a richter scale 6 is arround 30 mm movement. Well, actually the acceleration determines this, not the size of amplitude.

Also the one time protection will not work very well. A lot of times there is not a single earthquake, but multiple aftershocks, and those shocks can be as big as the original quake. If you have a system that is depend and on repair between quakes, it will fail.

Re:About one inch?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Depends on the regulatory environment:

Because skyscrapers are understood to be an intrinsically harder problem than 1-3 story stuff, the problem of building them tends to attract actually competent engineers, as well as the attention of code-inspection types and the scrutiny of whoever is insuring the thing. Under good circumstances, that tends to mean that the building ends up being designed and constructed to survive expected earthquake intensities. Smaller buildings are much easier to half-ass and still get a working result that will collapse and crush the occupants when a quake hits, unless the building code guys are sufficiently up to date and sufficiently zealous.

Re:About one inch?

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on the regulatory environment:

Because skyscrapers are understood to be an intrinsically harder problem than 1-3 story stuff, the problem of building them tends to attract actually competent engineers, as well as the attention of code-inspection types and the scrutiny of whoever is insuring the thing. Under good circumstances, that tends to mean that the building ends up being designed and constructed to survive expected earthquake intensities. Smaller buildings are much easier to half-ass and still get a working result that will collapse and crush the occupants when a quake hits, unless the building code guys are sufficiently up to date and sufficiently zealous.

Right.

Here's a quick test of one of the compressors

[VinylRecords]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=NubZJA4c_Rw

Seems like it would require an awful lot of force just to float a small house. An interesting idea that might be useful in other areas. But I don't see how this could catch on long term for things like apartment buildings or skyscrapers.

And let's not forget that it wasn't so much the earthquake that devastated Japan. But it was the wall of water that mowed down everything in its path.

Re:Here's a quick test of one of the compressors

[mpe]

Seems like it would require an awful lot of force just to float a small house.

The other problems include:
Lifting it without doing damage to the structure/contents
Needing to accuratly land the house back on its foundations.
How well it copes with vertical movement of the ground.
What happens in the case of ground liquifaction.

Re:Here's a quick test of one of the compressors

[JanneM]

Large structures sometimes use rubber and metal dampers that allows the structure to "float" in a similar manner. It makes for a much lighter construction as the actual building above the damping system doesn't need nearly as much reinforcement as a traditional earthquake-resistant design. The K supercomputer in Kobe is housed in such a structure, for instance.

Re:Here's a quick test of one of the compressors

[DarwinSurvivor]

Not to mention the possibility of the house *literally* floating away.

Re:Here's a quick test of one of the compressors

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcmtQpODzO0&feature=related around 5 min they compare two houses. The main issue I see is that this test is not the same as what they have described. In the test the foundation is the platform and the whole platform levitates, if the platform/foundation were stationary, as it moved away from underneath the house there wouldn't be any air pressure to opposite side and the house would tip over.

Re:Here's a quick test of one of the compressors

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

That raises the question that has been puzzling me:

We already have a variety of options(elastomeric materials, springs, damped shock absorbers, etc, etc.) for building structures that are 'decoupled' from the ground enough to protect them from shaking with minimal moving parts and no active sensors, compressors, motors, etc. WHY would it possibly make sense to use a system that depends on the continued function and reliability of an active sensor system and a fast-acting compressed gas apparatus if you can get the same result with passive parts that don't require anything aside from occasional inspection?

Re:Here's a quick test of one of the compressors

[JanneM]

My guess (which I wrote in another post) is that the existing options are not good fits for small buildings. A shock absorber or rubber gasket that is short enough to be fitted under a single-family home will not have anything like the horizontal travel needed to be of any use in a large earthquake. This may be compact and simple enough to be used in those cases.

Re:Here's a quick test of one of the compressors

[mrmeval]

Japan has a long history with earthquakes and tsunamis depending on severity and frequency of earthquakes and severity and frequency of tsunamis this may be a productive use of the resources expended. I would leave it to the home owner and the contractor to run those numbers and make a decision.

Any risk mitigation where you take into account costs versus potential damage is a lottery but if you use experience and intelligence, it can be more profitable than random chance.
 

Re:Here's a quick test of one of the compressors

[Solandri]

Seems like it would require an awful lot of force just to float a small house.

People's intuition often fails them when it comes to pressure (hydraulic or air). Yes it requires a lot of force to raise a house, but the beauty of using a pressure instead is that you divide that force by an area. P = F/A.

e.g. an M1A2 tank weighs 61,000 kg, which is 9.81 m/s^2 * 61000 = 598410 Newtons.
Its wheelbase is approximately 3.5x7 meters = 24.5 m^2

If you drove it on top of one of these devices, the air pressure you'd need to lift it is:
598410 N / 24.5 m^2 = only 24,400 Pascal
which in English units is a mere 3.5 psi

Pressure is basically the 2-dimensional analogue to the 1-dimensional lever. You greatly reduce the forces needed in exchange for increasing the amount of movement required. In this case, you need to be able to quickly pump a large amount of air at a relatively small pressure to replace pressurized air which is lost around the edges of the two plates.

i predict this doesnt prevent shit

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=NubZJA4c_Rw

watching this video makes me LOL.

in japan, you have three types of earthquakes.
the horizontal type depicted in this video.
there is also the vertical type.
then you have the worst of all three, where both are happening at the same time.

