Brick roads are beautiful and durable, but we don’t see them too often due to the effort it takes to produce them. What once was a labor-intensive, back-breaking job has now become a snap with this automatic Dutch paver laying machine, called the Tiger-Stone. The device rolls out a beautiful and sustainable hardscape, creating an instant road anywhere it travels. While the process may look magical, the secret lies in a smartly designed gravity-based system.
The machine consists of an angled plain that workers feed with paving stones or bricks. As the electric crawler inches forward along a sand base layer, the bricks are automatically packed together by gravity. A small telescoping forklift feeds the hopper, allowing the Tiger-Stone to lay out an impressive 400 square meters of road day, and the span can be adjusted up to six meters wide. Here’s a stereophonic video of the machine in action.
Brick roads have been around for centuries and they have been revisited lately by the green building community for a number of reasons. Bricks are easy to procure and reuse, cement pavers last a very long time, and they are easy to repair and replace. They tolerate water and freezing without forming cracks, and some newer systems actually absorb rainwater between the pavers and infuse it back into the ground again, reducing storm water runoff and helping improve the effectiveness of aquifers. Not to mention, the roads look pretty great too.
Via Gizmodo
Except that bricks that came from demolished houses are very very difficult to reuse because it is very difficult to get the mortar of off them.
I hope US Rentals sees this and rents it out by the day. 1,300 feet per day, that’s 1 mile of road in 4 days. There’s 5 guys there at $200 per day, two bobcats at $250 per day, and this new layer machine at probably $500 per day. At those rates, a mile of bricks could be laid for approximately $10,000 plus material.
Labor: $4,000
Bobcats: $2,000
Layer machine: $2,000
Total Labor: $8,000
All well and good, i like the idea. I wonder how good the tyre traction is on those. I know some bricks get increadibly slippery in the wet and it’d be pretty unfortunate if we had a sustainable road causing accidents!
Otherwise quite cool.
extraordinary, using this bricks, will save time, its impact becomes cheaper operating costs
Citizen, I\’m not sure that\’s right. The article says the machine\’s daily output is 400 *square meters* or road – not 400 meters of road. That may just be imprecise language, and I almost hope so, because it seems very slow. To say something that may be incredibly obvious, 400 square meters is 20 * 20, or if you assume a road is about 10 meters wide, 10 * 40. So, about 40 days to the mile.
We have brick streets in our area that are 100 years old, and still in good shape. Contrast that with a new asphalt road that will need repaved every 5-10 years.
The downside to brick are (were):
1) Noisy when driven on, bothering some sensitive homeowners. We have seen many streets in our area paved over with asphalt for this reason.
2) Slippery when wet. Addressable with modern brick making techniques?
3) Labor intensive, thus very expensive to install. Solved!
4) Required large gutters to keep water running off. Believe solved.
I volunteer my street for replacement with brick.
Great, see video http://bit.ly/9NjWIq
How do you lay the pavers down hill??
How about if we just use criminals to do it instead of an expensive machine? Don’t want to work on a road crew? Don’t break the law.
not some, but ALL brick paving passes water between the pavers.
hard to plow snow?
There is much more to a road than it’s surface. The machine just lays the road SURFACE on a pre-prepared roadbed, which includes curbs and everything else, perfectly smooth and level. This is where most of the expense and labor is. All the machine does it allows the workers to be standing up instead of kneeling, as they used to do. No big deal, except for the factory that makes the machine and the workers who have an easier job now.
how do you make the cuts to fit the edges?
If only this was permeable pavement that allowed water to filter through gaps it would be perfect. maybe thats the next stage of invention
If they could build a machine to sort the bricks and create patterns automatically, I think they could increase the speed substantially.
Thunderbirds did it first: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fceI7KdtvaE (5:15 in)
why was this re-posted 2 weeks later?
new technology solution to roads problem
good to see this kind of machine…. how do i purchase and import it to my country
$200 a day, oh boy… I should get a job in US! Engineers don´t make that in Brazil…rs
$250/day rental for a simple bobcat and you suggest $500/day rental for this machine GET REAL!