I can distinctly remember from my chilhood getting the pirate set of Legos® and setting them sail in our out-back wading pool. Seeing is how you could snap the little constuction blocks together tight enough they could be made to hold back the water, why not up-scale the idea for flood control? Have various sizes: "Home-defense", "The Street Blocker", and "Big Dam Blox" sizes for various applications. Easy to air-drop and deploy by assisting military forces, and easy enough to deploy by regular citizens. Although not as compact as sand bags, the blocks can be reused time and time again without having to throw them away, or re-filling them with sand or soil.

Local streets prone to flooding under moderate rain conditions? Police or other emergency service personell can carry one or two larger blocks in their cruiser, truck, etc. and with 3 minutes of actual response time from just a few units to save everyone 30 minutes worth of perilous rescue time.
-- Letsbuildafort, May 11 2004

Mega Lego http://www.halfbake...om/idea/mega_20lego
[svante] [Letsbuildafort, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]

All I had to play with as a child were sand bags.
-- ldischler, May 11 2004


Did you at least have shovels to fill the sand bags?
-- Letsbuildafort, May 11 2004


Dad said I'd get sand on my birthday. But he lied.
-- ldischler, May 11 2004


[Lbaf], legos float, just like your pirate ship of yore. What keeps your big dam blox in place? (sp: defense)
-- k_sra, May 11 2004


Stakes, rocks, natural terrain features or I suppose heavier "key blocks" used as the base could be given a tad bit more weight. Or better yet, give the blocks a slight curve and braced against a more permanent feature. Once completed, and stacked to the desired height would be more able to handle the pressures of large volumes of water.

Thanks for playing Grammar Gestapo for me, [k_sra]!
-- Letsbuildafort, May 11 2004


(picturing hundreds of children, on their knees building the first few layers) It's going to take a looong time to build, but should be fun.
-- Worldgineer, May 11 2004




//...legos float...//

Same thing happened to us. We didn’t have any sand for the bags, so Dad and I filled them with water. And when our section of the levee floated away and then the downtown floated away right afterwards, the mayor was awful steamed. He was waving his arms around, and he wanted to know if we was idiots, and Dad said no, not particularly. And Dad turned to me and he said that next time we should stake them to the house. That was good thinking, cause it’s really built. See, we used the mega legos.


-- ldischler, May 11 2004


Hmm, one problem is that lego bricks come in discrete sizes. So you won't be able to match the barrier up easily with a real world gap.

Still, filling small gaps with other stuff probably isn't that hard, especially if you make the big blocks an integer number of small blocks tall.

And besides, the idea has lego in it +
-- RobertKidney, May 11 2004


If you had a flat layer sticking out from the bottom of the lowest course of bricks, facing the water, the weight of the water should help to hold the dam in place. There's an inflatable dam that uses this idea to keep it secure.
-- oneoffdave, May 12 2004


I like it, and it give me an idea also. +
-- sartep, May 12 2004


cool idea +
-- engineer1, May 13 2004



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