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>What do you do with all that dirt? >... The Boring Company is investigating technologies that will recycle the earth into useful bricks to be used to build st
by schiffern 9y ago
>What do you do with all that dirt?
>... The Boring Company is investigating technologies that will recycle the earth into useful bricks to be used to build structures... These bricks can potentially be used as a portion of the tunnel lining itself, which is typically built from concrete. Since concrete production accounts for 4.5% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, earth bricks would reduce both environmental impact and tunneling costs.
I called it. :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14224261 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14224261
- easilyBored 9y agoI have seen ~3 decades old earth bricks (granted, uncompressed) and it's not pretty. Maybe compression and hydro-isolation does wonders.
- jacquesm 9y agoMix in some resin?
- greglindahl 9y agoThe traditional way is to use straw.
- schiffern 9y ago>~3 decades old earth bricks (granted, uncompressed) and it's not pretty No surprise there. CSEB is an entirely different material from regular old compressed earth block, which itself is entirely different from uncompressed earth. Squeezing out the empty space and adding a binder (cement) makes it all one solid piece as strong as concrete. Uncompressed earth is just... dirt. It's like saying, "Concrete roads won't work. How do we know? Because gravel is an ingredient of concrete, and gravel roads suck."