Granite Mountain Reserve—The Mojave Desert's climate is extreme.
Freezing temperatures and snow describe the winter and temperatures as
high as 115 Degrees Fahrenheit often fill the summers. Wind
speeds up to 128 M.P.H., flash floods, and numerous record setting
earthquakes are some other extreme weather highlights of the Mojave
Desert.
This report is on four structures that were erected in the Mojave Desert of South Eastern California in January 1992. These unique structures were designed to house a stand-alone research facility for the University of California.
The University of California, The National Science Foundation, and The Southern California Edison Company funded the project jointly. |
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A tight budget demanded the selection of a building system amenable to inexperienced volunteer construction labor. The projects location was so remote that the nearest source of conventional electricity, building materials, and skilled labor was at least 80 miles away.
All those apparent "constraints" actually provided challenging design and material use opportunities. Schoen's use of similar but less sophisticated building systems for high mass passive solar construction, in hot and arid regions of the world, led to his selection of The Insteel Tridipanels for the wall construction.
The finished panels were wired together and shotcreted with 1 ½ inches of cement on each side. The panels were made into a monolithic wall and produced a finish as straight and true as any formed concrete, minus the excessive labor cost and use of wood forms typical for projects of this scale.
The fully shotcreted walls were somewhat horizontally stabilized by the wood roof structures, but no diagonal steel tie seismic restraints were yet installed when the 6.9 and 6.5 Landers earthquakes hit the desert on June 28, 1992.
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