This building material could've saved California houses from fires, but it's rarely used in the US

"A wood structure will combust almost immediately. And studies show that once a wood structure has a 4% or 5% of the building on fire, it becomes a total loss because there's no stopping the fire," says Ken Calligar, CEO of RSG 3-D, the company that's bringing the panel to the US for mass production.

"There's no place for a fire in a 3D panel building to start because you've got a concrete exterior and nothing is combustible within the materials."

That's why officials in Santa Rosa, Calif., chose RSG 3-D to rebuild a firewall destroyed by wildfires last year.

The panel technology is not new. NASA has been using a version of it to build spacecraft for years because of its strength. And former President Carter used the material in his charity work decades ago on damaged buildings in Florida and Georgia.

But it never really took off in the United States.

"The reason the product has not been used well in the United Stated to date is because we have wood," said Geoffrey Evancic, the chief operating officer of Hutter Pioneer, a construction company that is working with the RSG 3-D panels.

"The United States is blessed with multiple forests and wood was an inexpensive building material, up until the last five years. With the new energy code, especially up in the Northern States, and in California, they want net-zero houses. You cannot get to a net-zero house construction with wood."

Let's block ads! (Why?)

from Top News & Analysis https://ift.tt/2K7exGH
via IFTTT