Foldable building units

Abstract

Prefabricated foldable building units are described that have one or more of the following advantages. They are more easily prefabricated, more easily transported to building sites without requiring special permits, unloadable and unfoldable at the building sites without using cranes (they can be unloaded using ground-level lifting rigs and unfolded using, for example, a cable mechanism), allow precise and fast completion at the building site, and allow significant reduction in the scope of work to be completed on-site, where costs and scheduling are far less manageable. Further, methods for unloading and unfolding foldable building units are described that obviate the need for one or more cranes that can be expensive and project-complicating, thereby opening up a significant percentage of building sites for placement of prefabricated foldable building units.

Description

[0001] related application [0002] This application claims U.S. Provisional Application No. 61 / 245,162, filed September 23, 2009, U.S. Provisional Application No. 61 / 371,524, filed August 6, 2010, U.S. Provisional Application No. 6, filed August 6, 2010 .61 / 371,540, the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 61 / 371,513, filed August 6, 2010. The entire teachings of the aforementioned applications are incorporated by reference in this application. Background technique [0003] Architectural structures, especially residential buildings, are usually constructed on site using stages of construction processes that require the transportation of the required materials and specially skilled labor to the job site. The inherent cost inefficiency of this approach is well known in the art. [0004] Accordingly, various alternative approaches have been described in order to provide affordable housing. Some of these alternatives include prefabricating building sections at a central...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

They require a lot of work on the building site, a lot of time for finishing on the building site, they are difficult to prefabricate, they cannot be unfolded and finished precisely on the building site, and they need to be used for unloading and unfolding on the building site the crane

Cranes can be costly to use, difficult to plan for, and not even suitable for a large percentage of construction sites, thus precluding these construction sites for a large number of prefabricated collapsible building units and generally requiring the use of individual building site owners or developers traditional structure

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