Concrete Tents, A Perfect, Secure, Growroom In 24 Hours

[ElPiloto]

Check out this video, it shows a tent made of canvas/concrete. The resulting building would make a perfect growroom anywhere, with good security. No info on price. They are being used by the military right now.

http://www.wimp.com/concretetents/

It would be easy and relatively inexpensive to build something similar using a boat building technology called ferrocrete. You make the basic shape using re-bar and chicken wire, then add concrete with one person, or more, inside smoothing the concrete and one person, or more, on the outside doing the same.

I remember in the 1960s when some Hippies built homes by mounding dirt, the using the re-bar and chicken wire. Then the concrete was sprayed on the outside like a swimming pool being built. When the concrete had hardened, they dug out all the dirt and had a very strong concrete home.

No worries about the wind or the ripoffs trying to steal your product.

Just Google ferrocrete to get details and photos.

 

[Rowdy420]

cool technology!

I've seen a similar type building done with hempcrete and they would inflate a giant bladder and then spray the hempcrete over it, once it was set the bladder would be deflated and then normal construction can take place.
Good luck, Peace

 

[guest5703]

SICK

 

[paladin420]

Now That has serious Potential.. great Find El..

 

[Pulp]

That's amazing... now just to find somewhere...

 

[Derka]

That particular technology has been around for quite awhile.

Take a look at monolithic.com

Several of the guided tours and walk arounds of their already built homes feature grow rooms. The biggest consideration and concern in any concrete built home is humidity control to prevent fungus/mold outbreaks.

Several other key features of those airform built buildings is that they average about 68-70 degrees year around, and costs pennies to heat and cool each month. Personally if I ever hit the lotto or become successful I plan to build several of these someplace remote with mmj laws.

 

[DutchBoy]

Great find indeed.

As a constructional aficionado, this tickles me to the bone.

 

[Guest 88950]

here is one i ran across a few yrs ago.

http://www.monolithic.com/stories/grow-your-food-in-a-monolithic-cabin-grow-dome

edit:
the mps light sounds interesting but couldnt find much info on them.

 

[NiteTiger]

Holy shit, birthday wishes do come true!

 

[NiteTiger]

They sell just the concrete fabric in man portable size rolls, and will even harden underwater.

*tearsofjoy*

Edit: Bit of google action brought me to a quoted price of around $15k USD back in 09, so probably closer to $20k today.

Turn anywhere into a hardened bunker in 24 hours, bury it in 48. Concealed, buried hardened bunker in a week end? Worth every damn penny, IMO.

Bet the straight cloth is cheaper too. Custom bunker hiked in? Sweet...

 

[Dislexus]

I found and posted this product first so NYAH. All +rep me not the imposture ;P

NiteTiger... I dunno about building a structure with the rolls of fabric itself... how would you manage that.

 

[delta9nxs]

howdy, folks!

in WWII they had so many merchant ships sunk by u-boats that they built them of concrete to conserve steel.

i am fascinated by this technology and have personally helped build a 56' sailboat made of ferro-cement. we used re-bar over a removable wood frame. then 3 layers of regular 1" mesh chicken wire were laid and tied over that, trying to offset the centers of the wire about 1/3".

the first coat was applied using people on the inside holding small pieces of plywood in place while their partner pushed and smoothed a layer of cement into the wire.

once that hardened at least two more coats were put over the outside, each one smoother than the last and usually one more coat applied to the inside. the hull was then ground smooth and painted with white pigmented epoxy.

building a building with flat faceted surfaces would be even easier than building a boat.

i would do two cement coats, a fill coat and a finish coat. since a building does not need smooth flow characteristics that should be enough. i would probably paint several coats of acrylic latex over that for complete waterproofing. maybe trailer cool seal.

the interior could be shot with about 3 or 4" of foam insulation. at r7 per inch that's r21-r28. this should be built on a slab to utilize the passive heating and cooling of the earth. at any given latitude the soil temperature 6' down should be the average annual air temperature. all the weather sites have this info for your lat/long by zip code.

since the temperature at six feet is stable year round why not insulate the ground at the surface six feet out from the side of your building, thus "fooling" the earth next to the building at the surface into behaving as if it were six feet down. this creates a much larger passive storehouse of temperature modulating mass.

this would be extremely energy efficient to heat and cool.

as far as shape i would go with a geodesic dome made of welded rebar

if you go to www.desertdomes.com you will find dome computers where you can enter your dimensions and it will spit out the precise lengths to cut each piece.

while you are there look for the two frequency domes. they make perfect hemisphere's so that a dome 24' across would be 12' high at the center. a 24 footer provides 452 sq ft of space.

i would use pre-welded triangles of 1/2 or 5/8" re-bar. color coded. tied together with rebar wire until it was all formed up and true to shape.

then weld the seams with 3 6" welds per side. after this step the re-bar wire could come off but why not leave it in place for a little extra security?

maybe a quonset hut shape could be used also. very easy to build. a squashed quonset like a greenhouse.

well, later on

 

[NiteTiger]

NiteTiger... I dunno about building a structure with the rolls of fabric itself... how would you manage that.

Hard Mode: Custom form supports and cover with fabric, like the boats and houses above.

Easy Mode: Make a flat jig for interlocking walls, then just lay the fabric and spray, let harden. Churn out wall sections like mad, then play legos

 

[ReelBusy1]

Hard Mode: Custom form supports and cover with fabric, like the boats and houses above.

Easy Mode: Make a flat jig for interlocking walls, then just lay the fabric and spray, let harden. Churn out wall sections like mad, then play legos

and you can build your ventilation needs into it also that way.

Because I didn't see a chimney in that cement tent

 

[GrowersUnite]

I wanna build a monolithic house one day, I even drew up a house based on one at their site. Anyways..

A 6x8 room hidden in the woods somewhere, with a 2x55 watt pll for the grow and two 23watt cfls for the rest of the bunker.

Maybe a water power from a nearby creek? Or solar panels? Both camo'd Anything more and you'd need big panels or a generator.

If you did this at your house, well you can just use your own power. Then I'd add a hydrallic powered lift, that has a rock mounted on it for a trap door.

 

[ElPiloto]

The ferro-crete boat builders have a saying about strength. They say that when a ferro-crete boat hits a reef, the reef breaks.

The idea about using a geodesic dome is a good one, but a lot of work compared to the inflatable form. For a dome or quanset hut design, it would be better to put the dome on top of a short wall to increase the grow height around the edges.

If I had access to a Bobcat or a back hoe, I might build the form from mounded dirt, then lay and weld the re-bar and chicken wire.

Concrete is great stuff and the ways to use it are limited only by your imagination.