Construction

Traditional Japanese Way to Preserve Wood with Fire using Shou Sugi Ban, Yakisugi on my log cabin (Video)

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For clarification:

Thomas Russell:

“I could be wrong, but I thought the char was left on as the protectant? Either way, nice blend of cultural history going into the cabin. I’m loving it. (Comment NOT sponsored by McDonald’s.)”

My Self Reliance:

“lol. You’re right. The heat still carbonizes some of the underlying wood and some of the char remains even after brushing lightly. However, leaving the full char on for exterior applications means it will last that much longer before the char erodes off. I’m only using this brush and oil technique on the interior where it won’t be exposed to weather.”

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This House Was 3D-Printed In Under 24 Hours At A Cost Of Just $10,000

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– This House Was 3D-Printed In Under 24 Hours At A Cost Of Just $10,000:

While 3D-printing may have been faded away in recent years from the spotlight of core “disruptive” technologies, that may soon change again after a company managed to 3D-print an entire house in just 24 hours. Located in Russia, the following 400-square-foot home, or 37 square meters, was built in just a day, at a cost of slightly over $10,000.

 

As profiled in the Telegraph, the company Apis Cor, 3D-printing specialists based in Russia and San Francisco, built the house using a mobile printer on-site. According to the company, the walls of the building were printed and painted in just 24 hours.

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A Manhattan “Pool In The Sky” – For The Billionaire Who Has Everything Else

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20160426_pool

– A Manhattan “Pool In The Sky” – For The Billionaire Who Has Everything Else:

If you have a lot of disposable cash, and a desire to go swimming 28 storeys above the Manhattan streets in a pool connecting two buildings, you’re in luck.

Forget the Skycraper Index as a sign of an imminent top, the “Pool In The Sky” Signal may just have outdone it.

From ABC News

By next year, the wealthiest New Yorkers will be able to swim 300-feet in the air in a swimming pool suspended between two towers.

Read moreA Manhattan “Pool In The Sky” – For The Billionaire Who Has Everything Else

“Made Out Of Sand” – A Dramatic Look Inside A Newly Built Chinese Apartment Building

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– “Made Out Of Sand” – A Dramatic Look Inside A Newly Built Chinese Apartment:

While real estate is all about “location, location, location,” it appears there are sometimes more prescient factors that any prospective buyer should pay attention to. Amid yet another government-fueled housing bubble, it seems in their haste to fulfil a rapacious demand for property in which to gamble their hard-grafted assets, Chinese construction companies have cut a few corners. As the following stunning video shows, a “newly constructed apartment” crumbles before the owners’ eyes as the ‘concrete’ walls turn to sand…

LiveLeak exposes, in the following video, just how poor the standards can be of so-called “new” properties. LiveLeak footage shows two men in a supposedly “new apartment building” in China where the concrete walls crumble like sand.

China is currently in the midst of a huge property bubble…

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Read more“Made Out Of Sand” – A Dramatic Look Inside A Newly Built Chinese Apartment Building

China Builds A Bridge In Just 43 Hours (Video)

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– Caught On Tape: China Builds A Bridge In Just 43 Hours:

When you have a billion people willing to work instead of expecting free “stuff”, anything’s possible… Earlier this year, a Chinese construction company had erected a 57-story skyscraper in just 19 days. This time the Chinese have built an overpass in mere 43 hours!

Workers took apart the old structure of Beijing’s Sanyuan Bridge in a few hours. Then they brought an entire piece of concrete to bridge the gap and paved it over, reports Citylab.com.

To build the bridge, over 1300 tonnes of new surfacing material was used which save months of commotion and traffic woes. For the first time in Chinese workers tried out a new ‘integrated replacement method.’

 

The Deadly Global War For … Sand

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Construction in Uttar Pradesh, India. Any building that needs concrete needs sand
Construction in Uttar Pradesh, India. Any building that needs concrete needs sand.

– The Deadly Global War for Sand (Wired, March 26,  2015):

The killers rolled slowly down the narrow alley, three men jammed onto a single motorcycle. It was a little after 11 am on July 31, 2013, the sun beating down on the low, modest residential buildings lining a back street in the Indian farming village of Raipur. Faint smells of cooking spices, dust, and sewage seasoned the air. The men stopped the bike in front of the orange door of a two-story brick-and-plaster house. Two of them dismounted, eased open the unlocked door, and slipped into the darkened bedroom on the other side. White kerchiefs covered their lower faces. One of them carried a pistol.

Inside the bedroom Paleram Chauhan, a 52-year-old farmer, was napping after an early lunch. In the next room, his wife and daughter-in-law were cleaning up while Paleram’s son played with his own 3-year-old boy.

