An architect has found a way to build flood-proof homes
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Is it something to do with structures that don't get knocked down by rushing water? Or something to do with allowing water to pass through rather than resisting it? Something to do with not breaking down after being submerged for days? Is this about the bamboo itself, or is it mainly about a different construction technique that just happens to use bamboo, but would work equally well with other materials?
What is this being compared against -- cinder block construction? Wooden frame construction? Or something basic like earthen huts?
The article's subtitle asks the question "What makes the material so ‘marvelous’?" -- but doesn't seem to answer it at all.
In some places building where it can flood is done for some local reason, but that isn't normal for most places.
I can't think of a single area that completely avoids building in potential flood zones, I can only think of governments that spend a lot of effort managing water so floods happen less frequently than they naturally would.
That makes as much sense as saying RV's are flood-proof because you can drive them to higher land.
But in this case you have to dismantle your entire home (requires an able-bodied adult), load it and all of your possessions on a truck (that you don't own) and drive it probably many miles away, wait out the flood, and then do it all in reverse.
(And stilts don't require bamboo -- they've been around for a long time.)
When you're about to crash, don't.
Aren't this common all over the world? In Eastern Europe the bamboo is just replaced with tree branches.
Why it has to be copied and why the villagers have to be trained to build them since everyone knows how to build them for at least a couple of thousands of years? (I participated in building two).
“Stilt house”
A probably bigger problem though is you'd need to add production steps to an already not dirt cheap material to create larger surfaces to make veneer from. And I'd imagine the veneer has potential to be mighty ugly since it'd have to be from a bunch of glued up boards.
Maybe bamboo OSB would be a simpler and cheaper experimentation.
Unfortunately I don’t have the skills to pursue this.
I can say as someone who has a hobby woodworking in NA though, even factory made bamboo items can be reasonably pricey for the amount of material used. I'm sure most of the costs are shipping but, I struggle to imagine the traditional 4x8' sheets of plywood being made of bamboo ending up being cost efficient without some serious production innovations (not that it wouldn't interest me endlessly).
It got me thinking of can someone mass produce simple pipes pre-filled with electrical wiring and outlets that don't require sophisticated knowledge to install/connect to solar? How do you cheaply bring up the standard of living in these $176 houses?
This comment gave me the idea that you could just run the electrical wiring through another piece of bamboo, since it's hollow and about the size of an electrical pipe. After searching, I didn't see whole lot of interest in this -- maybe it's too flammable? There is one DIY guide for decorative use, but that's it.
(Residential wiring doesn’t use conduit, outside of weird jurisdictions like Chicago, where conduit is mandatory for residential wiring. Romex (NM cable) is what homes are wired with)
I was told that appliances would often come with a wire and no plug and it'd be the expectation that the consumer would acquire and solve the rest.
This already exists, Reloc is one of the companies that makes pre-manufactured electrical cables and pre-wired electrical devices with simple plug together connectors.
‘Prefilled conduit with wire’ on its own has existed for a long time, MC cable is used in commercial electrical wiring, I think there’s also a residential variant of armored cable (BX?). There’s also SO cord, which is a bundle of conductors with a non-metallic jacket around it.
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>Summary: The article describes how architect Yasmeen Lari has pioneered the use of bamboo in constructing over 85,000 structures in Pakistan to house those displaced by flooding. Lari found bamboo to be an ideal building material while helping refugees - it is strong, readily available, fast-growing, and can last 50-100 years if properly maintained. She has now set an ambitious goal to construct 1 million new disaster-resistant bamboo homes across Pakistan's flood-prone areas over the next two years. The structures are designed to be easily dismantled and rebuilt when floods hit to provide more permanent housing solutions.