Saturday, November 9, 2013

Concrete Cloth: Why didn't I think of that!?

Probably because I am not a chemical engineer...

Anyway, have you heard about this stuff?  If you haven't, you should. I stumbled upon concrete canvas when I was looking for another solution for a quickly deployed, minimally structurally intensive low-income housing solution.  Turns out the company designed shelters made out of this stuff so that they could get refugees into suitable housing quickly in the event of a natural disaster.  Weird thing is that when they return to these refugee locations years later they are finding that the concrete canvas shelters are not only still there, but have been continuously inhabited and are standing up to the elements remarkably well.

The beauty of this stuff is that it is basically already reinforced.  It doesn't need any iron bar or mesh to hold it together.  It has two layers of really strong synthetic canvas holding it together and then the rest of the thickness of the product is an interwoven matrix of hollow tubes impregnated with dry concrete mix.  Dang.  That is soooo incredibly smart.  Picture thousands of interwoven pixie sticks... except they are full of concrete.  You get it wet, it cures in the shape that is given and badabing.  You have yourself a finished project!
It is being used in the UK for ditches, water erosion, even putting down foundations for structures... oooh, that sounds intriguing! Since it rolls out like cloth and is moldable, you could use it for just about anything.  

The problem:  well... as with any new technology, there are some costs involved.  
First of all, there is one company making this stuff in the entire world.  Their headquarters is located in a medium sized town in south Wales, and they can only make so much of it.  They have one distributor in the US as of right now even though they are prepping to enter the US market, thus their product is extremely expensive!  One of the shelters that they make, which provides 852 sq ft, costs around $30,000!  Yikes!  Since they mainly get government contracts in England and Wales, they have no need to lower their prices either because the governments get a good deal because it lessens man-power/wages.  

With all of that said though, they have won dozens of awards and are producing this stuff with almost the same invested energy of traditional concrete, which is still a lot, but this product doesn't need any more energy put into it once it is manufactured!  

This stuff also weighs more than a literal ton... actually about two tons for one of the shelters.  A roll of this stuff is so heavy that it requires special loading and rolling equipment to get it to the worksite.  Once it is there though, two workers can pull it off the roll or stake one end down and just drive the loader away and it will unroll itself.

Will this change the game for housing?  Probably not.  Not unless we can find a way to get it locally or manufacture it locally so we don't have to ship it thousands of miles to use it.  Will this change the game for other applications?  I am sure that it already is.  The name of the game is going to be local production though.  So, if Concrete Canvas wants to start up a manufacturing plant in Minnesota I think that would be awesome.
Just think of all of the cool practical jokes you could do with this stuff too!  

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