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Bubble deck concrete

icanreachit

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12 Apr ’16 - 9:36 pm

I went to a presentation this evening at the District Architecture Center and learned about a new technology that I wanted to share: voided biaxial slabs.

Many of us want a concrete slab for many reasons: thermal mass, no additional finish is necessary, longevity, etc. However, concrete is expensive and it also produces a significant portion of greenhouse gasses in the creation of it:

The solution: put giant balls in the concrete! The middle section of a slab doesn't do anything, it's literally just a filler between the bottom (set in tension) and the top (set in compression).

As a result you get very lightweight panels that can be used for huge spans with great load bearing capacities.

I haven't found any manufacturers for doing a 1-1 calculation and it may not be great for small houses but I wanted to share the find.

In my opinion, if we could grind up styrofoam which has an unknown half-life and press it into these balls, we could free up some space in the landfills and get some great insulation.

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13 Apr ’16 - 6:36 am

that is pretty cool

icanreachit

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17 May ’16 - 5:29 pm

Just so that no one stumbles across this thread in a few years and wonders why we didn't mention holedeck waffle slabs:

This tech allows for the utilities to be run through the floor thus saving on space between floors - Allowing more floors to be incorporated in a building of the same height.

The only way that I can ever imagine that I would ever get to incorporate this technology would be building a ping pong table with tennis balls split in half and glued face down to the base of the form. This would cut out the need for the concrete drastically (33% ish) and would make it lighter, but it wouldn't matter for such a small scale. However, the bottom would look awesome.