3cm of buffer space? maybe only in a horizontal shifting quake.
the other two? forget about it. its pretty sad that people are going to get scammed by this.

Energy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Real useful when there's no power...

Re:Energy?

[Skidborg]

So use explosives to create your compressed gas instead. Your newly launched space station will make you the envy of the neighborhood and the terror of missile defense systems everywhere.

Re:Energy?

[DarwinSurvivor]

Nah, by the time they've detected you, they already know your trajectory. It's the other 87 houses that they are now scarred of.

Re:Energy?

[azalin]

If you have a huge tank of compressed gas in your basement your scenario isn't that unlikely. Though I strongly doubt the debris to fly more than a few hundred yards. Also the neighborhood might be able to profit from the nice little pond that formed in the crater.

bonus!

[Anonymous Coward]

As a bonus, this system works great during tsunamis too.

Alignment?!

[Anonymous Coward]

so what happens while the house is levitating the foundation moves and is now 5cm to the left when the house comes down?

Re:Alignment?!

[Bastardchyld]

Good point, that was the first thing that I thought of when I read the article. The alignment issue is not so much of an issue, because potentially you could reinflate the bag and push it back, most likely with the help of some equipment.

More bothersome to me is that potentially the house could just shimmy itself right off of the foundation mid-earthquake with the airbag fully inflated and everything. Then it seems like the only thing your expensive little airbag does is protect the foundation itself from damage, which could potentially save some money on the rebuilding costs, but I highly doubt this is why folks would buy it.

Frankly though based on the video of the lady and the guy getting shaked. I wasn't paying too much attention the first time and thought that the lady (on the airbagged chair) was a person and the guy (on the unairbagged chair) was a manequin, which of course made my day when he got up.

Re:Alignment?!

[PatPending]

It looks like there is a robust outer band which encompasses the inner perimeter--much like telescoping tubes, a larger diameter one will "overlap" its inner one, preventing offset.

There is another issue: contamination of the surface. The Google-provided translation is rough but you get the idea (emphasis added):

Usually when the building is air ride on a thin cross-sectional, and basic artificial ground state so that adhesion to the ground, shaking it in a typhoon or clogged or something in between does not have any.

This is a great breakthrough for Japanese...

[Anonymous Coward]

film making. Imagine.... ground shaking ... startled cries.... LOOK! Run! It's House-Ra and its coming this way! Oh No! Out-House-Zilla is with him, and now he flies!! Aieeee! Flea! Flea for your lives ... ewwww!

Re:This is a great breakthrough for Japanese...

[eternaldoctorwho]

Flea! Flea for your lives ... ewwww!

Wait, what? You had me until the "ewwww" part. It's like when the creature from the black lagoon invades your tent you hear growling, roaring,....then "ewwww!" ? Funny, though.

Re:This is a great breakthrough for Japanese...

[Bob-taro]

film making. Imagine.... ground shaking ... startled cries.... LOOK! Run! It's House-Ra and its coming this way! Oh No! Out-House-Zilla is with him, and now he flies!! Aieeee! Flea! Flea for your lives ... ewwww!

Is that flea as in flea speach?

1 sec?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that a long time to wait?

I'm sure they've thought of this, but in a house, that's a lot of mass that's been tossed around starting from the 0 mark. It seems at the one sec mark, the structure would already be unstable and that's when you're going to lift it up in the air?

Re:1 sec?

[hawguy]

Isn't that a long time to wait?

I'm sure they've thought of this, but in a house, that's a lot of mass that's been tossed around starting from the 0 mark. It seems at the one sec mark, the structure would already be unstable and that's when you're going to lift it up in the air?

Japan has an earthquake detection network that can give advance warning about a quake, giving a few seconds or longer of advanced warning. Long enough for the compressor to spin up, fill a pre-charge tank and wait for confirmation from a local sensor before dumping the tank and floating the house.

Re:1 sec?

[macshit]

Isn't that a long time to wait?

I'm sure they've thought of this, but in a house, that's a lot of mass that's been tossed around starting from the 0 mark. It seems at the one sec mark, the structure would already be unstable and that's when you're going to lift it up in the air?

Remember though, that although there are different types of quakes, most in Japan don't seem to start at "full power", they ramp up over a few seconds. The March 13 quake for instance, did that.

Also, given Japan's current warning network, anybody not at the epicenter can get a few seconds warning even before the quake is evident locally—though maybe this is a bit pointless as it's exactly those who are at the epicenter that are going to really need the air cushion...

a sensor responds within one second

[Osgeld]

and generating the amount of air pressure to lift a house + all its belongings + its occupants takes how long? what if the power is knocked out in 500ms or less? why not make those rubber bushing systems more affordable instead of involving computer controlled "systems"

Re:a sensor responds within one second

[Jeremi]

what if the power is knocked out in 500ms or less?

