Unique Construction

Amazing Staircases

Earthquake-Proof Wood House Survives 7.5 Magnitude Quake

On July 6, 2009, in Miki City, Japan, we tested the NEESWood Capstone building to the Canoga Park recording of the Northridge earthquake. The steel frame was locked down providing a a rigid base for the six-story wood building. It was scaled to the Design Basis Earthquake for Los Angeles, which is 120% of the original record. This short video of the shake is provided by Dr N. Kawai, BRI.

The building performed very well with minimal damage propagation. After 4 shakes the building is still within the range of continued occupancy.
If you’re in search of a home that can withstand even the most powerful natural disasters, the solution might reside in the nearest tree. A team of researchers from five universities are currently working on ways to make wood earthquake-proof. If they succeed, the world may soon see cheap, sustainable wooden homes that can hold up even when earthquakes shake them to their cores.
So far, researchers have seen promising results: During a July 14th test at Japan’s Hyogo Earthquake Engineering Research Center, researchers used an E-Defense shake table, the largest shake table in the world, to simulate an earthquake measuring 7.5 on the Richter scale. The seven-story, million-pound wood condominium that was placed on the table remained standing, only suffering some minor cosmetic damage.

Researchers say that to get the building to withstand a whole lotta shaking, they changed the condo’s nail distribution to better distribute stiffness among the different floors, taking into account changes in structural pressure that occur during an earthquake. Designers also used 63 anchor tie-down systems from Simpson Strong Tie, steel rods that run from the foundation to the roof and prevent the building from rocking.

While many designers have looked at expensive, complicated building materials like flexible concrete and metal alloys to create quake-proof structures, this is the only experiment to use buildings crafted from wood. It’s important to optimize this particular building material because wood is both inexpensive and sustainable, meaning it can be used in all parts of the world, even in impoverished nations.

While researchers are quick to label quake-proof wood as sustainable, the extent of the wooden buildings’ eco features are unclear (for example, if they aim to use reclaimed or FSC-certified wood, or if they incorporate other eco-friendly building materials). But based on these early rounds of testing, one thing is certainly clear: earthquake-proof wooden structures are bound to really shake up the design world.

The Old House and the Sea

The Old House and the Sea
By PENELOPE GREEN

Jamestown, R.I.

“THIS house is always going to have rough edges,” said Henry Wood, resting his frayed sneakers on a splintered pillar. “It’s never going to look like the Breakers.”

It was another indecently beautiful day at Clingstone — a faded, shingled and, yes, very rough 103-year-old mansion set on a rock in Narragansett Bay — and Mr. Wood, its owner, was musing on what the place is not: specifically, that grander turn-of-the century folly in nearby Newport, a limestone-and-gilt palace built by a Vanderbilt in 1895.

But in fact it’s the rough edges and salt-encrusted surfaces that Mr. Wood, a 79-year-old Boston architect, treasures most about Clingstone. For nearly half a century, he has kept them (more or less) intact, and the house standing, through his own hard labor and that of others. He and a crew of family and friends who share his passion for the place’s “deep bohemian funk,” as Nicholas Benson, a stone carver from Newport, put it, have dedicated their time and skills (plumbing and wiring experience are always particularly welcome) to keeping the place from slipping into the water forever.

In 1961, when Mr. Wood bought the house with his ex-wife Joan, who is also an architect, for $3,600, it had been empty for two decades. All of its 65 windows were smashed, and its slate roof was wide open to the sky. Vandals had been creative: on the second floor, the interior shingles were embedded with marbles (they still are), which had been blasted there by some sort of firearm.

On three sides, four-by-eight-foot plywood signs proclaimed: “For Sale. See Any Broker.” “So we did see any broker,” Mr. Wood said. “And he told us the owners were asking $5,000 but they’d take much, much less.”

The house, he learned, had been built by a distant cousin, J. S. Lovering Wharton, from Philadelphia, who had a summer house in the Fort Wetherill area in south Jamestown. (Newport tended to attract New York society; Philadelphians summered in quieter Jamestown.) When the fort was enlarged at the end of the 1800s, the government seized his land, and Clingstone was his rebuke, Mr. Wood said. “He said, ‘I’m going to build where no one can bother me.’ ”

Working with an artist, William Trost Richards, Mr. Wharton designed a shingle-style house of picture windows, with 23 rooms on three stories radiating off a vast central hall; its plan is less a blueprint than a diagram of arrows indicating sightlines.

