Earth Sheltered Housing

[JohanofNess]

good guy, good guy, good guy, ....

 

Can anyone say the next line and not have it deleted?

[Hobbiniho]

My current estimate is around 20 years to build some 15,000 homes.

 

right my match isnt exaxtly great but you expect to build

 

15000 houses in 20 years which is

750 houses a year which is

14.4 houses a week which is

2.06 houses a day

 

now for your supposed massive IQ you dont seem very good at maths, there is absolutely no way that you can build two houses in a day please stop sprouting this bullcrap

[Suzanna]

 

I'm really enjoying reading all this, is Nigel real or a figment of some mad persons imagination, or is it Stuart Hill in disguise. I can just see an Island of windmills and hobbit homes.

[RickB]

Im convinced that the posts by Nigel Jarman are a wind up. No-one can possibly have an ego that big.

 

Unlinkedstudent, You are certainly the type of person that we want in Shetland. Easy going and willing to see how things go.

 

Shetland as we know it has evolved from a few thousand years of different groups of people coming and going. All of these people left their mark on Shetland in some way, some more than others. For example, Lerwick would not be here at all if there wasnt a need for a fish trading post on the east coast of Shetland in the 16th century.

People will continue to come and go for many years to come. We need these people to come and settle if Shetland is to survive otherwise the population will continue to fall.

All we can hope for is the wisdom to accept the changes that will help Shetland and reject any changes to the detriment of Shetland.

[Nigel Bridgman-Elliot]

> trying to preach to the rest of us that your way is much better than

> ours, and that we should change!

 

Well, if your happy with the way houses are currently built, the high price of rents, the lack of rented property, and the 900 odd people on the housing waiting list, and the poor designs which use lots of ever increasing expensive fuel to keep warm...

 

But I'm all ears, what do you want changed, improved/etc. ?

 

 

> managed to be more humble

 

Its a peculiar British response I find, say the same thing to an American and they accuse you of not being assertive enough, but say practically anything about yourself in a positive light in the UK, and your branded a show off/etc. Here we dislike success, or any attempt to even come close to it.

 

Maybe its because we don't like rich people, I'm not really sure, though I can understand if that is the case, as many rich friends I know, are not really nice people, and we woudn't want not nice people as our neighbours..

 

 

< there is absolutely no way that you can build two houses in a day

 

Thats because they are not all built, 2 every day, let me explain:

 

Lets say it takes 1 man, 100 days to build one house.

 

2 men might take 75 days lets say, and 3 take 50 days.

 

100 days = 1 house using 1 man

200 days = 2 houses, because your 1st man now lives in the 1st house.

+75 days = 3 houses, because your 2nd man now lives in the 2nd house.

+50 days = 4 houses, because your 3rd man now lives in the 3rd house.

 

As you get more houses built, you can house more workers and it takes less time to build another house, or group of houses. So at the very beginning your building very slowly, but towards the end your knocking them out pretty fast.

 

Though if the house was a pre-fab, you could do it one per day..

 

http://sugoijapan.blogspot.com/2007/10/how-to-build-house-in-day.html

 

 

> I can just see an Island of windmills and hobbit homes

 

FX [ smiles ]

 

Though I'm more of a geothermal man myself, I'm less keen on windmills cluttering the landscape (You could put them underground at the top of hills though, like a Persian windmill..) and more prefer something that works 24/7 and not just when its windy Or acres of solar panels maybe..

 

There are quite a few different designs for wind turbines out there;

 

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/07/new_australian.php

 

http://www.nextenergynews.com/news08/next-energy-news6.6.08c.html

 

http://www.thelovegreenschool.co.uk/cms/index.asp

 

http://www.jovanovic.f2s.com/page2.html

[paulb]

NOT WINDY HA

[PJ of Hildisvik]

Shetlink has definately entered "THE TWILIGHT ZONE" cue spooky music

[unlinkedstudent]

Shetlink has definately entered "THE TWILIGHT ZONE" cue spooky music

 

Not Tales of the Unexpected surely?

