Subject: Re: An insulated ceiling pond house -Reply

From: [email-masked] (Nick Pine)
Date: 8 Mar 1995 05:05:31 -0500

Robert Sanders  <[email-masked]> wrote:
 
>>So here's a more conventional house with an insulated pond in the ceiling...
 
>  There is a major problem with this in earthquake areas (most of the
>U.S.).  A ceiling and/or roof needs to be light weight and act as a
>membrane to hold the walls together.  Adding a pond overhead would
>make a dangerous situation as it would add to the forces trying to tear
>the walls apart and, if it fell, would crush those under it.

Thanks for the thought, Robert. I didn't think about that at all. There
is probably some solution, though, like putting the water under the floor,
thus sacrificing natural convection and heat trapping with overhead water,
or designing the building to take earthquakes, eg as a concrete/foam dome
with an integral ferro-cement lenticular diaphram tank above, or putting in
some sort of giant rip cord, like the ones in hot air balloons, that opened up
to let the water out quickly when an earthquake happened...

At the moment, I like the idea of hot water, sewage and rainwater under the
floor, in EPDM rubber/Thermo-Ply tank sandwiches, with a high-temp, low-power
fan to heat it by flowing 500 lfm air underneath... 

Nick

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From: [email-masked] (Nick Pine)
Date: 8 Mar 1995 05:05:31 -0500

Nick