He built it like a mill, Mr. Wood said, with wide planking, sturdy oak beams, diagonal sheathing and an odd flourish: an interior cladding of shingles, put there, Mr. Wood conjectured, because Fort Wetherill’s cannons went off so regularly in training exercises that they cracked the plaster in the neighbors’ houses.

Those neighbors, it seems, were skeptical of Mr. Wharton’s project. A society item in The Philadelphia Press in August 1904 reads, “Everyone is of the opinion here that Mr. Wharton will not stay in the house more than one season, and they say one nor’easter will settle it.” But Mr. Wharton loved his new house, and spent every summer there until his death just before the hurricane of 1938, which the house survived with little damage.

After his widow died, in 1941, the house stood empty until Mr. Wood and his wife came upon it. The story, Mr. Wood said, is that Mr. Wharton’s three sons disliked one another so much, they couldn’t agree on who to sell it to. “I think they only sold it to me because I was a relative,” he added.

Every spring for a decade or so after the sale, Mr. Wood said, he cursed “this albatross,” his roofless, windowless, floorless, powerless, waterless house. Wrangling what had been a rich man’s plaything, attended by servants and even its own shipyard, into a working couple’s weekend getaway turned out to be much more than a working couple could handle. Eventually, though, as the Woods mustered the talents of their friends, Clingstone and its maintenance evolved into a communal lifestyle, and ultimately a kind of religion.

Mr. Wood is now as proud as any parent of his house, and keeps a fat scrapbook of photographs and newspaper clippings that document its best moments. He has been known to buttonhole strangers on planes who express a knowledge of Rhode Island and say, ‘I think you know my house,’ and then fall silent, waiting for them to exclaim: The house on the rock! Once, he persuaded an airline pilot on a commuter flight from New York City to Boston to alter course to the east so the plane would fly directly over Clingstone.

To get to this point, Mr. Wood became an expert scavenger, a deft barterer and an experienced arm-twister. “The number of things I’ve gotten for free,” he said happily, ticking off the 60 black porcelain doorknobs salvaged from houses that were being torn down in Boston’s South End; the overhead factory lights that came from a slaughterhouse in lower Roxbury; the lumber plucked from an old Boston-area supermarket and strung with netting to make the railing that runs around the stairwell on the second floor. (There are still no banisters on the wide, twisting main staircase, though the father of a man who was married here carved the banister posts for the back stairs.)

In those first years, friends came to work and camped for weeks. The biggest worry, Mr. Wood said, was that there wasn’t any way to lock up: “We lost a lot of tools, and one brass bed.”

One year Mr. Wood put an ad in The Harvard Crimson: “Island occupant wanted to live in 23-room house. No charges. No duties. Ready now.” Somehow, The Crimson printed that last line as “Leaky now.” Still, Mr. Wood was able to “hire” his first caretakers, a doctoral student and his wife, who would stay at Clingstone during the week and head back to Boston when Mr. and Mrs. Wood arrived on the weekends with their three young sons: Paul, now 45 and an employment discrimination lawyer in Boston; Josh, 41, an architect there; and Dan 38, an artist and printer living in Providence, R.I.

Power in those days came from a balky portable generator for the tools, and lighting from boxes and boxes of candle “seconds” bought by Mr. Wood. Drinking water was brought over from Jamestown, as it still is. Toilets flushed directly into the sea.

Today, solar panels heat the water, and a wind turbine on the roof generates electricity. Rainwater is collected in a 3,000-gallon cistern, then filtered, treated and pumped through the house for cleaning purposes. (Mr. Wood claims it is safe enough to drink, “but my children don’t trust me so we don’t,” he said.) After years of using an activated seawater system that draws in seawater, then treats and filters the waste before releasing it back into the ocean, Clingstone now has the latest generation of composting toilets.

Bartering access to the house has yielded all sorts of boons, like the yearly services of the Jamestown Boatyard (formerly the Wharton Shipyard, built just for Clingstone), which hauls the family’s boats and floating dock and stores them each winter in return for a week’s use of the house in the summer. Would-be renters, Mr. Wood said, “must be able to swim, understand hurricanes, strong tides and outboards.”

Upkeep is still Sisyphean, and Mr. Wood, who is divorced from both his first and second wives, has benefited from an ingenious solution: the Clingstone work weekend. Held every year around Memorial Day, it brings 70 or so friends and Clingstone lovers together to tackle jobs like washing all 65 windows and scraping and painting their frames and sills.