Not to worry, they've got nuclear power in Japan, it's proven to be very reliable during an earthquake. :^P

Re:a sensor responds within one second

[drinkypoo]

If I were doing this I would fill the bag from a CO2 tank. CO2 tanks are even commonly used in lieu of a compressor within city limits now.

Re:a sensor responds within one second

[Anonymous Coward]

It's really hard to shutdown one of those. Actually their problem was the cooling system's power supply being swept away by the water. Ironically, had it not went into automatic shutdown, it may have been safer since the cooling system would have power.

Re:a sensor responds within one second

[Anonymous Coward]

And it is (well after they un-scram the reactors) in even the largest earthquakes, just one pre-chernobyl design didn't do so well in tsunami directly afterwards, but none were really fazed by the quakes themselves.

Wow! 3 whole centimeters?

[Anonymous Coward]

And I hear Fukushima has a flood wall to stop tsunamis.

Can't have too many guests

[zill]

For planes and airships there's that whole "Oh no we're losing altitude, let's push the fat guy out" trope.

I wonder what's the weight limit for this little gizmo.

Re:Can't have too many guests

[Bastardchyld]

Based on the posted video I'd say the weight limit is probably a ~100 lbs asian lady.

Re:Can't have too many guests

[Jeremi]

For planes and airships there's that whole "Oh no we're losing altitude, let's push the fat guy out" trope.

Yes, that was one of the shortcomings of their previous system design

Call it...

[fotoguzzi]

...the Marilyn Monroe effect.

Re:Call it...

[Anonymous Coward]

the Maliryn Monloe effect.

FTFY

Base Isolation

[Anonymous Coward]

Base isolation [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_isolation] would be a better idea that doesn't require a ups or continuous power supply for the compressor.

Tsunami are much rarer than quakes

[zooblethorpe]

And let's not forget that it wasn't so much the earthquake that devastated Japan. But it was the wall of water that mowed down everything in its path.

I'm not sure if you're aware, but earthquakes are much more common in Japan than tsunami are. Remember Kobe? There's a list of major earthquakes in Japan that might put things in perspective. Saving houses from substantial earthquake damage would be a major gain for the country.

(Mind, I'm not saying that tsunami aren't an issue -- just that earthquakes are also an issue, and a different problem set.)

Cheers,

Re:Tsunami are much rarer than quakes

[hcs_$reboot]

Interesting. But that air system addresses only the horizontal earthquakes. When the earthquake hypocenter is under the house, I'm not sure it'll work - it may even be worse than a regular house. Anyway, people in Tokyo and region need something quick:
- today
- yesterday evening

Re:Tsunami are much rarer than quakes

[roothog]

I'm not sure if you're aware, but earthquakes are much more common in Japan than tsunami are. Remember Kobe?

I think so. Basketball player, right? I realize he was good, but equating him to an earthquake seems a bit over the top.

Re:Tsunami are much rarer than quakes

[GreatBunzinni]

Yeah, but in both cases there are certain odds that you will get fucked in the ass and all shaken up when you least expect it.

Re:Tsunami are much rarer than quakes

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure if you're aware, but earthquakes are much more common in Japan than tsunami are. Remember Kobe?

I think so. Basketball player, right? I realize he was good, but equating him to an earthquake seems a bit over the top.

Kobe is a city in Japan :-) - Big earthquake on Jan 17. 1995 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Hanshin_earthquake

Overlooking it...

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems like it would make more sense to build all single-family type houses on "stilts" that can flex and should a tsunami come in, the house just floats on top (but is still anchored in place so it doesn't float away.) As far as I can tell it would be like building a "boat" on stilts, if an earthquake hits, the house stilts just flex (eg 8 stilts) and you can replace them if they are compromised. If a tsunami hits, well you may have to reconnect your utility lines (which should have auto-shutoff valves) but that's better than being crushed by the house coming apart or drowning after it's inundated. Save the area under the house for the car.

It's funny really, there are actually many houses that are built in North America that won't last in an earthquake, because building codes are only heavily enforced for large buildings. Anything built before the 1989 Loma Prieta (San Francisco) earthquake, is likely not up to code. That's just 22 years ago. If you live in the Pacific area, you're sitting on a timebomb that can go any day now. I'm taking my chances in this 1960's apartment. I don't think the building would survive a Tohoku style earthquake, but I'm nowhere near any liquefaction area, so the worst that would happen is the damn building collapses on me. Luck would probably have it happen while I'm awake and could dive under my desk, but if it happens while I'm asleep, fucked.

Re:Overlooking it...

[hawguy]

It seems like it would make more sense to build all single-family type houses on "stilts" that can flex and should a tsunami come in, the house just floats on top (but is still anchored in place so it doesn't float away.) As far as I can tell it would be like building a "boat" on stilts, if an earthquake hits, the house stilts just flex (eg 8 stilts) and you can replace them if they are compromised. If a tsunami hits, well you may have to reconnect your utility lines (which should have auto-shutoff valves) but that's better than being crushed by the house coming apart or drowning after it's inundated.

But how high do you build the stilts? Peak tsunami waves after Tohuku hit 40 meters (the waves that innudated the Fukushima reactor complex hit 15 meters).

Save the area under the house for the car.

