Category Archives: Floors

Architectural Technologist – World Builder by BranitVFX

Image via CrunchBase

About 3 years ago I found a video, about a strange man builds a world using holographic tools for the woman he loves. This award winning short was created by filmmaker Bruce Branit, widely known as the co-creator of ‘405‘.the landing of a jet on a motorway with a guy in a car getting lumped as the nose wheel. World Builder was shot in a single day followed by about 2 years of post production. Branit is the owner of Branit VFX based in Kansas City.

Why bring up this video from three years ago, simple, I was moved by the sentiment of the video, but even more taken by the science and futuristic vision of the CAD building resources. Has computing power moved on , can any of this be done now., it has logged over 2.8 million hits in the three years, although considder that this film was using current thinking about a year before this, so maybe 4 years ago.

I have brought it back into view, just because I think of it as a mile stone, a way to view progress in the industry, a marker, as when this was produced it was little scifi, I had seen serval demo systems at universities, of holographic systems, they are so cool to use, you soon get the hang of the gloves and specs, heavy and cumbersome as they are.

Some of the film is still scifi, but bits, no a lot of the items I think have moved out of the realm of Scifi into possibility. Take for instance the keyboard and colour pallet used, just by tapping all his fingers together, why this gesture, well it’s a movement we would not generally make, but what about the holographic keyboard, well look about the net and you will see several projected keyboard, perhaps not totally holographic, but close the Celluon Magic cube is one such item, how long will it be before the gestures of a keyboard become the gestures on pulling a wall up in Sketchup, or pulling up a colour pallet, not long I think

There are several prototype mock ups of the new iPhone 5. Many implying the holographic keyboard, certainly the computing power is there, put in the projection, I’m sure apple can do better than the Celluon and from the iPhone to boot.

Next Take the google eyepiece or glasses, surely this a development that could come easily, we know there is a front facing camera, will it be possible to augment a building using sketchup, whilst looking at the building, I think we are at that point.

Don’t forget, I will host a tech hangout every Thursday @ 12:30 pm, call in to chat, moan,find out something, anything to do with Architectural Technology. follow me on Google + “+stevescaysbrook”

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World Builder(ah-495.com)
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Architectural Technologist – More links and tips are now posted on Google +

Google+ wordmark (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I love Google +, the way posts can ripple from small to increasingly large number of readers is quite amazing, so much so, I have started to expand my CPD onto Google plus, under my own name, +stevescaysbrook , plus some more general comments on life and things that seem to excite me. The Circles tabs allow specific people to read them, but most of my posts are public anyway.

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Architectural Technologist – Subscribe to the Konstrukshon CPD weblog

Image by Scays via Flickr

If you look to your right, there is a new feature I have added to the site to enrole for a summary of the days blogs of this CPD site. Just enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. I hsver had this feature running for a couple of weeks now and have tested out the links and the resulting email.

It wil certainly add to your inbox, but it saves having to remember to travel to the site every day, the email gives a summary of the days blog and of course a link to follow up. The email address will never be passed on to anyone, I hate it when I sign up for a similar service and I get all sorts of linked sites emailing me, I only bar them or put up a rule to bin them, so it will not happen here, your email is safe with me.

Want to drop of the list for some reason, well at the bottom there is a link to WordPress who manage the service to manage your subscription.

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Architectural Technologist – Research & Innovation

Image via Wikipedia

As I was eating my breakfast this morning, I read the IOB magazine, now normally I might not have mentioned this little snippet of news, but one article made me think just al little more than normal. It was to do with research, now I tried to get into this area some time ago as a consultant, and found that due to my lack of a degree, I was not eligible, their loss I thought and went on my way, still thinking that I had all the experience from 40 years in the industry and several product launches and construction building techniques under my belt, and even a patent or two, to help a business develop.

The article made me think again, perhaps I have been looking at this the wrong way, perhaps I should have started to write a little more and publish my ideas and research into the community, I have had it beaten into my by my former employer a large chemical company that you keep you ideas quiet and locked away. But I am now turning that thinking on its head, I will today launch my new blog Konstrukshon Innovation & Research, where I will explore my mind and test ideas, they will be open and free, no holds, just me and my mind. There will be no corporate thinking here, no, it’s not invented here, just plain honest innovation. and if I see something I like then it gets a review, and my honest opinion.

I’m tired of being told that no degree means I can’t do any research, I have a degree, from the university of life, and it was a damn difficult course, but that seems to be of no use, wrong, it’s the best degree ever, and one I’m proud to say was and is the only course that allowed me as a person to develop. So join me and follow my innovation, my thinking in products, concepts, life process. It might be a little bumpy, but as many rugby players say, lots of blood and sweat but no tears, just the odd spelling mistake.

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Architectural Technologist – Weather and the Technologist

: Image by Scays via Flickr

As a Technologist, I have always had to make some account for weather, we design for rain, rising water, wind and sun, but the moving goal posts of the planet earth eco system means we have to take more interest in the way the planet weather is evolving, temperatures are bringing to rise, what we now see as record breaking days will be broken many times over the next 20 years or so, winds will become more violent, already in the UK we are seeing small local tornado‘s, Birmingham were I live has been hit several times in the past year, so what am I doing about it, well, I am taking more interest in some of the BBC wild weather programs, not because of the sensationalism, but because within the programs are the basics of the way our weather works, and at its heart is the global story, what happens in the USA affects us in the UK, the gulf stream in moving about, the pacific gulf stream is also moving, affecting more of our climate that perhaps we all realise, the arctic both North and south are slowly, if not at a pace, melting, we are going to see ground water levels rising, even coastal levels are set to rise, in one Wild Weather program, they are predicting that the Thames might just have two defence structures in the near future, due to rising rea levels.

