Resyst Home - Fire Resistant and Earthquake Resistant, Environmentally Friendly Luxury Homes
Natural Disasters combined with global climate change is changing the patterns of how people choose to live around the world. The effects of urbanization and climate change are dangerously converging… a multi-scale approach is necessary to analyze the impacts of material selection, providing efficient guidelines for post-disaster reconstruction 1. Our build environment and real estate have to adapt to these shifting market trends and social scenarios. Moreover sustainability and growth of any economy, depends on overall reduction of the carbon/environmental footprint of the supply and demand as majority of all economies relies on energy dependent production, based on the availability of natural resources. Construction industry contributes most heavily to all economies and is one of the key players influencing social growth and development. However the current build environments have prominent large environmental footprints. Therefore, as an innovative construction technology and creative real estate developer startup it is Resyst Home’s mission to make our build environments much more resilient to natural disasters than it is today at the same time, covert the demand and supply sides of the construction technology transformed into more sustainable ones pointing toward circular economies2.
In California, we have witnessed recent high risk disaster events, Woolsey and Paradise Fires and the Ridgecrest earthquake to name a few. Natural disaster events like fire and earthquakes are greatly unpredictable. Meanwhile, building system commissioning has been recognized as a cost- effective measure to cut energy consumption, but in practice commissioning quality can deliver less- than-satisfactory outcomes. Regulation needs to better support commissioning outcomes3. Architects and Engineers design structures with prescribed material design constants in steel (kipps) or wood (fiber bending stresses) accepted for different building types per the ‘Building Standard Commission’ recommendation enforced by law as Building Code, different standards in regions/sates/countries. But truly, we are incapable of completely making our buildings earthquake or fire exposure proof.
Resyst Homes mission is to best the current industry standards in practice to make a market shift. There is no company with this mission in the market now, but we believe this in flux. It is our goal to conducts tests associated with our current, ongoing projects4 to meet both the International Standards (IS)and American Society of Testing Materials (ASTM ) standards as they are erected. Having experienced licensed professionals on our team, we are proud to bring a new standards for best practices that far exceeds the “minimum” prescribed for residential construction by Building Code. As a company, Resyst doesn’t stand for minimum industry practices – we plan to excel and inspire with our ongoing research in progress to improve disaster risk mitigation and reduce the current carbon footprint of our built environments. We appreciate your interest, support and sharing this incredibly challenging journey with us.
At Resyst, we are determined to develop zero carbon footprint for our buildings, through fundamental changes in its materiality. Using wood-based building materials results in low CO2e emissions5. The construction sector is experiencing a revolution through the last ten years, with the idea to switch to its ancient building material, timber. With climate change politics on the spotlight, countries such as-Germany, Austria, Finland and Canada have introduced massive timber construction, using engineered wood products and Cross Laminated Timber(CLT). Also there is a growing body of empirical data on CLT’s fire resistance capabilities. Unprotected CLT floor assemblies met ASTM E119 standard qualifying criteria for 2-hour fire rating in loaded conditions6, where as typical type-V assemblies do not meet any fire ratings, unless additional layers of fire protective material is applied to it.
Total average activity duration and total cost of CLT modular construction is lower than the conventional building7. Developed in the early 1990 in Switzerland, as a way to reduce waste in sawmills, the system has been successful in Europe for the past 20 years, and more recently has made inroads into the Australian and North America, Canadian markets. In the United States, the adoption of the system is still in its early stages.
Resyst plans to build equity on this advantage. Case studies on high rise multi unit residential projects show an approximate
14 percentage time/cost saving versus conventional construction. Recent research has shown that CLT could be cost-competitive as an alternative to concrete structures and for buildings over 6 stories high8.
