[Greenbuilding] Flood resistant walls

RT archilogic at yahoo.ca
Thu Dec 20 15:33:15 CST 2012


On Tue, 18 Dec 2012 15:16:09 -0500, Stephen Collette
<stephen at yourhealthyhouse.ca> wrote:

>> Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2012 17:03:05 -0500
>> From: Gennaro Brooks-Church - Eco Brooklyn <info at ecobrooklyn.com>

>> He has a three story row house typical of Brooklyn and Red Hook.
>> His first floor got two feet of water. His cellar became a swimming  
>> pool.

>> My main challenge is to find a surface for the interior walls. Sheet
>> rock is not an option.
>> I would like something lower embodied energy than say Dense Glass  
>> panels.
>> Any suggestions?


I remember that not all that long ago, a fellow from Brooklyn (or maybe it
was a Red Hooker ?) came onto this List saying that he had just acquired a
$#!+ - load of tempered glass panels which were, IIRC, at least 4'x 8' x
0.75" and was looking for suggestions as to what he could do with them.

This would seem to be a very good use for those glass panels.

Back then it was suggested that they could be used to make demountable
interior partitions which could, if desired, be designed to allow
"borrowed" light into interior rooms which may not have direct access to
natural daylight.

They could also be used to make opaque partitions too of
course, treating the glass in the manner of non-vision spandrel glass
panels in office towers. ( I was just looking at the recent Univ of
Waterloo Alumni magazine and it had a feature on the opening of the Mike &
Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Centre and the piece mentioned that all of
the interior partitions were glass and the occupants of the building were
expected to use the walls as big white boards for scribbling their ideas
and computations etc.)

I'm pretty sure that it was suggested that the glass panels could either
be used in a single layer or in pairs, perhaps with something like chunks
of broken tempered glass as a cavity filling if the sheets were used in
pairs.

It was also suggested that the glass panels could be used to create "water
walls" -- thermal mass walls which could do double duty as aquaria to
raise food -- ie Tilapia, Silver Carp, species that do well in warm water.

If the fellow with the glass was mistaken and it is in fact, not tempered,  
then the glass could be sandblasted to make translucent panels ... or  
etched or carved into to make arts & crafty-type decorative patterns ...  
and so on.

The glass at that thickness would be self-supporting so it wouldn't need
any structure behind it. It'd just need to be clipped at the floor and
ceiling to keep it in place (allowing sufficient clearance to allow for
thermally-induced movement and deflection of the structure).

If there are any loadbearing partitions with moisture-susceptible
materials in them (ie wood) then I'd say remove that material and replace
it with non-moisture-susceptible materials. and design to allow for
drainage and self-drying in the event of future flooding. It'd be a matter
of substituting columns and beams for stud walls.

That would seem to be the logical course of action.

However, if one wants to go the conventional route of sticks and skins :

I remember when as a kid, in-ground swimming pools were usually surfaced
with little 4"x 4"tiles, presumably fully vitrified. These days, 30
mm-thick granite & marble slabs and huge 2 ft-square porcelain tiles seem
to be plentiful so should be available as reclaimed material from renos,
demos and waste) so I have to wonder why one would use new "DensGlass" or
similar for interior partitions. At worst, one could cast wire  
mesh-reinforced concrete panels 0.75" - 1" thick to use as tile backer  
board, if tile backer board is deemed necessary (ie for thin tile).
Wouldn't need it for the 30mm and thicker stone panels.

1.5" thick slate from old school chalkboards is typically available from  
salvage yards in sheets that are 5 ft in the small dimension. The back  
side is often a cleaved surface if you don't like the smooth writing  
surface side.

Salvaged brick to replace wood-framed partitions. Even crappy brick would  
be okay since it's being used on the interior and not exposed to weather  
so long as it's not subject to freezing before it's had time to dry out  
after a flood. True, one would likely need to beef up the load path down  
to the basement but that shouldn't be any big challenge.

-- 
=== * ===
Rob Tom					AOD257
Kanata, Ontario, Canada

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