October 2007
$180 video projector
http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/20071031/torpedo-projector-lets-kids-go-big-%e2%80%a6/
Odd resolution - 920 x 240 or something - but looks remarkably like video projectors for all 
World Toilet Organization conference in India
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7070494.stm
A World Toilet Summit has opened in the Indian capital, Delhi, with more than 40 countries taking part.
The four-day meeting will examine solutions and technologies that can be used to provide a basic need for nearly half the world’s population.
According to estimates, 2.6bn people around the world lack access to a hygienic toilet.
Barnett on Acquisitions
http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/2007/10/welcome_to_my_career.html
To which I said:
To really understand this, we need to run a war game. Two groups, one with the standard kit, the other with 25% of the budget spent on total acquisition of that kit, one year, and the ability to buy or contract for anything they can get delivered.
I don’t think anybody has much doubt how that game would turn out.
A lot of this stuff is analogous to architectural problems in legacy software. The old architecture simply no longer does the job, the Young Turks of the Web Department are writing gateways and setting up alternative processes just to stay 5 years behind current practices, and nobody will take responsibility for breaking “what has always worked” even through it’s fairly obviously not working any more. These systems evolved against two generations (40 years) of opposition to a system who’s calcification makes our own look acrobatic and supple. But being last dinosaur standing is not the same thing as being the winner, and it would do us all well to remember that.
Here’s the bad news: 5% faster than the Soviets isn’t enough any more.
Today’s bad guys don’t bring their own sack of bureaucrats to every engagement. We should not either. That’s a tactic that was successful 20 years ago in yesterday’s war against yesterday’s enemy.
It only gets worse from here.
Monoculture is a problem and a sign of weakness, not strength. Etc. The problem with having politicians who don’t believe in evolution is that they don’t build systems that evolve, except by accident, under perverse incentives. I’ve witnessed round after round of personal losses to the bureaucrazy, and you would not believe what America has lost as a result.
Buckminster Fuller Challenge Second Draft - ow my aching brain
Again, please send me all of your thoughts and feedback. We’ve got time to tweak yet!
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Challenge Response:
The Hexayurt (http://hexayurt.com) is a practical global housing solution that has found champions in groups as diverse as the Amritanandamayi Ashram, the American Red Cross and the US Department of Defense. A $200 family home that includes utilities like toilets, electrical light, water purification and a stove will kick start a global revolution in the lives of the poorest. This proposal will show how to achieve this goal.
The Building
Standard materials often come in 1×2 sizes, like 4′x8′ plywood. A Hexayurt is built with whole and half sheets of any appropriate 1×2 material. Lightweight materials can be fastened into a building with box closing tapes, which have breaking strains of up to 150 pounds per inch yet cost pennies per foot. These cheap tensile materials are a key enabling technology for the Hexayurt building.
The best material is a honeycomb cardboard material called Hexacomb. (http://www.pregis.com/Products_NA/ProtectivePackaging/Hexacomb/Structura…) Hexacomb was used in permanent buildings in California in the 1980s but fell from favor when building codes changed. However, it is suitable for permanent dwellings and costs around $10 per sheet. It can be insulated with blown cellulose (shredded newspaper) and faced with thin aluminum (think soft drink cans) for long term durability. In short, it is a very cheap, green structural insulated panel (SIP.)
Panels can be assembled in the field, starting with a compressed honeycomb block (i.e. the hexagonal cells are closed, forming a solid block) and two large sheets of paper-backed aluminum. The honeycomb is stretched out, opening the hexagonal cells, and coated with glue using a roller. It is then glued to the foil facing sheets, forming a rigid panel. (reference Mark Jacobson of http://hexacomb.com) This allows an entire building to be fabricated from a 6′x1′x1′ box for easy shipping.
Alternatively, polyisocyanurate insulation boards can be used. They cost $15-$30 each and the US building industry uses over 1,000,000 each day.
12 panels make the basic Hexayurt. 6 boards are used whole, on their long edges, to form a hexagonal wall. Six more are used to form the roof, which is a simple cone made of 4′x8′ panels cut in half diagonally. The building is taped together and guyed down like a tent. Windows and doors are cut to taste. It takes about two hours.
12 board, 8′ Hexayurts shrug off 40-60 mph winds without difficulty. Larger units can also be made but they require stronger materials. Folding units are also possible.
People download the plans from the internet and build their own shelters for recreational use in harsh desert climates.
This works. In its own way it as shocking as the geodesic dome.
The Utilities Package
Without basic services like sanitation and light, a shelter is only a small step. To achieve an integrated solution requires collaboration.
Toilet technology varies greatly by climate among other factors. The Sulabh toilet (http://www.sulabhinternational.org/) can cost as little as $10. Thermophilic composting toilets are another good option. It is a specialized design challenge.
From Solar Cookers International (http://solarcookers.org) we take the CooKit. Solar cookers can also purify water by heating it to 160F for several hours, killing all pathogenic organisms. A simple melting wax indicator (the WAPI) shows when the water is purified. The materials for the CooKit are the same as those of the Hexayurt itself - foil-covered cardboard.
