Straw Building Passes Quake Test

After Pakistan was devastated by an earthquake in 2005, Darcey Donovan, an engineer in California, pursued designs for quake-resistant homes using local materials. The result was a straw-bale building. It withstood substantial shaking in tests at the University of Nevada, Reno.
More on building resilient communities at DOT EARTH: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com

More on this project at http://www.paksbab.org and http://www.unr.edu

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• disasters
• earthquake
• pakistan
• engineering
• design
• sustainability
• mechanics
• haiti
• quakes

[jasonlajoie]

Hey TylerNumb Nuts, this is a video about making earthquake safe homes. Piss the fuck off and go rant your dumb-ass on some anti-Islam site.

[suprapower420]

i tired to type everything that is wrong with that statement..but i find its alot more simpler so just say..you are a complete moron!

[Capture1Errday]

@light4darkness

1. Put adobe around the straw bales and you have a perfect material to absorb and distribute any moisture.

[Th3R3M1nd3r]

I like the video, I don't think the bitch was necessary.

[kkage2]

@britlit101 same as if you take a BBQ lighter, and put the end in a container of gasoline, so the end is completely submerged, and attempt lighting it, it will still spark in the gas, but the gas will not light because there is no oxygen..

[britlit101]

@kkage2 I found a website, quite reputable, TLC.com, that describes the resistance of strawbale homes to fire. But according to them a study was conducted by the Research Council of Canada and to my surprise found that strawbale walls resisted temps as high as 1850 degrees fahrenheit for TWO HOURS. Cool, huh!! But the reason is simple, according to TLC the straw is tightly compacted together which reduces the amount of oxygen between the straw. And we all know fire needs oxygen to burn.

[kkage2]

@britlit101 nope... 

[sayanlevel5]

how about fire can they withstand that?

[light4darkness]

good work, but

1. 10-20 yrs later, how's rotting going to affect the straw?

2. They did not collapse, YET. If a poor person goes thru 1 earthquke, then fails to repair, or just patches cosmetically, will it hold up in earthqake #2, or 3, like they had in Chile? You might give them a false sense of security. Run the simulator till it fails, so you know the outcome.

[britlit101]

Actually magnusalexa, the use of straw is quite fire resistant. As hard as it may be to believe, it's true.

[magnusalexa]

building homes in pakistAN WITH STRAW IS A FIRE RISK WAITING TO HAPPEN

[Sinomis]

Wtf you talking about man?