[Greenbuilding] chickens coming home to roost

[Alan Abrams]

<The concern I've always had about chicken wire with ferrocement is: 
there's almost no metal there. If any kind of small crack happens and 
water gets in there, it will rust in no time. That said, chicken wire is 
historically the ferrocement building material of choice.>


there's chicken wire, and then there's "chicken wire."  Poultry netting is
something like 25 gauge, one-inch hex pattern, and stucco netting is about
20 gauge, 1 1/2" hex.  As I've mentioned before, I seen eroded adobe walls,
where the bricks were almost completed dissolved, with 1" thick reinforced
stucco shell still supporting portions of the roof...

of course the limiting factor is water intrusion and rust, so whatever the
application, it must be rigid enough to prevent cracks due to flexure,
supple enough to prevent shrinkage-expansion cracking, and waterproof in any
event.

-Alan Abrams