Some flood prone areas of the US already do this -- build a parking level on the bottom with slotted doors to let the water flow thorugh. My aunt had a house like this and after she evacuated, she thought her belongings were safe, until the flood water levels hit 12 feet -- 2 feet into the living area of the house.

It's funny really, there are actually many houses that are built in North America that won't last in an earthquake, because building codes are only heavily enforced for large buildings. Anything built before the 1989 Loma Prieta (San Francisco) earthquake, is likely not up to code. That's just 22 years ago. If you live in the Pacific area, you're sitting on a timebomb that can go any day now. I'm taking my chances in this 1960's apartment. I don't think the building would survive a Tohoku style earthquake, but I'm nowhere near any liquefaction area, so the worst that would happen is the damn building collapses on me. Luck would probably have it happen while I'm awake and could dive under my desk, but if it happens while I'm asleep, fucked.

I like to think that even my 1917 wood framed rented house will survive (albeit with some damage) a moderate quake, though I've deliberately avoided living in a soft-story building like the ones that failed in the Marina District in the Loma Prieta quote.

As I look for a house to buy, I'm looking for a single story building and plan to pay the $8K or so it will take to do some basic earthquake retrofitting (better foundation anchors and cripple wall bracing). Oddly, this type of retrofitting is opposite of the free sliding house that's described in this article. Maybe poor foundation anchors are the way to go to help ensure that the structure doesn't collapse even if it means the house is totaled after it falls off the foundation.

Re:Overlooking it...

[zrbyte]

It seems like it would make more sense to build all single-family type houses on "stilts" that can flex and should a tsunami come in, the house just floats on top...

You obviously have never played Angry Birds.

Don't care about the earthquake proofing

[w0mprat]

I just want a levitating house! Anyone for house air hockey?

Re:Don't care about the earthquake proofing

[azalin]

Am I the only one having a weird vision for a new godzilla movie?

Not in the wake of the Fukushima disaster!

[Anonymous Coward]

Guys, this is protection against being shaken to bits, not fried by radiation...

OP - think before you write!

Fatal flaw

[DanJ_UK]

Perfect, provided it doesn't knock out power to the ("generators") compressors.

No, wait...

Lateral displacements?

[flyingfsck]

The quakes in Japan, Haiti and California usually goes along with tremendous lateral displacements, so how will this help?

Re:Lateral displacements?

[hawguy]

The quakes in Japan, Haiti and California usually goes along with tremendous lateral displacements, so how will this help?

Isn't that exactly what this type of system is supposed to protect from? It doesn't matter if the ground below shifts laterally by a few feet, after the quake is over you just power on the compressor and get a few friends to help recenter it on the foundation.

Now a vertical displacement is a much bigger problem with this system...

The Starcrossed

[MichaelSmith]

Brings to mind the Ben Bova novel where skyscrapers were actually huge rocket boosters. At the slightest hint of an earthquake they flew out into the ocean for a safe splashdown.

Re:The Starcrossed

[jandrese]

Wow, that has to be one of the least practical systems ever envisioned in the history of the world.

Re:The Starcrossed

[MichaelSmith]

The Starcrossed was a very funny satire about the production of TV drama, so the ideas it contained were intentionally over the top.

Car analogy please?

[FormOfActionBanana]

How much is an "incredible amount" of air? Can someone possibly explain this "air floating" concept in terminology of cars? Thanks.

Re:Car analogy please?

[flyingfsck]

500 politicians worth of hot air?

Re:Car analogy please?

[Anonymous Coward]

500 politicians each? Oh no! if they do more than 3 houses it will create a whirling vortex of destruction that may blow Japan off the map while at the same time passing huge numbers of horrible laws! Run, it's an ACTA storm!

Re:Car analogy please?

[rocket rancher]

How much is an "incredible amount" of air? Can someone possibly explain this "air floating" concept in terminology of cars? Thanks.

I'll give it a shot... Wide tires don't need nearly as much pressure for "air floating" the car as do narrower tires. My 'Vette masses around 1600kg with me aboard, but it is "air floated" by four (really wide) tires inflated to 185 kPa each. My Ducati 1098 (not a car, but I don't think it represents a significant loss in car-analogy-appropriateness) can "air float" the mass of the bike+me system (280kg) on two (pretty narrow) tires with 285 kPa of pressure each. The pressure I need for "air floating" my vehicles above the road is inversely proportional to the area of the tires that are touching the road, the so-called contact patch -- in general, the more contact patch, the less pressure I need for "air floating" the vehicle. Even though the Ducati masses less than the 'Vette, it has a significantly smaller contact patch (on the order of one or two magnitudes less) so it needs more pressure to accomplish the "air floating." The contact patch of a 100 m^2 house is about 4 orders of magnitude larger than a 'Vette's contact patch, but the house only masses maybe two orders of magnitude more than the 'Vette, so the amount of pressure I need for "air floating" my house above the earthquake is around two orders of magnitude less than what's needed for "air floating" the 'Vette above the road. As somebody demonstrated above, that pressure is obtainable with my own lungs. The amount of air I would need to move under the house though, is formidable. A 3cm tall column of air under a 100m^2 house has a volume of 3000 liters; if I can move 400 ml with each breath (probably less, I smoke) it would take about eight thousand breaths to fill it. If I breathe about six times a minute (don't want to get dizzy) it would take me about 1500 minutes, or about a day, to move that much air with just my lungs.