Gunshots thundered through the house. Preeti Chauhan, Paleram’s daughter-in-law, rushed into Paleram’s room, her husband, Ravindra, right behind her. Through the open door, they saw the killers jump back on their bike and roar away.

Read moreThe Deadly Global War For … Sand

Meet The World’s First 3D-Printed Apartment Building (Made in China)

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“Simply incredible.”

… and most probably also incredibly toxic!

3D-Printed Apartment Building

– Made in China – Meet the World’s First 3D-Printed Apartment Building (Liberty Blitzkrieg, Jan 20, 2015):

The following story is simply fascinating. Provided this and similar structures are able to stand the test of time, it will have unbelievably deflationary consequences for home prices across the world.

I first highlighted this company, WinSun, last year in the piece: Zillow Study Shows 1 in 3 Homes are Unaffordable, Meanwhile Vacation Home Sales Soar. Here’s an excerpt:

This month, architects in Amsterdam started work on the world’s first completely 3D-printed house. It’ll take three years and quite a bit of money to finish. Meanwhile, in Shanghai, a company claims to have printed ten houses with inexpensive industrial scraps in less than a day. What’s the difference?

It depends on your definition of 3D printing. Both projects are using massive 3D printers; in Shanghai, it’s 490 feet long, 33 feet wide, and 20 feet deep. Rather than expensive plastic, though, the Chinese company WinSun Decoration Design Engineering Co is printing with a concrete aggregate “made in part from recycled construction waste, industrial waste, and tailings,” according to the Architect’s Newspaper. Each of these homes costs less than $5,000.

Read moreMeet The World’s First 3D-Printed Apartment Building (Made in China)

Chinese Firm Showcases 3D-Printed Houses (Video)

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– Chinese firm showcases 3D-printed houses (RT, April 27, 2014):

A Chinese company is using 3D-printed blocks to build cheap and quickly assembled houses as a possible solution to the urgent problem of modernizing housing conditions in Chinese villages. The blocks are made from a mixture of sand, concrete and glass fiber, materials processed from common construction waste, which is pumped layer after layer through the top of a 6.6-meter-tall, 32-meter-long industrial printer.

China: 10 Recycled Concrete Houses 3D-Printed In 24 Hours

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– China: Recycled Concrete Houses 3D-Printed in 24 Hours (Business Insider, April 24, 2014):

A Chinese construction firm based in Shanghai has succeeded in building 10 houses each measuring 200 square metres in 24 hours by using an enormous 3D printer.

3d-printed-house-being-built-using-material-made-construction-waste-mixed-cement

A 3D-printed house being built using a material made from construction waste mixed with cementWinSun Decoration Design Engineering Co.

The houses are all eco-friendly and constructed from 3D-printed building blocks made from layers of recycled construction waste and glass fibre and mixed with cement.

Each home costs less than £3,000 to build.

Read moreChina: 10 Recycled Concrete Houses 3D-Printed In 24 Hours

Are Millions Of Business People At Risk of Dying In Collapsing Buildings?

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– Are Millions of Business People At Risk of Dying In Collapsing Buildings? (Washington’s Blog, Feb 13, 2014):

Death Traps?

Millions of people work in or visit high-rise buildings … assuming the buildings were more or less safe.

But it turns out that there is a severe, lethal risk of sudden collapse in even the best-made skyscrapers in America, Britain, Germany, Japan and other nations worldwide.

Read moreAre Millions Of Business People At Risk of Dying In Collapsing Buildings?

International Construction Firm Balfour Beatty Considering Drone Workers

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– International Construction Firm Balfour Beatty Considering Drone Workers (Technology Advice, Nov 8, 2013):

Most people associate drones with military and counter-terrorism programs, but Balfour Beatty CIO Danny Reeves wants to use them for a rather different purpose. Speaking at the Fujitsu Forum, he told Techworld that unmanned aerial vehicles could be used to build walls, and improve project efficiency.Balfour Beatty is a international construction and engineering firm that specializes in large-scale projects and building management. Their revenue for 2012 was approximately $17 billion, with an operating income of just under $500 million, so presumably they have the resources to commission a fleet of construction drones. Reeves also spoke of the potential for drones to monitor sprawling project sites, hopefully reducing communication errors and wasted labor on large sites.

