FW: [Big_Village] Theatrical Truss for Housing

crossposting an article that may be of interest to some...aloha,
-- 
forest
[email protected]
http://www.lavazone2.com/forest/

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From: Eric Hunting <hunting-IxED4/[email protected]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
Date: Sun, 09 May 2004 15:06:44 -0400
To: <[email protected]>
Subject: [Big_Village] Theatrical Truss for Housing

I thought I'd share with this group some information on something I've been
studying lately. I've recently been in correspondence with the Netherlands
offices of the Prolyte company (www.prolyte.com), manufacturer of truss
systems for theaters and portable stages. Theater trusses offer a very
clever building system. You have these simple modular mass produced
components made of aluminum that are easily transported and which people
with little skill can quickly and easily assemble into very elaborate
structures. And their strength is phenomenal. They produce structures of
amazingly large spans and high strength and one can often see whole cars and
trucks sharing space with actors or musicians on stages made from these. And
the assortment of accessories made by different companies for use with these
is vast, offering many possibilities for adaptive reuse. This has long
interested me as a possible non-toxic building system but I was unable to
get anyone in the show-biz industry in the US to talk to me about this so I
finally decided to go straight to the source. To my pleasant surprise, the
people at Prolyte didn't think this was that strange an application and
their engineers quickly identified the specific model line of trusses I
should use; the H40V series. Apparently this truss line has already been
certified for building use under the strict German building regulations.

They also provided me with load calculations for the simple pavilion home
concept I've been studying for use with multiple different building systems.
(http://radio.weblogs.com/0119080/stories/2003/11/18/finalProjectDesign.html
) This design would employ these trusses either as a simple roof pavilion on
a concrete slab foundation or as a two-deck pavilion on pier foundations.
The structure would use foam core metal panel roofing and wrap the edge of
the roof deck in aluminum flashing and soffit panel. Enclosure is provided
by commercial window panel systems with profiles mounting to truss clamps
and using either glass or opaque panels.

This might be a useful concept to consider for eco-village structures
-especially those that might need a lot of reconfiguration or repositioning
over time- though at the moment it's still unclear what the cost would be. I
must wait to get feedback from Prolyte distributors in the US. However,
theatre trusses are so ubiquitous there is a large market in second-hand
components. It's much harder to find used trusses of a specific brand and
model line but the possibility is there that one could get most if not all
the components for such buildings on the used parts market -though it would
be much easier for show-biz insiders than for the rest of us.

Eric Hunting

hunting-IxED4/[email protected]




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