Nothing in this article explains, suggests, or justifies how or why building with bamboo is somehow "flood-proof", or what the alternative is and why it's not.
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.
It most certainly does. Direct quote: "If a flood is coming, homeowners can dismantle the structure’s bamboo skeleton from its permanent foundation and move it to higher ground. Bigger buildings, such as community centers, stand on stilts several feet high."
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.)
Elsewhere in the world, houses on stilts are the norm. This solution seems a little weird to me; evacuating people is a lot easier than evacuating homes.
What area are you talking about that people don't build where it floods? It certainly isn't Europe (Netherlands, Rhine valley, Venice), it isn't the middle east, it isn't Africa (Niger River, Nile), it isn't South America, it isn't SE Asia, it isn't E Asia, it isn't central Asia, it isn't Australia, etc.
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's fine, but all of the areas I mentioned are places where people build below the flood hazard level. Like, virtually the entire country of the Netherlands is a flood hazard zone, Venice floods nightly, Germany had the recent Rhine floods, Australia has building codes specific to construction in flood zones, the US has major urban centers in flood areas, and so on. I'm curious what area is being referred to where this sort of stuff doesn't happen.
> The bamboo homes, which combine mud and limestone facades with inner bamboo skeletons or bamboo roofs, are designed to be copied and pasted across Pakistan
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).
Lari’s current project subverts that structure. The bamboo homes, which combine mud and limestone facades with inner bamboo skeletons or bamboo roofs, are designed to be copied and pasted across Pakistan and perhaps, beyond its borders. Her foundation’s free YouTube videos show how to build the homes.
If @dang sees this message, some curiosities: Why is the timestamp around 10ish hours after I submitted it? Is this OP one that was resubmitted by the mods? Also, while I suppose anything could be flagged, what is going on?
Does anyone know if bamboo is capable of being used in engineered lumber? Could you make effective LVL or similar from it? Feels like you’d get dirt cheap, renewable, and super strong lumber this way.
Well, from my experience, bamboo isn't cheap, and from my reading varies in properties based on species at least as much as wood.
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.
No idea on price of bamboo but my thought is a plantation of it would dramatically outgrow pine. You could harvest numerous times per year. And seeing how pine costs have sores I wonder if there’s an edge there.
Unfortunately I don’t have the skills to pursue this.
Oh it most definitely grows faster, it's more a production question/investigation.
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).
I don't see why you couldn't grind up the fibers and compress them, but a lot of the strength of bamboo comes from its structure, so I'm not sure it would be much of an improvement.
So how are these flood proof? the TLDR she is designing super cheap limestone/mud/bamboo dwellings that last longer than tents. Are they being designed at elevation?
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?
> 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?
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.
From the article: "If a flood is coming, homeowners can dismantle the structure’s bamboo skeleton from its permanent foundation and move it to higher ground. Bigger buildings, such as community centers, stand on stilts several feet high."
Spot on. The definitions have been stretched too thin to retain meaning. If these are acceptable definitions then every impermenant structure is all-weather proof. We just need to be clairvoyant enough to migrate the structure before weather happens!
The prefilled pipes are called BX or armored cable, and outlets are wicked easy to wire in the first place. Impoverished people aren't idiots, they're just resource constrained.
thank you for that clarification. I also never suggested they were idiots. But resource constrained + not trained as electricians = me wondering how do you make it foolproof and safe and cheap.
Electric is not hard. A few people in the village become an electrician and just do it. I learned watching my dad doing various things in the house, and now my kids are learning watching me. My dad learned from his dad, who just read some books on the subject. (I also read books on the subject). Sure electric can get complex, but what happens in a house is covered by a few charts (what size wire to use, how many wires fit in a box...) and some logical thinking.
I think what I'd do is just build a light and outlet onto the bottom of a solar panel; cut the proper holes, drop solar panel onto roof, now there is a light bulb and outlet in your ceiling. But I have no idea if this is practical; is there a lot of caulk in the developing world? No idea. But "all in one" seems the most foolproof to me.
>It got me thinking of can someone mass produce simple pipes pre-filled with electrical wiring
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.
I don't think bamboo is entirely hollow. Doesn't it have solid junks at each "joint" or whatever it's called? That would mean to run wire or something else through them, you'd have to either drill out those parts, which would require a very long drill bit.
I've never done it, but apparently you can knock out the nodes with a long metal rod (like a piece of rebar or something) before the bamboo is completely dry, or after soaking or steaming it.
The main benefits of conduit are protection from physical damage, and having a raceway to neatly run wires/cabling in after a structure is built. I don't know that either one is particularly important here? Also I would think that electrification would revolve around the community centers rather than individual dwellings.
I don’t think bamboo is a listed raceway, I’ll have to double-check the NEC when I get back from lunch.
(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)
Yeah, they definitely need to add some cat6 to the walls of these structures. Ten gig switches are becoming cheap enough, and can provide heat in the winter. Then each individual home can connect to the community center with some buried fiber, plus a 60GHz point to point link for when it floods. The community center can have a few server racks for local media, and a satellite uplink. Wait, what are we talking about again?
>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.
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.