“I grew up seeing unleveled houses. It was just something very normal in my life,” said Robby Strunk, a research technician at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's Alaska campus who is from Quinhagak, Alaska, a village on the Bering Sea coast.
FAIRBANKS, Alaska - When Robby Strunk was growing up, adjusting the foundation of his family home in Quinhagak , Alaska — a village on the Bering Sea coast — wasn’t out of the ordinary.“When I first started leveling the house, we only needed to level it once a year, and that quickly turned into two within my lifetime, within my schooling, back home” Strunk said in a Tuesday interview. “It’s very crazy how quickly it changes.
“We see more movement and more subsidence underneath the buildings that we’ve been designing, and it’s changing fairly rapidly,” NREL Alaska Architect and Researcher Aaron Cooke said Tuesday. For the Alaska campus’ adjustable foundation designs, Cooke considers some of the myriad approaches in terms of axes, particularly those for small, residential structures. One design, which he calls a “glorified jack,” moves a foundation up and down at different contact points as needed — along an imagined y-axis.
Those designs use large, steel skis to aid coastal communities, like Unalakleet, in a “managed retreat” from areas with degrading permafrost that causes patches of soil to fall off the shoreline. “If your foundation shifts, then that changes the whole building envelope of your house, and so it can make it more expensive and unhealthy to live in those houses,” he said.
Alaska Permafrost Thaw Permafrost Thaw Permafrost Thaw Alaska Permafrost Degradation Nrel National Renewable Energy Laboratory
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Melting permafrost could be turning Alaska’s rivers orangeLaura is a science news writer, covering a wide variety of subjects, but she is particularly fascinated by all things aquatic, paleontology, nanotechnology, and exploring how science influences daily life. Laura is a proud former resident of the New Jersey shore, a competitive swimmer, and a fierce defender of the Oxford comma.
Read more »
Sustainability Report: Where does recycling go after the Central Recycling Facility?The facility accepts electronics, which go to Green Star of Interior Alaska in Fairbanks.
Read more »
Gusty winds and lightning in Interior Alaska fuel wildfire near FairbanksMore than 35,000 acres had burned by Tuesday on the west side of the Tanana River, fire officials said.
Read more »
Alaska Supreme Court confirms: ‘Hoverboard dentist’ is banned from dentistry in AlaskaIn a separate criminal case, former dentist Seth Lookhart was sentenced to 20 years in prison with eight suspended.
Read more »
Alaska Supreme Court confirms: ‘Hoverboard dentist’ is banned from dentistry in AlaskaIn a separate criminal case, former dentist Seth Lookhart was sentenced to 20 years in prison with eight suspended.
Read more »
Director of NREL’s Alaska Campus Ice Breaker: Q&A With Director of NREL’s Alaska CampusIcebreaker an question and answer between the Director of Alaska Campus of NREL talks about buildings clean energy and Ice
Read more »