As an engineer in a small town, I seem to take on lots of unusual projects. I happent to be both a Civil & Mechanical engineer with quite a bit of experience with energy management as well, so I often get asked to provide engineering for some unusual things. Many people are trying to cut corners or save as much money as possible, which I fully understand. "Can you turn this hunk of steel into a bridge? I want to build my house with straw bales. I want to build a retainig wall out of these old beams."
Here is a direct request from someone recently -
Over the next five years I'll be planning and hopefully executing plans for a 1,000 sq. ft. home . I've been giving this a lot of thought over time and would like to come up with an infill mix that would be local, easy, insulative and fitting a tight budget. For the finalizing of this goal, I could really use a Soils Engineer who can think outside the box a bit. If the "law" allows I'd be doing a post and beam structure of used materials from Heritage Salvage, with a self-designed infill of porous lava from the Oaks, in a fibrous (shredded paper?) matrix of fly ash and/or cement. I'd like to acheive this in a six inch depth without rebar unless strictly neccessary. If this sounds interesting to you too, just send on an email to:
I have not yet responded.
Here is a direct request from someone recently -
Over the next five years I'll be planning and hopefully executing plans for a 1,000 sq. ft. home . I've been giving this a lot of thought over time and would like to come up with an infill mix that would be local, easy, insulative and fitting a tight budget. For the finalizing of this goal, I could really use a Soils Engineer who can think outside the box a bit. If the "law" allows I'd be doing a post and beam structure of used materials from Heritage Salvage, with a self-designed infill of porous lava from the Oaks, in a fibrous (shredded paper?) matrix of fly ash and/or cement. I'd like to acheive this in a six inch depth without rebar unless strictly neccessary. If this sounds interesting to you too, just send on an email to:
I have not yet responded.
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