If you watched dragons den tonight

Which episode was that? I say Ep 8 (with chap with cordless tool kit), but did not see anything about bricks there...

On Grand Designs ISTR there was a house built by pouring concrete into polystyrene "bricks". A bit lighter than the concrete sort which could be useful in transporting to a disaster zone.

MBQ

Beco Blocks

Your thinking of Bob Symes, who still has a Youtube channel

On the safety angle, what about the ultra-stretchy hose? Whilst I don't exactly have rippling muscles, if I find it hard to fight the pull of the hose when vacuuming stairs, then there must be many who really have significant difficulty.

Chris

I have a vague recollection of their being a legal case where someone was using the hose at full stretch while up a step ladder... he got pulled off and tried to sue. Can't remember what the result was. But yes the point stands - the hose will stretch to a significant length, but has quite a bit of pull when at full stretch.

In message , Alan writes

Its meant to be for emergency construction

I have no idea regarding its longevity

Yes, it has steel stays to give it rigidity

In message , Jerry writes

Yeah right - easy to transport into disaster zones, are they ?

Take up little space in transit do they ?

This Monday just gone

You wouldn't need to transport the finished blocks, just moulds, beads and a steam generator.

But if you had concrete you could just cast walls in situ using wooden formwork or an inflatable form.

Yes Ep 8

If you can use the BBC iPlayer then 41min 40 seconds in.

Cheers

snipped-for-privacy@a17g2000yqi.googlegroups.com...

Google "concrete tents". Relief agencies are not convinced. Main reasons are they are too permanent and don't encourage people to rebuild and water is not always readily available in a disater zone.

MBQ

And thus repeated this coming sunday at 7:00 (pm)

tim

Several houses have used them.

Lighter but still bulky. I've not see the Den item but I get the impression these blocks are plastic and fold down to a much smaller volume.

As has been mentioned you don't really want "temporary" accomodation to be so well constructed that it becomes "permenant".

Ah! found it - it was such a short section I must have skipped over it without noticing when fast forwarding through.

The odd thing is that, because almost all of the pull is due to the suction, rather than any springiness in the hose, the pull is practically independent of extension.

Chris

Some is due to the suction but a significant amount is due to the hose particulary if you don't let the free end rotate as you pull it out.

Well, I just tried standing it on the tiled kitchen floor, and easily stretched the hose to 3 metres before the body began to follow.

When working on the stairs with the small swivel-head tool, even if the hose is only slightly extended, as soon as you make contact with the carpet, the suction causes to hose to contract, creating a significant additional pull.

Chris