 

[Fifi]

But I'm all ears, what do you want changed, improved/etc. ?

You are Jesus returned to earth and I claim my £5.

 

>

[Malachy]

As you get more houses built, you can house more workers and it takes less time to build another house, or group of houses. So at the very beginning your building very slowly, but towards the end your knocking them out pretty fast.

 

Would these be Gentec Venturi houses by any chance? Have you got a graph to prove it?

[Nigel Bridgman-Elliot]

Not Gentec Venturi houses, but concrete domes, such as:

 

http://static.monolithic.com

 

Which has a wealth of information, such as:

 

http://static.monolithic.com/gallery/commercial/rentals/index.html

 

> "Monolithic Domes have already proven their value as rentals,"

> David says. "There are several residence inn domes right here in

> Italy, Texas that are consistently occupied. These small domes work

> very well for one or two people. They attract working singles,

> newlyweds, retirees, as well as single parents with just one child.

> Renters like the security they provide, their minimal maintenance

> and low energy use.

 

My design is based on an internal skin of prefabricated steel reinforced concrete blocks slotted/bolted together in a similar shape/style to what you might find when looking at a football. The reason for the blocks is so they can be replaced in the future from the inside when the rebar fails (concrete cancer/spalling/etc.). Also the blocks can be fited in a finished state, with built in bolt attachment areas so you can hang your services/furniture/etc. on without having to drill into the surface and leave the place like a pin cushion after 100 years.. (I'm keen to keep services such as electric cables and plumbing surface mounted, rather than buried in the walls for ease of maintence.)

 

Cover that with a monolithic layer of waterproof concrete which includes insulation in the form of something like perlite mixed in, but without rebar so there is less risk of it failing in the future. (As is so common with modern steel reinforced concrete buildings..)

 

 

I don't have any fancy graphs at the moment, but I'll stick it on my todo list. As I definitely want to build my own home, it doesn't matter how long that takes me, and if I'm a bit out on my sums, that doesn't really matter either whether it takes 15 years or 30 years to build some 15,000 homes, I'll build them as quickly as I can afford to do so, but offhand some back of the envelope calculations give me a rough estimate of around 20 years, which seems good enough to go by for now.

 

I am slowly working on drawings, videos, etc. so that one day I'll have something pretty and PR friendly to show everyone, for now there is just the very beginnings of that which I've began to put together. (Money is the big changer here, once you have that, any dreams you have can quickly become reality.)

 

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vzOWN9TBY34

 

And if you want to look at others efforts to produce earth sheltered housing, here is one:

 

http://uk.youtube.com/user/daviscaves1

[nederlander]

Nigel, could you please use the quoting system that is provided! Your posts really are quite difficult to read, and as for who you are replying to, well I stopped trying to figure that out long ago! Its really not that difficult!

 

Oh, and as for your ideas; harebrained is how I would have to describe them! They just wouldn't work imho.

[paulb]

nigel spend some time reading shetland council building regs. they dont even like non standard roofs nots sure what your pods would do. could see them as holiday accom but houses no.

[Nigel Bridgman-Elliot]

I will do, whilst some councils do not like such approaches, others do:

 

http://www.theundergroundhouse.org.uk

 

Is in Cumbria, and whilst being somewhat on the small side, does show that such things can be built in the UK. (If only land was cheap there and crime not so high..)

 

 

> They just wouldn't work imho

 

I'd be most interested to hear why you think they wouldn't work.

[beachcaster]

What the hell has all this crap about building thousands of underground houses got to do with moving to Shetland? After all, that is what this thread is supposed to be discussing.

Can the mods please separate this thread so that Nigel can have his own thread to sprout absolute horseturde about something he clearly has no idea about. That way we can choose to ignore this deluded fools ramblings.

 

 

 

 

***Edited to defeat sweary filter***