Re:Car analogy please?

[FormOfActionBanana]

Wow, do you really drive a Chevette?

Tohuku Earthquake != Fukushima

[tp1024]

The earthquake and tsunami was the disaster, not the accident at Fukushima. There were dead people from the nuclear accident and 50,000 evacuated (not counting those in the evacuation zone whose houses have been destroyed by the tsunami) is a lot less worse than the earthquake's and tsunami's 20.000 dead + 500,000 evacuated.

Half a million were evacuated from utterly destroyed houses in an area now prohibited from permanent human habitation because of the tsunami hazard ... and the unwillingness of the Japanese to raise tsunami protection of cities, which reasonably enough was the same height for cities as for nuclear power plants, from 6m to 16m. Strangely enough, there was no finger pointing and no complaints about lacking tsunami protection of cities, where ... well, you know, people live (and died) and didn't get an advance warning of 2 days to evacuate before the tsunami hit.

Re:Tohuku Earthquake != Fukushima

[tp1024]

Of course, there were no dead people from the nuclear accident - unless you're counting the one man who died from a heart attack in the aftermath. (One crane operator died in Fukushima Daini because of the earthquake and two people were swept away by the tsunami in Daiichi. Not even the explosions killed anyone, because people were warned of elevated hydrogen concentrations by instruments dedicated to just that purpose. The hazard was known, but the Japanese decided not to do anything about it by upgrading their plants.)

Re:Tohuku Earthquake != Fukushima

[Anonymous Coward]

Japan should immediately fix a badly damaged condition at this time.
disave

thks

Re:Tohuku Earthquake != Fukushima

[Anonymous Coward]

SHUT UP!

Radiation is scary.
Water is not.

Actual danger is irrelevant, just as this scheme's actual ability to protect a structure is irrelevant. There's money to be made from fear, the last thing we need is kill-joys like yourself bringing up bothersome things like facts and logic.

Re:Tohuku Earthquake != Fukushima

[drinkypoo]

. There were dead people from the nuclear accident and 50,000 evacuated (not counting those in the evacuation zone whose houses have been destroyed by the tsunami) is a lot less worse than the earthquake's and tsunami's 20.000 dead + 500,000 evacuated.

The health cost of the releases of radioactive material from Fukushima Daiichi is incalculable. They were numerous and they were, in some cases, quite hot. And that's disregarding utterly the flushes into the ocean, or the likelihood of seepage.

Re:Tohuku Earthquake != Fukushima

[AmiMoJo]

Raising walls is not really the answer for dealing with tsunami. They are looking at other options like placing things under the surface of the sea which will remove a lot of the energy from the wave, making it smaller.

Re:Tohuku Earthquake != Fukushima

[tp1024]

The health cost of 20.000 dead is incalcuable - vanished in minutes, not even a chance to say good bye. There is a health cost of two oil refineries and a chemical plant burning uncontrolled for a days. Thousands of tons of benzene must have contaminated the area. There were problemes with supply of naphta, benzene, xylene and toluol (all important to plastics and chemical industry) worldwide after the earthquake and tsunami brought down a dozen chemical plants or so.

Carcinogenic effects of benzene are known to require mere micrograms. You can't smell it, you can't see it, taste it or detect it in any way not requiring major analytical equipment in those quantities. There is no Geiger Counter for organic molecules and no Star Trek tricorder will tell you were some minute trace of the stuff is. Radioactivity, for all its dangers, is at least easy and very reliable to detect, at levels that are not dangerous (you can detect differences in the level of natural background radiation).

Sure, it's not cancer unless it's caused by radioactivity. But have a look at cancer mortality in the USA and tell me why Mississippi, Louisiana or Delaware haven't been evacuated despite cancer mortality being 12% higher than US national average and 25% higher than in states like New Mexico, Arizona or Colorado? (Even here I'm treating the two lowest numbers in Utah and Hawaii, as well as the two highest in Kentucky and West Virginia, as outliers.)

[sarcasm]What is the health cost of not evacuating everyone to Hawaii?[/sarcasm]

Re:Tohuku Earthquake != Fukushima

[Anonymous Coward]

The health cost of the releases of radioactive material from Fukushima Daiichi is incalculable. They were numerous and they were, in some cases, quite hot. And that's disregarding utterly the flushes into the ocean, or the likelihood of seepage.

Of course, "incalculable" means that they could be lower than the cost of coal ash releases, lower than the cost of an airplane flight to Sydney, or higher than GDP of China. One generally chooses that word to imply that the costs are closer to the GDP of China than to any more reasonable figure.

"Quite hot" is a similarly vague term, in that anything 1000x, or 10,000x greater than regulatory limits is clearly scary. On the other hand, regulatory limits are for continuous release, and it's really hard to guess the effect of 50 nanocuries/kg of soil contamination, or of radiation levels 10x background. Especially when you consider that our best guesses about the effects of such low doses are based on linear extrapolation from data collected in uranium miners.