Feeding the volunteers, who camp all over the house, is a job in itself. There are, in fact, 215 such projects in the database maintained by Anne Tait, an artist and professor who married Dan Wood in 1998, organized by theme and skill.

“Replace sewage line in basement, or offer moral support,” reads one of the project listings in this year’s schedule, under Plumbing.

Under Cleaning, you’ll find, “check and maintain ‘No Bush’ sign.” (Since the 2004 election, this painted bedsheet has been hanging from a window.) And in the children’s section: “Watch babies and sing great songs to them.”

Matches have been made on these weekends: those who arrived as strangers might leave holding hands, Mr. Wood said, then return the next year married. (Clingstone is jinxed, however, as a wedding spot. “We have had unfortunate results,” said Mr. Wood, referring to three Clingstone weddings that ended in divorce.)

Ms. Tait shone on her first work weekend, which she attended after dating Dan for three weeks in 1994. She used her sign-painting skills to paint the glass of all of the outside doors with the words Please hook open or close. (Untethered doors at Clingstone are quickly smashed by the wind.) Another year, she refinished the kitchen floor. And as the house’s first female resident in a long time, she set about making it “less of a little boys’ playground and more of a home,” she said.

“Henry’s sister told me, ‘Clingstone eats women,’ ” she said. “I do feel like I lost a limb or two. It’s a rough place, like camping, or a farm where you have to make your own butter.”

Amused, Mr. Wood said mildly, “You never made butter here.” Joan, his first wife, had adored the house, he said (they were divorced in the late ’70s), but “my second wife hated Clingstone.”

“She’d drive from Boston to a party in Jamestown, and rather than spend the night here she’d drive all the way back,” he said. “When she left, it became a man’s house, no place for a woman.”

Clingstone was legendary for its parties in those years, and for what Mr. Benson, the stone carver and a peer of Mr. Wood’s sons, described as “Henry’s relaxed attitude about cleanliness.”

“It was mayhem,” he added. It is no longer mayhem here, but the house still has an appealingly offhand and bohemian vibe. “It’s an organic house,” said John Benson, Nicholas’s father, whose nickname is Fud. Like his son, he is a stone carver, and a cousin of Mr. Wood’s. “It’s a house that has existed in a family that has always prized what we call the real world, which is the world of water and wind and stone and wood.”

Mr. Benson, who carved an arrow pointing true north on the rocks on the bay side, is one of the house’s staunchest volunteers and most dedicated artisans. “It’s no longer a rich man’s house,” he continued. “But it has carried its elegance — no, that’s a bad word — it has carried its honesty through the generations, from the well-to-do people that built it to the people who have to work to support it.” He described Clingstone as an instance of “marvelous archeological survival,” a place that has “taken a second breath and has been kept alive by dedicated work.”

A cautionary sign by the steep ladder that leads to the roof (salvaged from a telephone switching station) reads: No entry after three drinks or 86 years of age. “It used to say 80 but we had a guy on a work weekend who was 84, so I changed it,” said Mr. Wood, ever the realist. It would have been a shame to curtail the activities of a willing volunteer.

Tiger Woods $46 Million Dollar Mansion

Happy Anniversary, Lincoln Memorial!

Today marks the anniversary of the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial in 1922. It’s definitely one of the most distinguishable landmarks in Washington D.C., a place that certainly isn’t lacking in memorable monuments. But how much do you really know about the famous tribute? I’ve tracked down some interesting tidbits for you to add to your arsenal of info.

memorial2.jpg

1. It took 50 years to happen

Abraham Lincoln died on April 15, 1865. Just under two years later, in March 1867, the Lincoln Monument Association was incorporated by Congress to build an appropriate memorial to our 16th president. Apparently that was the easy part. It took the next 34 years to choose a location, and when one was finally chosen in 1901, the area was all swampland. It was another 10 years before the monument was authorized by Congress, and on February 12, 1914 (Lincoln’s birthday) the first stone was officially put into place. Eight years later, the dedication ceremony took place and was attended by Lincoln’s son, Robert Todd. The monument was dedicated by William Howard Taft.
2. The symbolism of the columns

