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titanium roof flashing, and cheap titanium

If dwellings lasted 3x longer then rent would go down as dwellings are paid off. give roofs a titanium flashing underlayment to make them more weather resistant; also making TiCl4 from seawater and rutile
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It might be possible that housing would be more affordable if it were cheaper to build very very long lasting buildings with less maintenace than the previous kind.

My perception is that water lessens the longevity of houses and increases maintenance. I think that underneath the roofing shingles a thin layer of titanium sheeting would ultra durably shed water. The theory behind this is that after landlords pay off a building, then most of their income goes to maintenance, further financial adventures, and competition. Buildings that last a really really really long time should eventually cause cheaper rent. Many landlords have 1-5% profit margins, so removing most maintenance would increase that, also causing more dwelling to be built

Now, about making that titanium about as cheap as aluminum. Electrolysis of salt water is able to produce chlorine gas. The chlorine gas bubbles out where it meets the abundant mineral rutile (TiO2), then electricity is used to create a highly reactive discharge plasma (or even a plasma rutile aerosol) at the TIO2 chlorine mixture producing TiCL4, which is then distilled, or drained away.

More electricity reduces the TiCl4 to titanium metal, producing cheaper titanium from seawater(ish) and a common mineral, rutile. This process has many similarities to aluminum production.

My main emphasis though is using titanium as a building material to make housing cheaper.

beanangel, Nov 01 2016

Titanium video https://www.youtube...e&client=mv-google)
As mentioned in an annotation. [Vernon, Nov 02 2016]


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       I wasn't sure if my seawater and rutile soucre of titanium metal was new enough, even witht he plasma aerosol, so i mentioned the titanium roof covering. Actually I once calculated one that it was only about $3000 or $4000 to put a titanium roof on 2000-3000 sqft dwelling at current titanium values.
beanangel, Nov 01 2016
  

       Two questions:   

       (1) Why would your titanium extraction process be cheaper than the Kroll process?   

       (2) Why titanium? If you want durability and cheapness go for plastic - maybe 5-10mm polypropylene boards (not membranes). They are cheaper, as light as a thin titanium sheet, and much easier to cut, join, drill and work with. They will also last almost forever, if they are covered by shingles and thereby protected from UV. Also, if you nail titanium sheet you get electrolytic corrosion around the nail, and in any case the nailed hole is not watertight. If you nail 5mm thick polypropylene, the flexibility of the material means that the nail-in-hole is watertight.   

       Titanium is not what you want as a roofing material. I have not tried populating my random ideas generator software with materials and building problems, but if I did, I suspect "titanium roofing" would be one of the things that came out of it, along with "brick carpets" and "naugahide bridges".   

       I therefore have no choice but to bone this idea, since it fails to display any signs of having been influenced by human intelligence.
MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 01 2016
  

       [+] He said "titanium", heheh.
FlyingToaster, Nov 01 2016
  

       Can't we all just get along? Plus if bean is the AI we want it to regard us favorably, please.
bungston, Nov 01 2016
  

       I get along fine with [beany], as far as I know.
MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 01 2016
  

       I suspect a leaky roof is more often caused by dimensional changes over time or seam failures, rather than bulk material failure. Your titanium underlayment is presumably going to have seams and will not be immune to thermally induced separation or cracking. So, while the vast majority of the thin titanium sheet will last forever, one or two cracks or gaps will cause it to leak like every other roof. Or, to use an analogy, why make the entire bank vault from titanium when the weak point is the steel lock?   

       // if you nail titanium sheet you get electrolytic corrosion around the nail   

       That's what the titanium nails are for. It's titanium all the way down.
the porpoise, Nov 01 2016
  

       The 1/3rd of a house I live in is about 90 years old. Barring vampires with extra long mortgages, I'd assume the cost of building the house has been paid. So you'd assume that my apartment is cheaper to rent than a new full house in Nowheresville 25 miles out of town. That's not true. And the difference isn't maintenance. I'm astonished by the absence of maintenance we have. You can build a cheap 4 bed house for $150k in this city, if it lasts 100 years, then 2 weeks rent per year covers a re build. Its just not a major cost driver. Naked supply and demand is, largely.   

       Titanium, or rather the alloys of, are great in strength-to weight. Bad in cost. But weight doesn't matter here. Tar paper held down with molded concrete seems to hold up well enough for a tiny fraction of the cost.   

       If you managed to build a house that lasted much longer, say weld the whole thing together out of stainless steel... how would you cope when the ubiquitous solar roof turns up, in 30 years, or if people get a foot taller... or if the land suddenly becomes a bad place for a residential property, if the building becomes non-viable 1/2 way through its life, all that extra capital cost is wasted. If you sink extra cost into a building with the hope of lower maintenance throughout its life, how do you expect to live long enough to benefit?
bs0u0155, Nov 01 2016
  

       Oy vey. So many questions he has.
MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 01 2016
  

       How old is the other 2/3rds?
the porpoise, Nov 01 2016
  

       You should provide link supporting the claim that you can encourage chlorine to replace oxygen, with respect to chemical bonds and titanium.   

       I recently saw a YouTube video of a documentary about titanium, and near the end of it there was a claim that a new process had been developed for extracting the metal more cheaply than the Kroll process --no details given, though.
Vernon, Nov 02 2016
  

       /If you managed to build a house that lasted much longer/   

       Clearly the answer to these questions is that the house must be portable to more favorable locations. A stainless steel house would be much easier to put on a trailer and haul away than a tottering pile of bricks and plaster. In fact, if you make the entire house of a single piece of Chryslerbuildingesque nickel plated steel (including interior furnishings), and spherical, you could roll it from site to site as the world changed around you.   

       Yes, with the coffee taking effect it is coming to me: you would be like Knight Rider, or Kane in Kung Fu, or the A team - rolling your house from site to site, solving problems and helping the populace, then rolling on, gleaming metallically in the setting sun. Although the time scale would be different as each site/set of problems would take up a generation or more.   

       As regards living long enough to benefit the standard methods will do: being the Highlander, reduced calories, vampirism, taunting Jesus on the way to the crucifixion and sirolimus.
bungston, Nov 02 2016
  

       One of the ways landlords maintain profit margins is deferred maintenance. This is considered nonoptimal as the place looks run down, or has actual problems which accumulate worse tenants and lower rent eventually. Buildings that are minimal or zero maintenance at the same building costs would increase profits, while building longevity would eventually lower rent.
beanangel, Nov 02 2016
  


 

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