Lastly, it continues to be interesting that dilution, presumed to be an effective means for disposing of the toxins from all other forms of power generation (including solar, wind, and hydro, and the campfire we'd all use if we returned to the gilded Stone Age), is not appropriate for nuclear, simply because we can detect radiation with vastly greater sensitivity than we can detect other forms of chemical contamination.

Re:Tohuku Earthquake != Fukushima

[tp1024]

Try and read about the real science, it wasn't just a couple of uranium miners, not even close (and those 2000 pages are just a dense selection of research done until 1980). Also, ten times the average background radiation can be naturally found in several places (e.g. in Cornwall or Denver, Colorado) with relatively high thorium/uranium concentrations in the soil, without detectable effects.

Finally, the approach of diluting toxins has not been followed for decades. These days the general approach is concentration and indefinite storage - as most of those toxins know no such thing as a half-life. (Germany is storing more than 2 mio tons at just one site in salt caverns. But nobody cares, because it's not radioactive.)

Re:Tohuku Earthquake != Fukushima

[drinkypoo]

Dilution has been shown repeatedly to not be a solution to anything because of bioaccumulation. You can disperse it into the environment and living things will re-concentrate it for you.

Ninety-Nine Percenter version?

[macraig]

So what does the shantytown version look like?

Re:Ninety-Nine Percenter version?

[cffrost]

So what does the shantytown version look like?

Something like this?

Re:Ninety-Nine Percenter version?

[macraig]

Nah... we want the house to jump, not the people in it! :-)

This sounds just as effective as...

[Sigvatr]

...that house in the Simpsons that sprouts legs and attempts to run away, before keeling over and bursting into flames.

Power Outage?

[SpaghettiWestern]

The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant was screwed because most of the power generators were installed in a basement that was subsequently flooded and therefore useless to keep the pumps going to pump fresh seawater in to cool the cores, causing ongoing level 7 meltdowns at three reactors.

From the wikipedia page ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Power_Plant ):
"The reactor's emergency diesel generators and DC batteries, crucial components in helping keep the reactors cool in the event of a power loss, were located in the basements of the reactor turbine buildings. The reactor design plans provided by General Electric specified placing the generators and batteries in that location, but mid-level engineers working on the construction of the plant were concerned that this made the back up power systems vulnerable to flooding. TEPCO elected to strictly follow General Electric's design in the construction of the reactors."

The design basis for [the plant] for tsunamis was 5.7 meters. The earthquake triggered powerful tsunami waves that reached heights of up to 40.5 metres.
Around 4.4 million households in northeastern Japan were left without electricity and 1.5 million without water.
Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami


So say right that the power to the Air Danshin Systems Inc installation is taken out by an earthquake and there is no 'levitating' to be had? Aftershocks?

I doubt each installation would have its own generator and even if it did it would have to be left running in order to be able to kick in if power was lost.

Lessons learned, maybe not.

Better video demonstration on model house

[tick-tock-atona]

I don't care if it's practical or not - it's damn cool!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzSuuk4um44

What about after the earth-quake?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about creating a scandal proof safety compliance system, for maybe I dunno nuclear reactors?

mod D[own

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Therefore it's every day.5..Like I'll have offended

Failure mode in lateral movement

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

1. House goes up on air cushion.
2. Ground below shifts sideways several meters.
3. House goes down off its foundation.

Re:Failure mode in lateral movement

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can think of something within 30s, the engineers building it probably thought of that as well.

Re:Failure mode in lateral movement

[JanneM]

4. Everybody survived and most belongings are fine, unlike the house next door that collapsed over its occupants.

Re:Failure mode in lateral movement

[Dunbal]

1. House fails to go up on air cushion since the compressor did not start due to brown outs caused by 10 million other compressors attempting to draw power at the same time.

2. Transformers and substations explode all over Japan, and emergency services are left without power.

3. Occupants die, but at least are saved the embarassment of realizing how much money their government obliged them to waste on a useless system when they made installation mandatory.

Re:Failure mode in lateral movement

[Dunbal]

Translation: AC is a mindless sheep who believes that everything he reads is a brilliant idea put forward by highly intelligent selfless people without any agenda at all. Now stop questioning things and BELIEVE! Amen, brother.

Re:Failure mode in lateral movement

[jandrese]

If the ground shifts several meters then your house is not going to have water, sewer, or power when it lands either. I'm guessing they'll have to tether the house to the ground a little bit (maybe with big springs?) so it doesn't wander too far off of its foundation.

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Just checked the date ...

[Alain Williams]

It is 1st March, not 1st April. I'm still not convinced, maybe someone got the month wrong.

What about the ups and downs?

[boundary]

I can understand how this gizmo might protect a house from the side-to-side waves ( P-waves?) that earthquakes create. But not so sure it's going to do much to protect a house from the up-and-down type waves (S- and L- waves)...

Rubber vibration mounts

[flyingfsck]

I just think that rubber vibration mounts would be so much simpler.

Re:Rubber vibration mounts

[JanneM]

Small mounts can handle only small displacements. Large mounts are frequently used for large buildings but are too big for single-family homes and small commercial buildings.