There are 36 columns featured on the Lincoln Memorial. It wasn’t planned this way, but the columns were eventually said to represent the 25 U.S. states at the time of Lincoln’s death, plus the 11 seceded states. The names of the 48 states at the time of the monument’s completion were written around the top; a plaque recognizes the later additions of Alaska and Hawaii in 1959.
3. It’s been the site of some interesting events

mlk.jpg

Most people probably know that Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech took place at the Lincoln Memorial to honor Lincoln for issuing the Emancipation Proclamation.
But it was also where Richard Nixon tried to appeal to Vietnam War protestors a few days after the Kent State shootings. About 30 students were holding a vigil at the monument in the wee hours of the morning. At about 4:15 a.m., Nixon showed up to have a little chat with them. Neither side could be swayed from their opinions.
Also, for President Bush’s 2001 inauguration, the Rockettes danced down the steps while performing their famous leg kicks. Not sure how I feel about that one.
4. The inscriptions

Stop squinting at the pictures – here’s what the inscription over Lincoln’s head says:
“IN THIS TEMPLE
AS IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE
FOR WHOM HE SAVED THE UNION
THE MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
IS ENSHRINED FOREVER.”
You’ll also find the text of two of Lincoln’s most famous speeches – the Gettysburg address, of course, and his second inaugural address. On this one, the word “future” was accidentally carved with an “E” instead of an “F” and had to be fixed. To this day, you can see where the error happened.
5. The stats

Lincoln himself is 19 feet, nine inches tall – but keep in mind that he’s sitting down. The stone for the building is Indiana limestone and Yule marble; Lincoln is made of 28 blocks of Georgian marble. There are 98 steps that go from Lincoln to the reflecting pool, but the number has no significance. The Memorial is on the “tails” side of the penny, and if you look really close you can see a little figure of Lincoln etched in his proper place in the monument. The Memorial is also on the five dollar bill (although I’m sure you already knew that).
6. Is Lincoln using sign language?

lincoln_hands2.jpg

If you look close at Lincoln’s hands, his left hand looks like an “A” in American Sign Language and his right hand looks like an “L”. Although the National Park Service denies that the positioning was intended, there might be some truth to this story. Sculptor David Chester French was quite familiar with ASL – his son was deaf. Furthermore, Lincoln signed federal legislation giving Gallaudet University, a college for the deaf, the right to give out “official” college degrees. So it’s very possible that French snuck the reference in as a way to recognize Lincoln’s contributions to the deaf.
7. The Lincoln Memorial goes high-tech

If you’re headed to D.C. and didn’t have time to do your research beforehand, no worries – your cell phone will provide all of the information you need. You can dial (202) 747-3420 to hear park rangers talk about 10 different themes, including “Debunking the Myths of the Lincoln Memorial” and “The Life and Times of Lincoln the Man”. Although I suppose you don’t have to be at the monument to hear the rangers talk – you can dial in from your couch if you really want to.
8. Are Robert E. Lee and Abraham Lincoln the same man?

You know in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone where Voldemort appears on the back of the head of poor Professor Quirrell? Apparently there’s been a rumor circulating for years that the same thing is true of Lincoln and Lee. Supposedly, there’s an outline of Confederate Army General Robert E. Lee’s face carved on the back of the Lincoln statue. This has been repeatedly refuted, but the rumor still lurks.

Building Stonehenge - This Man can Move Anything

Wally Wallington has demonstrated that he can lift a Stonehenge-sized pillar weighing 22,000 lbs and moved a barn over 300 ft. What makes this so special is that he does it using only himself, gravity, and his incredible ingenuity.



How It All Began

I am a retired carpenter with 35 years experience in construction. In my work experience, over the years, many times I had to improvise on tools that were not at hand in order to get the job done.

At one of these times, about 12 years ago, I had to remove some 1200 lb. saw cut concrete blocks from an existing floor. The problem was that we did not have a machine that could reach some of the blocks. The only obvious answer was to break the blocks into smaller pieces with a sledgehammer and load them into a wheelbarrow. To me, this seemed to be too much labor at the time, so I improvised.

Using a few rocks and leverage, I removed the blocks from below the floor to an area that the machine could reach them for removal. After doing this several times, the technique became very easy and quick. This experience had me consider the possibility that people may have used this technique before modern day equipment was available.

Following My Instincts

Nine years later, after retiring, I decided to explore this on my own. I brought home a one ton block of concrete from a job. Once I got home, I realized that I had to use my techniques to get the block off the truck. After unloading, I found that my technique allowed me to move the block around the yard with very little effort. At that time, my family became very interested in what their "crazy dad" was up to " this time".