Read moreInternational Construction Firm Balfour Beatty Considering Drone Workers

To Improve Today’s Concrete, Do As The Romans Did … Whose Massive Concrete Structures Have Withstood The Elements For More Than 2,000 Years

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– To improve today’s concrete, do as the Romans did (UC Berkeley, June 4, 2013):

BERKELEY – In a quest to make concrete more durable and sustainable, an international team of geologists and engineers has found inspiration in the ancient Romans, whose massive concrete structures have withstood the elements for more than 2,000 years.Using the Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), a research team from the University of California, Berkeley, examined the fine-scale structure of Roman concrete. It described for the first time how the extraordinarily stable compound – calcium-aluminum-silicate-hydrate (C-A-S-H) – binds the material used to build some of the most enduring structures in Western civilization.The discovery could help improve the durability of modern concrete, which within 50 years often shows signs of degradation, particularly in ocean environments.

Read moreTo Improve Today’s Concrete, Do As The Romans Did … Whose Massive Concrete Structures Have Withstood The Elements For More Than 2,000 Years

Greece: Economy Grinds To A Halt As New Construction Implodes By 66.6%

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– Greek Economy Grinds To A Halt As New Construction Implodes By 66.6% (ZeroHedge, Feb 12, 2013):

Some time ago we used to joke that the Greek economy, and by implication society, is literally falling apart due to its sacrifice at the altar of preserving the European, and thus global, status quo. It is no longer a joke, and the latest confirmation of the absolute halt in the Greek economy, which is now way beyond the liqudity trap and is now in a liquidity (and everything else) tiger cage is data on Greece Construction activity which according to data released on Tuesday by the Hellenic Statistical Authority is in complete freefall. From Kathimerini “In November 2012, total activity dropped 66.6 percent year-on-year in terms of building permits, 63.3 percent in terms of surface area and 65.4 percent in terms of volume.” Just 1,156 permits were issued across the country, corresponding to 197,000 square meters and 706,900 cubic meters. In the first 11 months of last year construction activity shrank by 36.4 percent in terms of permits, 30.3 percent in surface area and 28.7 percent in volume, compared with the same period in 2011. The statistics observed in private construction activity are virtually the same as the above, as activity in the public sector has effectively ground to a halt.

And for those curious how the people are surviving, the answer is simple: nobody is paying taxes:

Read moreGreece: Economy Grinds To A Halt As New Construction Implodes By 66.6%

‘We The Tiny House People’ (Full Documentary): Small Homes, Tiny Flats & Wee Shelters

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YouTube Added: 23.04.2012

Description:

TV producer and Internet-video personality Kirsten Dirksen invites us on her journey into the tiny homes of people searching for simplicity, self-sufficiency, minimalism and happiness by creating shelter in caves, converted garages, trailers, tool sheds, river boats and former pigeon coops.

Read more‘We The Tiny House People’ (Full Documentary): Small Homes, Tiny Flats & Wee Shelters

China Will Build the Tallest Building In the World in Just 90 Days (Update: Company Headquarters: Yes, That’s A Huge Pyramid At The Bottom!)

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– China Will Build the Tallest Building In the World in Just 90 Days (Updated) (GIZMODO, Nov 20, 2012):

According to its engineers, this will be the tallest skyscraper in the world by the end of March of 2013. Its name is Sky City, and its 2,749 feet (838 meters) distributed in 220 floors will grow in just 90 days in Changsha city, by the Xiangjiang river. Ninety days!

It’s not a joke. According to the construction company, the skyscraper will be built in just 90 days at the unbelievable rate of five floors per day.

Read moreChina Will Build the Tallest Building In the World in Just 90 Days (Update: Company Headquarters: Yes, That’s A Huge Pyramid At The Bottom!)

Namie-machi, Fukushima: 214,200 Bq/Kg Radioactive Cesium Detected In Crushed Stones

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– 214,200 Bq/Kg of Radioactive Cesium from Crushed Stones from Namie-machi, Fukushima (EX-SKF, Feb. 15, 2012):

Remember the radioactive apartment complex in Nihonmatsu City, Fukushima, where the concrete foundation contained the supposed “radioactive” crushed stone from the stone pit in Namie-machi, bordering the “no-entry” zone?

Fukushima Prefecture finally released the data on the radioactivity of the stones, and it was indeed high. The survey by the Fukushima prefectural government and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is still ongoing, in an effort to identify the elevated radiation levels coming off the concrete that used these crushed stones. Good luck.

Jiji Tsushin (2/15/2012) reports:

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…Fukushima Prefecture also announced the result of the survey at the stone pit [in Namie-machi] conducted on January 20. The crushed stones for concrete stored in the open without a roof were found with the maximum 120,200 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium, while the crushed stones used as subbase course materials were found with 214,200 becquerels/kg.

(At least) 7 tonnes of stones (for building exterior) from Fukushima Prefecture were sold in Tokyo last year, as I reported in my post on January 22, 2012. I haven’t heard news of whatever happened to them.