there's a building material that can
keep houses intact during hurricanes
earthquakes tornadoes and fires it's
been widely used around the world but
the u.s. lags behind in adopting the
construction technique that's about to
change
housing economists will tell you that 77
percent of homes built in the United
States are at extreme risk for some type
of natural disaster the East Coast is
primarily hurricane the Midwest is
tornadoes which we will also survive the
Rockies and the West our wildfire plus
seismic events
we're resistant to all of that there was
a record 300 billion dollars in disaster
damages in the US and 2017 with
devastating fires in the West and
hurricanes in the East Ken Keller is the
CEO of rsg 3d one company that wants to
help it's bringing a building material
known as a 3-d semmen tissue sandwich
panel to the masses in the US each panel
consists of fire retardant foam
sandwiched between two wire mesh faces
the two faces are connected with
reinforcement wires that run through the
foam and the whole thing is enveloped in
concrete it's very strong it filled
properly and can withstand high winds
earthquakes and even fires a wood
structure will combust almost
immediately and studies show that once a
wood structure has four or five percent
of the building on fire it becomes a
total loss because there's no stopping
the fire 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 the technology is not new nASA
has been using a version of its about
space craft for years because of its
strength and former President Carter
used the material in the US for
rehabilitation efforts decades ago
one of the major push for that
technology actually was the adoption of
the system by our former President
Carter where he used that in rebuilding
some of the damaged building that
happens in Florida and other places like
Georgia I was supposed through his
habitat charity engage Habitat for
Humanity built with the panel back in
the early 1990s and survived Hurricane
Andrew without a scratch Carter's use of
the sandwich panel drew attention to the
technology but it was not clear at the
time how to manufacture it on a large
scale but a company in Austria called
EDG cracked the code and created
machines to assemble the panel's
bringing down the cost of manufacturing
rhg 3d is one of a handful of companies
using EDG x' technology to bring the
material to the states for mass
production now higher lumber costs
expensive skilled labor and more
demanding building codes are making it
an appealing alternative to conventional
construction the reason the product has
not been used well in the United States
to date is because we have what 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 you know
especially up in the northern states and
in California they want Net Zero houses
you cannot get to a Net Zero house
construction with what the panels are
already in homes all over the world but
experts say that more education and
updated building codes are needed for
this to go mainstream in America when
used properly Caliber says the cost of
using these panels is the same or
slightly cheaper than conventional
building methods we have to change the
entire dynamic of how we want to build
product in the United States and it's
going to have to be this type of
technology because it's available
it's effective it's efficient and it
gives you a much superior product at the
end of the day so we're not going to
have any other choices this is where the
industry is going
you