In a few days time, I decided my one ton block was no longer challenging, so I made some bigger blocks to play with. Within a few months time, I was moving, rolling, standing on end, and stacking them on top of each other.

I found that I, working alone, could easily move a 2400 lb. block 300 ft. per hour with little effort, and a 10,000 lb. block at 70 ft. per hour. I also stood two 8 ft. 2400 lb. blocks on end and placed another 2400 lb. block on top. This took about two hours per block. I found that one man, working by himself, without the use of wheels, rollers, pulleys, or any type of hoisting equipment could perform the task.

Testing The Technique

A year after beginning my project, my son needed a pole barn moved, due to a desired property split. I decided to put my technique to the test. The wood building was a 30 ft. by 40 ft. and 16 ft. tall. It weighed over 10 tons. In order to move the building, we added another 5 tons of bracing and reinforcement.

The conditions were not good. At first, the field was muddy and I could only work for a few hours a week. Working by myself, I still found that I could move the building at a speed of 6 ft. per hour. With my son helping, we doubled that speed. After 40 man-hours of labor, we moved the building over 200 ft.


I found I could move this building by myself by using physics, no wheels or rollers.

Attempting To Solve A Mystery

For many years people have tried to solve the mystery of the Egyptian pyramids, some even claiming extra terrestrial intervention. I have always enjoyed the challenge of a mystery and I know that ET did not have anything to do with ancient construction. Similar works were done in different places on earth and at different times in history and there has to be a more accurate explanation. I believe skilled individuals performed the work. I have found that this work could easily be done using only primitive tools and physics.

The Tools

I have found that only simple wooden tools and gravity is needed for moving heavy weight. Nothing rigid is necessary. You do not need to lift weight to move it from place to place. Stones make excellent fulcrums and pivot points.

How To Use Physics

I found that the heavier an object is the easier it is to balance it. Since mass has to obey the laws of physics, it resists movement and once it is set in motion it resists change. Also, once a weight is close to balance on a single point, rotation can be initiated and the object becomes stable. The more weight, the more inertia, the more inertia, the more stable, therefore the heavier the better. Additional weight or leverage is used and can be shifted so the weight can be balanced on more than one fulcrum. For horizontal movement the fulcrum is also a pivot. Since leverage is not used under the object it does not interfere with motion. In the classes of levers, the lever is always in contact with the fulcrum, input, and the load. When I am using leverage or weight as input, it only comes in contact with the load and the load rests on the fulcrum. Therefore, the load is my lever. There is evidence of fulcrums on ancient megaliths throughout the world. I have spent years rediscovering The Forgotten Technology of our ancient ancestors. In response to Archimedes most famous quote "Give me a lever long enough, and a place on which to rest it, and I will move the world." I respond with "Give it two places to rest and I can also move the world." I didn't mean to challenge him, all I meant to do is explain it to you.

Lever Classes

Which class is it? According to a Physics book, " Levers are divided into three classes based on relative positions of the input, fulcrum and load. A lever for which the input and load are located on opposite sides of the fulcrum is a class 1 lever. If the input and the load are located on the same side as the fulcrum, the lever belongs to class 2 or 3."

In the technique that I have been using for my demonstrations, the load rests directly on the fulcrum and the input rests on the load. Is the load the lever or have I been moving my blocks without a lever at all?



About My Logo

In order to understand how the ancient wonders were constructed, my logo has to be recognized. It is "The lever that has fallen through a crack in time."

Ancient Construction

Introducing The First Machine To Walk The Face Of The Earth

I have found that ancient legends from around the world are true. Some megaliths could have been set in place by as few as one man. I could build The Great Pyramid of Giza, using my techniques and primitive tools. On a twenty-five year construction schedule, (working forty hours per week at fifty weeks per year, using the input of myself to calculate) I would need a crew of 520 people to move blocks from the main quarry to the site and another 100 to move the blocks on site. For hoisting I need a crew of 120 (40 working and 80 rotating). My crew can raise 7000 lb. 100 ft. per minute. I have found the design of the pyramid is functional in it’s own construction. No external ramp is needed.

The Forgotten Technology

I have began to build a replica of Stonehenge with eight 10 ton blocks on end and 2 ton blocks on top. One man, no wheels, no rollers, no ropes, no hoist or power equipment, using only sticks and stones. In the future, either myself, sons, or grandsons will be able to show this and other forms of The Forgotten Technology to the world. I believe that I have learned to use the laws of physics to my advantage.