[Greenbuilding] [BULK] Re: green roof membranes Second Try

[Chris Green]

Lawrence Lile wrote:
> I had a neighbor with a cement roof that was built in the early 1900's.  <snip>   Yes, ferrocement would make a really dynamite roof.
I have a book somewhere around the house about How To Build a 
Ferro-cement Boat, by Samson and Wellens, 1968. Looking for this title 
at ABEbooks.com, I see there are now many such books available.
If you can build safe boat hulls out of ferro-cement, there's no reason 
one couldn't build a roof from this material.

I remember from the late '60's and early '70's, when this technique was 
a regional fad, the idea was to build the iron pipe and chicken wire (up 
to 50 layers) hull upside-down, then invite a pack of gung-ho friends 
over to spend the day smooshing mortar into the assembly. This required 
a substantial bribe in the form of lots of beer and pizzas, but the job 
usually got done. I believe these hulls ended up being around 2-3" thick.
IIRC, the process involved part of the team on the outside pushing the 
mortar into the wire structure and vibrating it with something, and the 
other part of the crew inside smoothing the mortar out as it made it's 
way through the hull work.

The designs in that book were ocean-going sailboats, and some of them 
were fairly large for that era at 40-60' long.

Chris Green.