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Posted by Paul Cook in Kempner, TX [71.53.93.35] on Sunday, November 07, 2010 at 13:20:32 :
In Reply to: Quonset Huts posted by Greg in NY [76.180.29.122] on Saturday, November 06, 2010 at 21:23:23 :
I spent one year of my life in Korea working in an office in a quonset. With the abundance of windows, it was actually bright and pleasant, even with the Army's "paint the inside and outside of everything the same shade of light green."
The placement of a heat source was critical since you could get a satisfactory convection flow up one side that would flow up the curved side and flow over and down the other side.
I don't know how the building was insulated between the inner mason board type panneling and the metal outer skin, but there was no "re-radiating" of the summer sun's heat and we were comfortable.
The military ones had steel frames and we never gave snow loads a thought. We had plenty of snow but we never knew of any of these buildings collapsing. (This is where I spent many fun hours playing in a M37 with chains on all four wheels.)
Five years later, the Army sent me on another vacation in the "Land of the Morning Calm". This time my "hootch" was a quonset that had been partitioned into private rooms. Each had a "window" into the central area to allow the "central heating" to flow into my room. Again, I don't know how the building was insulated, but I was comfortable. During the first two weeks of this tour, the air temperature never got above 15 degrees.
We had to walk from the "hootch" to the bathroom/shower building. If we had on wet shower shoes, we had to be careful that they did not freeze to the sidewalk and leave us barefooted.
Forgetting all the unpleasantness of being separated from my family, my experience working and living in original quonset huts has left me with a fondness for them.
None of the new curved roof/sidewall types cause me to compare them with a real quonset hut.
I would guess that the self supporting versions would be better if they had real frames.