Re:Rubber vibration mounts

[Anonymous Coward]

Big bearing blocks with a synthetic wax core would seem appropriate for this task, and would seem simple enough. Shift the weight around enough in a given timespan and the wax would liquify and act as a hydraulic bearing allowing a house to float over its foundation. But since the wax is a solid when everything is stable, it would probably need less maintenance than a bearing with a core made of another lubricant. At least this seems a lot less complicated than some other systems, or is there something else engineering-wise that I'm missing?

Re:Rubber vibration mounts

[JanneM]

Doesn't sound like a bad idea at first blush. Of course, the wax would need to retain its characteristics over a wide range of temperatures and humidities. Most of Japan is temperate, with large temperature differences from summer to winter (we get about zero - freezing - in winter to almost 40 in high summer here in Osaka for instance). And the weather can range from long dry spells to typhoons.

All Slashdot geeks will die during the earthquake!

[PolygamousRanchKid]

. . . when their basement lairs are filled with compressed air!

. . . um, maybe it's time to think about moving into the attic . . .

Utilities

[boef]

One would assume that there would be some interesting flex connectors on things like water/ sewage/electrics etc. I did not notice anything in TFA (well, I only glanced OK). On the other hand, I suppose 3cm is not THAT much movement to deal with....

Re:Utilities

[rabbidsquirrel]

Seismic flex connections are common in the industry. Nothing special there. They are expensive though and require maintenance. Base isolation foundations are not new tech. No one has used airbags though - mostly because active systems (like this) are more prone to failure than passive systems. A system like this would also require 2 foundations... Making your house cost even more.

Roller skates ...

[Skapare]

... and some big rubber bands ... in 2 directions.

Not all waves are equal

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure that might save your house from the P-waves , but what happen when the S and L waves come and your house goes up and down. Pop goes the House!

What if...

[Tastecicles]

...the ground moves more than 3cm (in any direction)? It happens in major quakes; the 2006 tsunami was the result of the sea floor dropping over 2m. I've been through a 5-pointer, and the ground certainly moved more than 3cm, although it did move back as rapidly as it shifted. That one moved my entire house probably four inches and back, causing major structural damage (buckled window and doorframes, two cracks from foundation to roof) which is still being repaired after four years.. almost to the day, in fact(!).

Re:What if...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm... It's almost like that's the sort of thing the system is designed to protect against....

Not good... not good....

[erroneus]

The Fukushima disaster was a lot more than an earthquake. It was a tsunami!! Levitate your house off its foundation? Just makes it easier to wash away! You've got a house-boat and surf-board now.

Re:Not good... not good....

[hawguy]

The Fukushima disaster was a lot more than an earthquake. It was a tsunami!! Levitate your house off its foundation? Just makes it easier to wash away! You've got a house-boat and surf-board now.

The Fukushima plant is on the coast. not every home in Japan is in a coastal Tsunami inundation zone. But even if it is, if this system keeps your house from being destroyed, it might give you enough time to evacuate before the Tsunami hits.

questionable design

[Anonymous Coward]

There are several flaws with the design:

- it requires components which require maintanance. This is likely not to be done, and even when it is done, it is not guaranteed to work (backup generators in power plants fail frequently, despite being maintained. Thats why there are several backup generators).
- the compressor is probably powered by electricity. During earthquakes nuclear power plants automatically shut down. The earthquake could damage the power lines. An power outage is normal during a major earthquake. A solution would be a generator on site, but that would require more maintanance, and since it doesn't start within a second, it would require a large number of backup batteries (also maintanance).
- an earhquake doesn't come alone. There are usually a large number of aftershocks. All those active components would have to whether a large number of aftershocks - even if there is no electricity.

A passive approach to securing a building against earthquakes seems much more reasonable and likely to work.

Magnetic levitation?

[andyteleco]

How much energy would be needed to lift a house for a short period of time using magnetic levitation?

At what cost could the electro magnets and the necessary batteries be installed. Would it be even feasible to store the needed energy in affordable batteries (to make it work in case of a power failure)?

Just a thought...

Every Man`s home is ...

[cpuffer_hammer]

His Bouncy Castle

Great

[Dunbal]

Nice to know, especially when an earthquake starts and every hous in Japan starts to draw power at the same time to run their compressors. Combine maximum demand with the period of maximum likelyhood of power failure and what do you get? Something that sounds really neat on paper with the only practical use of chasing dumb people with VC dollars. Japan would benefit much more in making their houses say, waterproof...

Wouldn't it be so much cheaper...

[Anonymous Coward]

... to just rebuild every single houses foundations as a shock absorber?
Vibrations are what destroy things. Simply by making a foundation to absorb most of it should be much better, no?

Hell, make houses float in a huge container of water, a few chains or ropes to hold it in place and prevent it from touching walls, bridge, best house right there.
Build in some wave-cancelling that spawned from metamaterial research (easy to do at this scale) and there should be very little vibrations despite the liquid.
Japan has plenty of water around it, it doesn't need to be pure water since it is merely a container.
This would even likely be cheaper and not break down, which the levitating house is very likely to do, not to mention the risk of explosive accidents due to broken valves or even more things that could go wrong.
Plus, now your house doubles as a boat if a tsunami decides to come your way. Not a very good boat, but still a boat that won't (if designed right) get you drowned.
This would also work with vertical waves as well to a slightly lesser extent, but still better than the summary house.

