Better (earthquake) safe than sorry!

The arches have extra reinforcement beams at two levels

By: Sonam Wangchuk

24. september 2008

Today we filled in the walls above the arches and raised all the walls to the level to the roof ring beam. And by early evening we had even filled concrete in this roof ring beam. Yes, made of our dear U blocks again. Having accomplished this we finished the day a bit early today. Now this RCC beam should rest for three days for curing before it can take the load of the roof. So we shall be doing other small things in the next three days.

Steel reinforcement inside U-blocks for the roof ring beam

Casting concrete in the roof ring beam

Ventilation is an important part of a naturally cooled building and I will write more about that later but one of our problems was how to let the east-west winds pass through the two class rooms without having noise also passing from one room to the other We invented a new way today by cutting a U block in a way that air can easily flow but sound not as easily. Let's see how it works.

U-blocks cut and laid in a way so that air would pass easily but sound not as easily

Sorry today my tip is much longer than the diary itself. But then they say a picture can say what thousand words can't. So!

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The school by the end of Day 9

Tip for today:

Better (earthquake) safe than sorry-

You have so far seen four reinforced concrete ring beams go at various levels into the building. And there was the foundation beam which went in much earlier and there is one more to go, at the roof top level. You might wonder why so many! Well the entire Himalayan belt falls under Zone Four of earthquake risk (out of five zones). Do you know that children died in unusually large numbers in the recent earthquakes in China showing that school buildings are often highly neglected?

These horizontal ring beams are tied together by the vertical ties, made also with steel bars and concrete. These vertical ties which are anchored in the foundation beam are placed at every one and a half meter along the long walls and on both sides of every opening (door, window) and corners etc.

Together the horizontal and vertical ties make a network of reinforcement elements. The idea is that the metal reinforcements bring ductility (flexibility) to the building and the building is able to absorb a lot of energy before a major damage. In the event of an earth quake it should get cracks but should not collapse and if it has to collapse then it should give enough time to the people to leave the building.

These are some of the principles of earthquake safe design and we have tried to follow these, because they say- Earthquakes don't kill, badly designed and badly built buildings kill.