Lifesize Lego Blocks Made From Rubble Make Up New Haiti Homes

[1monster]

Last edited Sat Aug 1, 2015, 04:45 PM - Edit history (1)

Making disaster rubble into building blocks for new, safer homes.

info page: https://themobilefactory.org/news/sergio-valkenburg-and-the-mobile-factory-help-make-haiti-beautiful-again/

Indigogo fund raising page: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-mobile-factory#/story

[cantbeserious]

1. Great Idea - Very Practical

eom

[MADem]

2. This is the kind of thing that deserves to be on the GREATEST page!!

Posts about divisive shit get hundreds of recs, when it's stuff like this that really deserves to be seen and discussed.

What a GREAT idea!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Action_Patrol]

14. Another reason you're one of my favorites.

[SamKnause]

3. K&R x 10000000000000

Awesome !!!

[NV Whino]

4. Wow, great stuff.

[haikugal]

5. $1.....where's the link!!!!!

What a great idea for many disaster or war torn areas...impressive idea but where's the link? How are we to help by acting without a link?

I like this...kick and rec!!!

[1monster]

8. Here it is. (Adding it to the OP)

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-mobile-factory#/story

[haikugal]

9. Thanks!!!!!

[passiveporcupine]

6. Love it

Fantastic way to re-use and renew old resources.

[List left]

7. link to their indiegogo page

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-mobile-factory#/story

[localroger]

10. I'd like to see a more technical presentation

This video is slick but it elides a lot of the real difficulties. Reducing rubble (presumably concrete rubble) to liquid cement requires crushing it, which requires energy, and new adhesive to bind it into those blocks. The practicality of this depends a lot on what chemicals and energy sources are used. The usual binder, portland cement, has little tensile strength so homes built with simple cast blocks will NOT be earthquake proof. All other binders I know of are ridiculously expensive. Reinforcement can be added with things like fiberglass strands, but again this is new material that needs to be introduced like the binder. Also nothing is said about what's done for the roof -- sheet metal, I presume?

This may be a great project but it's the kind of project a LOT of people have been working on in various forms since the 1960's, and this really does not indicate that they've solved any of the problems that have kept all those projects from making much of a dent in the world.

[1monster]

11. While not a technical explanation, this might help a little...

They identify, sort, separate, crush, and filter the debris before making the concrete. I would assume that it is the way any recycling operation works.

I don't know why the image won't reproduce here, but this is the url for the image.

http://res.cloudinary.com/indiegogo-media-prod-cld/image/upload/c_limit,w_620/v1434477098/ihexe7woqgmybiloyfdg.png

[MADem]

15. From another source, the very image--

[1monster]

16. Thanks!

[MADem]

19. I love this idea--and the "lego-ness" of the blocks makes them earthquake resistant

up to 8.5 on the Richter scale...!!!

[localroger]

20. Thanks, but it's still not answered

After the crushing, what holds the crushed stuff together to make a Q-brixx? This is very important and nontrivial. You have to realize hundreds of businesses and inventors have been working on this since the 1960's. There is extensive literature. All of the solutions are either very imperfect or very expensive. The simplest thing, casting the bricks with Portland Cement, has almost no tensile strength. It is very specifically considered hazardous for earthquake zones. All of the alternate adhevsives that do have more strength, such as epoxies and other plastics, are brutally expensive, and all of the reinforcing techniques for portland cement are either expensive or don't perform well. The only ones I could imagine them using in this technique are fiberglass strands, which basically have no effect until the cement matrix cracks and fails, or steel fiber strands which will corrode and either lose their strength or spall the concrete much faster than regular rebar does.

[MADem]

23. The inventor is saying these are good up to 8.5 on the Richter scale.

Here they say the blocks move with the earthquake, rather than breaking:

I'm no engineer--could it be the "lego" aspect that makes it work?

[localroger]

26. I get that the wall doesn't fall down if the blocks don't disintegrate.

What I can't figure out is how the blocks, particularly the lower rows under a lot of compressive force, don't disintegrate when the horizontal ground movement arrives. I did a lot of math on walls like this back in the mid aughts. You do not want to be in any kind of building held together by portland cement without rebar in a seismic event.

[1monster]

29. I am not a building contractor or an engineer, but I can tell you this...

I live in a city that has walls that were built 200, 300, plus years ago. They were made with a concrete called tabby.

Tabby is made from burning oyster shells to make lime, then adding the lime, water, sand, ash, and broken oyster shells to make a concrete.