So I have put a new subject onto my CPD list, it simply says weather, I have put two entries up so far, one for Tornado valley, in the USA and one for the UK weather in general, I think more will come as I research just what the effects will be on our buildings and what we as Technologists need to do the detail against the weather. I am also pleased to announce that as part of the Midlands CIAT CPD events we have a lecture planned and booked for Feb 2011, on this subject from a leading climatologist in Coventry University.

Does this also mean energy production might favour PV and other alternatives, absolutely, if we are in for more hot and windy weather, then surely we can expect the supply of energy to almost every user, domestic, and commercial to change, so on the bright side, we may find our detailing looking at these alternative in more detail.

Things I have put onto my list of details to amend, pitched roof design, strapping of pitched and flat roofs, edge details, chimney design, ,,,,,,, my list grows as I think about it.

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Architectural Technologist – Wet Rot & Dry Rot

: Image via Wikipedia

There is no way that any technologist will ever go through there long and I hope fruitful career without seeing and examples of either wet or dry rot, in timber construction .

Lets first deal the dry rot, the Wiki site has a simple and straight forward statement :

Dry rot refers to the decay of timber in buildings and other wooden structures caused by certain fungi. In other fields, the term has also been applied to the decay of crop plants by fungi and the deterioration of rubber. It would appear to be a paradoxical term seemingly indicating decay of a substance without the presence of water. However, its historical usage dates back to the distinction between decay of cured wood in construction, i.e. dry wood, versus decay of wood in living or newly felled trees, i.e. wet wood^[1]. In addition, the term can be used as a metaphor for grave underlying problems within a large organization (such as political corruption in government or low morale in the armed forces) that show no symptoms until a sudden, catastrophic failure, much as dry rot of wood in ships caused catastrophic failure.

I’ve seen plenty of example of dry rot, and all have had to be dealt with by experts, who come in remove all the affected timber and spray to kill of the spores and the tentacles, which may travel a long way to find food, I have had several cases in terraced housing where the source was at one end and the tentacles spread over the whole block, its nasty and if you see it, don’t ignore it get it out quickly and get ventilation into the area by any means.

Now for Wet rot, funnily enough, wiki has no good example or definition, but I found an excellent article on the DIY info site of all places:

Wet rot is a general name for the damage caused by any of several fungi, the most common of which are Conio-phora cerebella and Fibroporia vail-lanti.

These fungi require more moisture than dry rot fungus and develop where timber is in direct contact with wet or damp surroundings. Exterior joinery, where the paint film has cracked allowing water to penetrate, is a typical starting point for wet rot. The remaining paint film prevents any water drying out by evaporation, so the wood swells, joints open and wet rot spores enter the cracks.

To detect the first signs of wet rot, inspect any cracked paint on window sills or door frames. A thin veneer of surface wood may conceal a soft, dark mass of rotted wood dust beneath. The fungal strands of wet rot fungus are thinner than those of dry rot and are dark brown in colour. When growing over wood, these strands often develop a fern-like shape.

How to Treat Wet Rot

Outbreaks of wet rot are much more frequent than those of dry rot but are seldom as difficult to treat. The fungus stays around the original site of damp wood in which it germinated, making it easier to isolate.

The treatment itself is less drastic than that required for dry rot. If the cause of dampness is rectified and the timber is allowed to dry out, there should be no further growth. Therefore, it is necessary only to cut out affected wood, which has been seriously weakened by the rot.

The CPD here is huge, it’s not a simple subject, my best advise is to attend a CPD lecture given by any one of the many expert eradication companies, or trawl the net looking for good discussion pages, I found one on the Restoration forum, I have made two separate page for my CPD on these two different but related topics.The CPD list for wet and dry rot is as long as your arm, and will take time to completely review both related subject, but its one all Technologists should understand, it leads to timber preservation by both natural and chemical means, and ventilation needs.

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Architectural Technologist – Vectorworks quick tip from Archoncad – Checking floor alignment

: Image via Wikipedia

I was having a chat with Jon today and I complained that I was having a problem aligning floors vertically, when you have 5 or 6 floors, and you switch them all on, if one is out of alignment, you can see it, but which floor is it, in this neat little trick Jon show just ho easy it is to see which floor is a fault, making it so easy to fix.

This was a Skype call with Jon sharing his screen, whilst I made a recording of the window. Note the quality, its improving daily, awesome 11 hours time difference, as far away as he can possibly be and all for free !!.

As for the photo today, well this was not my first computer, that honour goes to a commodore 64, but this was second, and apart from one or two forced entries in the Windows world, its been mac ever since, I still have this model and 6 others leading up to the colour classic.

Brick coursing (konstrukshon.com)

Architectural Technologist – Screed cracks

: Image by Scays via Flickr

The picture here does not realy show the problem, but its the best I can provide to show the problems lightly to be encountered when the screen spec is not adhered to or thought about.

The failure of cement–sand levelling screeds can be highly disruptive, dangerous and costly, owing to the unavailability of floor space and the downtime needed to put it right. Repairs often need to be carried out quickly, which is all the more reason to carry out a rigorous investigation to determine the cause of failure and propose a remedial solution that resolves the defect.

Failures may relate to deficiencies in design, workmanship, materials, interfaces with other elements and use. Often more than one factor plays a role. Failures may follow shortly after installation or not manifest themselves for many years. Recent trends for increased thermal insulation under screeded ground floors and the use of pumped screed are associated with common defects.

The Building web site has most of the answers to this particular problem and its worth reading the entire asrticle, and following the links provided.

Also try the Flowcrete site for further reading

I have spent about an hour researching screeds and will have no hesitation in claiming that as quality CPD