Just avoid the resonant frequency

[Chrisq]

If the resonant frequency of the house moving backward and forward on the cushion is within the frequency of earth oscillations then this could make things worse rather than better!

Re:Just avoid the resonant frequency

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly what I just thought about.
How their scientists are going to predict changing frequency of that natural phenomena ?
This could make things worse rather than better.

Re:Just avoid the resonant frequency

[Overzeetop]

Luckily, air cushions have huge hysteresis losses which tend to act as dampers.

"For a small price...

[Chris Mattern]

"...I can install this little blue button to get you down."

The land of the rising sun... and now homes

[__aancvu2993]

So the superaffluent will have their hovercrafted homes turned over and smashed against something in the hurricane accompanying the earthquake or will crash into some poor (pun intended) man's home that's not floating away in the flood accompanying the earthquake. Since the rich neighborhoods have surely CCTV coverage, it will be hilarious.

This invention needs more air/seaworthiness. After that, what could go wrong?

It would probably be cheaper...

[Oswald McWeany]

It would probably be cheaper to move Japan 100 miles west than it would be to install compressed air systems on the homes/offices/schools/ and workplaces of 130 million people.

Attach ropes to Japan and give them to people in South Korea and pay them to pull real hard.

Overkill

[GameboyRMH]

Passive solutions already exist that can handle this. Basically the house is built on a platform that has domed feet (or roller-balls) that rest in metal bowls embedded in a traditional foundation. When the earthquake hits, the massive inertia of the house easily overcomes the high friction at these movement points, and the house nearly stays still while the ground moves underneath it. The bowls allow plenty of travel and have vertical sides to minimize the chance of the house skipping off the lower foundation entirely.

Inertia is a powerful thing, as an example one time I had to get my dad to give my little Samurai a tow to the shop. I tried to explain about carefully taking up the slack on the tow strap before moving, but as usual he couldn't be bothered with all my "nerdy overanalysis" and he just took off with a good 4-6 feet of slack in the strap. His crossover bounced back like it was tied to a tree (lucky the strap didn't snap), and he said that's what it felt like, and asked it I was holding the brakes down. Nope, that's little more than just the inertia of a 2300lb object.

F.A.R.T.

[drainbramage]

So I can no become a Foundation Air Reaction Technician?
My Mom would be so proud.

Absolutely incredible.

[Anonymous Coward]

...a compressor, which forces an incredible amount of air under the home...

I find that completely unbelievable. Beyond credibility, even.

Extrapolating 50 years . . .

[Greg Merchan]

Meet George Jet-san.

Ahem...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now they just have to find a way to levitate the compressor.

Um, major fail

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

This assume the foundation will be in the "exact" same location as before the earthquake and there is no upwards shift in the ground.

Not to mention that if you don't mount the air compressor and backup generator high enough, the tsunami will take out your fail safe.

Have you not learned anything Japan?

Re:Um, major fail

[hawguy]

This assume the foundation will be in the "exact" same location as before the earthquake and there is no upwards shift in the ground.

Not to mention that if you don't mount the air compressor and backup generator high enough, the tsunami will take out your fail safe.

Have you not learned anything Japan?

Not every house in Japan in in a Tsunami inundation zone. And even for those that are, if this keeps you alive long enough to escape your house and evacuate before the Tsunami hits, it still seems like a win.

It doesn't matter if the foundation ends up in exactly the same place after the quake, even if it's shifted a meter or two to the side, the house will rest unevenly on the foundation until it's recentered. Which seems a lot better than having the rubble that used to be your house sitting perfectly centered on the foundation.

Not every solution will meet every need. This solution protects against a particular type of earthquake, for quakes that have significant vertical motion, this would not be very effective and might even be detrimental.

It's just superconductor electromagnetism!

[Anonymous Coward]

It levitates:

• bullet trains from Tokyo to Osaka
• my house, for I ride the saddle of the world

• MEEEE!!!

eject!

[stinky wizzleteats]

It's an earthquake...

Quick! Jettison the house!

no miscommunication

[cstacy]

How much energy would be needed to lift a house for a short period of time using magnetic levitation?

This is impossible to estimate because nobody knows how f*ing magnets actually work.
Meanwhile, the tides come in, the tides go out, and tsunami's are the problem.

questionable engineering

[PJ6]

It would be easier to lower a supporting base than it would be to raise the whole house. You know, that whole less work and less inertia thing.

And since they're not designing for up-and-down, a hydraulic coupling would be better, which could be engaged by a passive, purely mechanical movement-triggered fluid transfer.

What? no magnets?

[doccus]

"It's , like, all magnets, Carter"..That's what I thought they were referring to, a kind of mag-lev solution.. I suppose keeping the house from sliding off would be a problem.. but so would power generation, as in the case of blowing air under the house.. Wouldn't building a house on a humungous set of shocks instead, be better? I believe they already do that too..