Those tabby walls built all those years ago are still very strong and they were not expensive to make.

The strength of the design used here is not in the tensile strength of the blocks, but in the lego style of the bricks and the way they are put together with the bamboo frame with the tension wire that allows the building to have flexibility.

Although I haven't yet read all of the material given on the various web sties, I didn't see anything about Portland cement. What do they do in, say, San Francisco to make their buildings more resistant to earthquake damage?

I'm sure that these people have a pretty good idea of what they are doing. There is another video on one of the sites that talks to the people from the companies that have given/donated money to this enterprise. Some of those people are engineers and are donating their expertise to this project. (It's in Dutch, with English subtitles.)

Every time someone posts something on DU about people who are trying to make this a better world, there are those who have to make a post indicating that the project is not feasible or possible. Yet, two of those that I can remember, the kid who wants to clean up the seas and the Solar Roadways, are happening. This one is already in the making. They just want to expand it.

[MADem]

17. There is no binder between the bricks--they're cement legos, basically.

They will survive an 8.5 on the Richhter scale apparently. See this video, you can see the bricks being made:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=79&v=YOLcwGlSrUA

It doesn't look like they are building massive homes, here--more like durable shelters.

The roof is bamboo in their examples.

http://themobilefactory.org/


Here is the manual for the bricks: http://themobilefactory.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/150406-XCOOP-manualT-shelter-rubble72dpi.pdf

[localroger]

18. Not the binder between the bricks

I get that the bricks are gravity stacked. I'm talking about the binder that holds the bricks themselves together into a solid mass. Simple cast concrete without reinforcement crumbles very easily and is not considered earthquake resistant.

Like I said people have been working on this since the 1960's and there are no really affordable solutions that I know of.

[MADem]

21. The Dutch guys are saying they are earthquake resistant up to 8.5 on the Richter scale.

See the links above--you can see them making the bricks.

[localroger]

24. I now have watched the videos

I don't know who made that certification, but bricks held together by portland cement at the bottom of a wall will not sustain an earthquake, full stop. This is a known problem and one frequently levelled at other techniques used in places like Mexico, where cement is cheap but rebar isn't. So there there is something critical missing if this is what it claims to be, and I see more effort put into snazzy animations (and the funding drive) than explaining how this really improves on anything that was being done in 1974 except by making the factory portable.

[localroger]

22. OK, on watching the videos

This has been done, and it's not earthquake proof. I don't know who they got to certify the bricks as earthquake proof but there is no way that one of those bricks at the bottom of an 8 foot high wall is earthquake proof unless he is putting something a lot more expsensive than portland cement into the slurry. I got deep into this stuff after living through Katrina and made a couple of trips out west to look at actual buildings and processes. I suppose it's good if you thiink of it as turning the rubble into "temporary structures that are better than tents," but that's ALL it is.

[MADem]

25. Apparently they get that rating in the Netherlands--the blocks apparently have some "give"

to them. They move "without breaking" with the earthquake rather than fight against it. That's what this guy is saying:

[localroger]

27. I'll believe it when I see them go through an actual earthquake

...or a proper simulation at full scale.

You need to remember that for engineering purposes the tensile strength of unreinforced concrete is considered to be ZERO. And that's fine when you have a concrete structure supporting itself against gravity, because that's all compressive force. But when you start shaking it you introduce all kinds of off-center loads which produce shear forces, which unreinforced concrete essentially has no resistance to, at all. So I'm sure one of these structures looks fine and sound and all sitting in the guy's back yard but like ground that liquefies, the math says it might be very different when the ground starts moving around beneath it.

[MADem]

28. You are talking to someone who is an admitted dunce on these issues.

That said, if I had to trust anyone, blindly, with regard to building something sturdy and lasting, I'd put money on the Dutch. They have to build walls--little Dutch boys and their fingers notwithstanding-- that keep out the OCEAN! I would hope they would take these factors into consideration. Also, they do seem to be very precise about the preparation of the base of these things, too--I don't think they're just building it on bare dirt. Perhaps the whole mess kind of dances along as the ground moves?

That was actually filmed at the Port of Amsterdam, on a chunk of land given over for the purposes of setting up a display/demonstration by the government. I suppose it's also a good staging area for the containers as well. I think the government are hopeful that this project will do well.

[Uncle Joe]

12. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, 1monster.

[SoapBox]

13. K & R!

Brilliant.