Concreting the UK

cells

Say we wanted to concrete over the whole UK

How long would it take?

I'm not talking about houses, just the stuff roads are made from

Any ideas?

marleyboy

It depends on the Manpower. To hazard a guess 30 - 50 Years on even areas, as much as 3000 when it comes to the Mountains and Valleys. If were including Lochs and Lakes we could be talking Millions.

DTDfanBoy

cells wrote: »

Any ideas?

Perhaps it's time to give up the crack

chewmylegoff

cells wrote: »

Say we wanted to concrete over the whole UK

How long would it take?

I'm not talking about houses, just the stuff roads are made from

Any ideas?

The easiest way would be to use the hot air generated on this forum to melt the polar ice caps until there was only a tiny bit of Britain left above water and then concrete that. I reckon I can get it done by next Wednesday.

cells

marleyboy wrote: »

It depends on the Manpower. To hazard a guess 30 - 50 Years on even areas, as much as 3000 when it comes to the Mountains and Valleys. If were including Lochs and Lakes we could be talking Millions.

Assume the uk is more or less flat

We will leave out lochs lakes and waterworks too

So you would guess towards the 50 year mark of your 30-50 years?

Generali

Well the UK, according to Google, is 243,000 sq km. They say 5% of the country is already under concrete so similar leaving 95% of that or about 231,000 km^2 to go.

I we assume that we want to concrete this to a depth of 15cm we'd need 34,625 km^3 or 34,625,000,000,000 m^3.

Again according to Google, a concrete truck as a capacity of 6.1 m^2 so we would require about 5,675,000,000,000 to carry all that concrete.

The M25 has had a maximum of 196,000 vehicles on it in a day according to Google. If we assume the UK's road network has the capacity of 1,000 M25s (a wild stab in the dark quite frankly) then it would take 28,960 days to move that concrete if we also assume that all road movements are restricted to moving concrete and nobody has to travel to get to the site of the concrete. That is 80 years.

So there we go. I can state definitively that it would take 80 years to concrete over the rest of the UK to a depth of 15cm.

:P

vivatifosi

80 years to concrete (copyright Generali) and 2000 years to get the relevant planning permission.

padington

Never, the cable TV and water companies would be digging it up faster than you could lay it down.

zagubov

We worked out on another thread that if we wanted to have american style houses and gardens roads parking area etc. at our population density, we'd be about 30-35% built up, about the same as Malta.

Are we planning to achieve this for 200 million people?:eek:

kabayiri

Why the concern with concreting over the UK?

We all know that in a decades time every man and his robodog will want to live and work in Londonopolis. This mega city will have the M25 relabelled as the "Londonopolis inner ring road".

The so called Northern Power House will be just that - a source of power from the North (wind / fracky gas / more wind).

cells

Generali wrote: »

Well the UK, according to Google, is 243,000 sq km. They say 5% of the country is already under concrete so similar leaving 95% of that or about 231,000 km^2 to go.

I we assume that we want to concrete this to a depth of 15cm we'd need 34,625 km^3 or 34,625,000,000,000 m^3.

Again according to Google, a concrete truck as a capacity of 6.1 m^2 so we would require about 5,675,000,000,000 to carry all that concrete.

The M25 has had a maximum of 196,000 vehicles on it in a day according to Google. If we assume the UK's road network has the capacity of 1,000 M25s (a wild stab in the dark quite frankly) then it would take 28,960 days to move that concrete if we also assume that all road movements are restricted to moving concrete and nobody has to travel to get to the site of the concrete. That is 80 years.

So there we go. I can state definitively that it would take 80 years to concrete over the rest of the UK to a depth of 15cm.

:P

Good guess. Or rather im more interested in the method than the actual number.

some thoughts. The road network capacity would probably be irrelevant as you can drive on the concrete your building