Resyst is committed to our environment to the full extend and this is part of our core mission. Even though the there is a potential for CLT to even self-extinguish9under certain conditions, we are in progressing on our reasarch in using organic fire retardant products yet to be tested with ASTM and IS standards. Regular market available CLT uses Polyurethane adhesives which is suitable for cross- laminating soft lumber. We questioned the Polyurethane adhesive’s environmental implications and regular CLT’s reuse capabilities even if energy recovery of glued wood waste10is a good possibility. More research and data need to be collected for Polyurethane adhesives health implications. With Resyst’s commitment for the environment and healthy buildings we were forced to find a product that doesn’t use polyurethane adhesives. We are in discussion for a technology transfer with an Austrian manufactures, Thoma Holz 10011, a pioneer in “Dowel Laminated Timber (DLT)” an alternative to CLT. DLT laminated timber uses hardwood dowels to laminate softwood together, a very antique technique used in Japan. Soft wood is sustainably harvested during the full moon to reducing the whining. We believe creating a domestic manufacturing pipeline using fire retardant adhesive free DLT technology will enable us to provide to the customer a far superior building at the same cost as conventional construction.
In many regions under the ‘Ring of Fire’, especially in California, earthquakes over the years have been known to cause devastating damage on buildings and induced huge loss on human life and capital. Since the invention of devices such as the viscous and friction dampers, scientists/researchers have been able to incorporate these devices into buildings and other engineering structures. The viscous damper is a hydraulic device which dissipates the seismic forces by pushing fluid through an orifice, producing a damping pressure which creates a force. In the friction damper, the force is mainly resisted by converting the kinetic energy into heat by friction. Devices such as viscous and friction dampers are able to absorb almost all the earthquake energy, allowing the structure to remain undamaged12. Direct displacement-based design (DDBD) approach is one of the most effective performance- based design methods for dampers. A modified version of DDBD can be proposed for the design of structures equipped with fluid viscous damper (FVD) that the effect of higher modes and difference between spectral velocity and pseudo-spectral velocity are applied in the design process. Different steel moment frames equipped with FVD can be designed using novel methods. For comparison objectives, the performance of the modified method has been compared with the previously proposed DDBD. Although the structures designed using the previously proposed regular DDBD have achieved the desirable performance level, the peak story drift is significantly less than the target drift and this design approach leads to an expensive over-design, whereas in the structures designed using the modified DDBD, the peak story drift is close to the target drift and the achievement of desirable performance level has been effectively satisfied. Therefore, the drawback of over-design has been solved, and the modified version of DDBD can be considered as an effective design approach for structures equipped with FVD13. Resyst is incorporating advanced seismic design technology using FVD on CLT panels creating innovative earthquake resistant moment frames.
Nowadays timber structures target taller heights and so they face much larger seismic demands.
All this together has made seismic protection technologies (SPTs) to emerge as a hotspot in timber engineering research, devoting more than 80 publications only in the last decade. All types of SPTs share the common principle that, rather than increase the lateral resistance of a structure, they are focused on reducing the seismic demands and such reduction has been reported as large as 90% and above.
Although many distinct devices and techniques are intended to this end, SPTs applied to timber structures may be grouped into supplemental damping, seismic isolation, and rocking systems. Apart from the copious scientific production in the field, knowledge has been published in very distinct niches, which makes a linkage of state-of-the-art very difficult, as well as an analysis of current challenges and limitations. An outlook for future research trends is expected towards cost-effectiveness, rate-effects, engagement of devices, and design guidelines which may expand these technologies bringing timber structures into higher levels of seismic performance15.
Resyst Home Inc. is the pioneering company in disaster resistant luxury home segment , defining the new materiality for zero carbon buildings as well as embracing emerging technologies in the field of disaster resistance and mitigation. Our team comprises of cutting edge researches in the field, survival specialists and engineering pioneers. We have made considerable headway in understanding the problem we are solving and we anticipate completing all the necessary remaining engineering within the next 3 months before we break ground on our first sold construction projects. Additionally, each building were constructing undergoes its own engineering analysis such that we are confident the end product has the desired Resystant properties. Resyst homes are incomparable to traditional construction since regular building technology doesn’t incorporate any of these features or materiality. Via innovative materials and engineering were delivering a far safer product to the consumer with roughly equivalent cost to conventional Type-V construction. We appreciate your interest and sharing the innovative, creative enthusiasm with us. Please feel free to reach sree@studiodplusr.com with any questions you may have.
