Clever Use of Trapezoids to Save Materials, and What the Heck are These Solar Lights?

[thejaymo]

HI everyone hope you had a good burning man! jsut came across this post on core 77. might be interesting to think about hexayurt style furniture made from the same supply chain?

Clever Use of Trapezoids to Save Materials

[Vinay Gupta]

Very, very elegant indeed. Highly bolt-compatible, too, so they'd be easy to get up and down...

Gridbeam is The Way for hexafurniture, though. I'm convinced of it.

V>

On 15/09/12 12:43, thejaymo wrote:

HI everyone hope you had a good burning man! jsut came across this post on core 77. might be interesting to think about hexayurt style furniture made from the same supply chain?

Clever Use of Trapezoids to Save Materials

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[Chita Jing]

   Gridbeam's pretty good for building just about anything human scale. I sure would like to see more gridbeam ideas spread around. DIYers also need way more help with practical methods and skills with electricity, attaching motors to things, using surplus industrial supplies and housing systems such as plumbing, roofing, foundations, fenestrations, etc. 

Tools promote the idea of elderly, small or disabled people  participating in custom designing their own lives too. Computerization promotes the organization and transfer of information between geographies, cultures, demographics. (Sometimes I wish people would study more so-called Third World ideas for application in developed countries.) 

   Urbansteading is blossoming. People want methods to live more naturally even if they still must work in the Big City and live in the mainstream much of the time. 

   I see Hexayurts as a bridging construct in an overall shift in sensibility toward a new type of self-reliance. If you can house yourself, it makes Home a formidable positive reinforcer for independence.  Everywhere you look, you see proof that you can take care of yourself and your family. 

[Gavin Harkness]

I've looked at the Gridbeam system before and liked the idea, but for the average DIY'er impractical and expensive. 
Firstly, the timber used needs to be smooth finished, high quality, strong, straight, fine grain with no knots in it.  That sort of timber is not cheap. 
Then there is the time and equipment required to drill all those exacting holes.  You need a decent drill press and a jig to increment the timber through the drill press.

Now consider the volume of, and time required to, paint/varnish the timber and inside the holes.  (Small shelters are not known for their moisture control!)  A very mind numbing job to say the least.

All this work, double if you can't buy the finished timber size and have to rip and plane the timber yourself, for something that chances are your not going to use the vast majority of the holes, you need to cut to length and end up with a structure that probably will still need plywood bracing to stop it wobbling over time.

Now don't get me wrong, I love the idea of a giant meccano set, I just couldn't see myself trying to built my own from scratch.

[Vinay Gupta (Hexayurt Shelter Project)]

Gridbeam needs automation: it's a product, a feedstock, not something that is really sensible to DIY,. any more than it's sensible to make your own plywood!

V>

[Gavin Harkness]

If your looking for a simple framing system, have you seen square tubing systems like these guys sell:

http://www.speedframesystems.co.uk/index.php

There is plenty of suppliers (even B&Q have a cheap version) and probably be significantly cheaper than wood. 

[The Distinguished ...]

Good afternoon,

I actually prefer Unistrut for this. I've built all sorts of useful
things, from shelves. to frames for silk-work, from bridges to outdoor
(geodesic) bath-houses, from wire-tracks through machine racks with it.
Very easy to configure or reconfigure, very solid design, and lots of
people carry the bits, Amazon, McMaster Carr, and unistrut themselves.
<A HREF="unistrut.com"> http://unistrut.com </A> with sales offices all
over the world. It's a bit heavy, but it's solid, durable,
off-the-shelf, bunch of different materials and easily available. Need
some tools to assemble, but nothing beyond a DYI ability.

And yes, like "GridBeam" all you need is a good photograph, so you can
count the holes, there is no moop, unless you drop your bolts or the
like, it can collapse down quite flat, depending on your design, and is
designed to be structural, with many different pieces available for
corners, angles, attachments, etc.

Percy

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[Gavin Harkness]

Unistrut:  The stuff legends are made from.  A well tried and tested building system and it's easy to weld!  Very quick to build with, if you have a drop saw and a can of spray on galvanising paint for the cut ends. I know they also do stainless steel, but what other material options do they have?

[The Distinguished ...]

Greetings,

On Wed, 2012-09-26 at 01:16 -0700, Gavin Harkness wrote:
> Unistrut: The stuff legends are made from. A well tried and tested
> building system and it's easy to weld! Very quick to build with, if
> you have a drop saw and a can of spray on galvanising paint for the
> cut ends. I know they also do stainless steel, but what other material
> options do they have?

In addition to the most common standby, I've used their fiberglass, I've
seen aluminum (both T5 and T4), and I've heard rumor of (but not
actually seen) carbon fiber.

Percy