Flood Resistant Construction Write-up

Our first housing structure is primarily for residential buildings, schools, and medical facilities, known as floating houses. Two houses will be attached to each other, like that of a long house, all mounted onto a large bamboo raft. The bamboo raft, known for its incredible buoyancy will serve as the flotation device for the houses once the water begins to flow in. In addition, there will be foot long teeth at each end of the raft, surrounding tall wooden poles embedded into the ground so as to keep the houses from floating away as debris and causing more destruction in the highly populated area. In addition, the house is also equipped with wind resistant roofs built with shallow angles so that rain can run off of the left and right side of the house. The reason for this is so that the water flows into a gutter and travel down a pipe alongside the house into an enclosed tank, where the newly captured water will wait to become filtered and put to use by the family. In addition, bamboo will also be used for the main structure of the house, due do its high buoyancy, so that we do not add any more weight on the raft itself.

Our second house is more suitable for buildings that are more vulnerable to damage, due to their close proximity within the floods area of envelopment. Opposed to a floating house, it is built out of structural strong materials such as bricks or cement. Unlike the floating houses, this different housing structure, which can be called the elevating household, will not accommodate any residents on the first floor, but mainly on the second floor. Water will flow into the first floor and rise until it meets the ceiling. The ceiling comes equipped with a similar float raft made from either bamboo or polystyrene foam coated in glass fiber reinforced concrete. It is attached to four posts on each corner of the house, fitted into a slot in which the posts can move up and down freely. This house structure gains its name due to the fact that as the water level rises in the first floor, the second floor will rise along with it, recreating a sort of elevator-like system. So that the residents will be lifted out of harm’s way into the third floor position, while the house stays structurally safe.