For cooking and heating, we suggest an efficient biomass stove like a wood gasification stove (http://woodgascampstove.com) or a rocket stove (http://aprovecho.org/). The gasification stove requires 3W of power (from rechargeable batteries) but is incredibly clean burning and efficient.
Power is burgeoning with innovation. A simple approach is a large solar panel which recharges AA batteries using a 15 minute charger. Each person takes their empty cells, places them in the charger, waits 15 minutes, then takes their electricity home. Another approach is a pull-cord battery charger (http://potenco.com/) which if used one per village could cut costs even more.
Cold cathode (CCFL) interior lights are as efficient and robust as LEDs, but produce broad, even illumination suitable for reflecting off the reflective roof of the Hexayurt, lighting the whole building. The indirect light allows the human eye to adapt to make best use of light, making the Hexayurt seem much brighter than the light meter reading would suggest.
Cooling and refrigeration are hard to provide on limited power budgets. Clay evaporative cookers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot-in-pot_refrigerator) can provide food storage. Ducted high efficiency fans (http://sleepbreeze.co.uk) could, in future, provide affordable cooling for individuals vulnerable to thermal stress.
Together these simple technologies can provide the same basic services which those in industrialized nations take for granted for a tiny fraction of the price.
The role of the Hexayurt Project is integrate a set of technologies to provide necessary services in a culturally and regionally appropriate way. This is a whole systems thinking design optimization challenge. (see diagram)
Field Testing
The next step for the Hexayurt Project is to go beyond demonstrations and into an experimental deployment. There are two groups that are interested in working with the system, validating the technology, and possibly moving towards adoption.
The first group is the US Department of Defense. Hexayurts have been built at three US DoD demonstrations (Strong Angel III, Combined Endeavor 07, STAR-TIDES http://star-tides.net) and have attracted significant interest from Dr. Linton Wells II (former Chief Information Officer of the DoD.)
The second group is the Mata Amritanandamayi (Ammachi) Ashram in Kerala, an NGO which has a large free housing program. In fall of 2006 Amma asked us in person to come to the Ashram and teach the technology to her community.
The role of the Hexayurt Project is to solve the fundamental engineering problems and publish the results for the world to use. The fact we have interest from such diverse groups validates the generality of the technology.
However, because we do not patent our copyright our work, so that it is freely available to everybody for any purpose, we cannot easily find funding. The disaster relief and poverty alleviation charities are strongly oriented towards existing off-the-shelf solutions, rather than building technologies. US military funding system is poorly geared towards small, lightweight projects without heavy institutional backing. We need help to turn the non-funding institutional interest that we have already achieved into action.
Once we have a village-level demonstration, NGOs and government groups can take the results and work with their existing suppliers to build Hexayurts and utilities packages to their own specifications. But until we prove that it works in the field, the open nature of our intellectual property works against us.
In short, the Hexayurt Project needs funding to demonstrate the technology in a village setting and to document the results clearly and scientifically. We would anticipate working closely with groups with serious field resources to do these tests, of course.
Financials
We would anticipate four cost centers
* Subsistence living expenses for Lindsey Darby and Vinay Gupta.
* International travel to test sites.
* Equipment and test units.
* Professional services (one video shoot, some engineering analysis.)
Based on our current cost of living, and reasonable projections for other expenses, we would expect the prize to cover our full time engagement and all associated travel, materials and services for 18 months to two years. Because of institutional lag, however, it may prove more effective to use the money over five years. There may be long periods when very little can be done while we wait for institutional decision making and building seasons, for example.
Impact
Refugees
Current aid programs are inadequate for the reality of refugee life. Tents rot in a year in the sun. Gathering firewood exposes people to needless risk. The Hexayurt Project can deliver an integrated, whole-systems based refugee response package which is designed around the decade-long refugee context, at a price comparable to relief tents. The Hexayurt Utilities Package was designed in response to the Sustainable Settlements Charrette (http://www.carebridge.info/carebridge/community/charrette2.html).
Disaster Relief
In the developing world, we would anticipate shipping raw materials and a large field fabrication team into the disaster area to work with people to make their own panels and emergency homes. (http://www.appropedia.org/Hexayurt_rapid_deployment#Flat_Packed_Cardboar…)
In the developed world, Hexayurts can be made from insulation boards, sheltering around 500,000 people per day. The American Red Cross is enthusiastic about this plan (http://disastr.org)
The Poor
By bringing down the cost of essential services, and demonstrating an alternate model of infrastructure, we can change how governments approach poverty for the better and start to provide for the millions. We hope that people will manufacture hexayurts all over the world once we have demonstrated what is possible.
About Us
Lindsey Darby is an environmental sciences student with a strong interest in poverty issues, societal resilience and economics.
Vinay Gupta is an engineer. He dropped out of college to help start a medical software company, and has worked in many different fields. He volunteered with the Rocky Mountain Institute (http://rmi.org), co-authoring a paper for the Danish EPA and co-editing “Small is Profitable” (http://smallisprofitable.org) and “Winning the Oil Endgame” (http://oilendgame.com).
For more information, please see http://hexayurt.com/bfi
Passive House energy efficiency standard
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house
Passivhaus in German) refers to the rigorous, voluntary, Passivhaus standard for energy use in buildings. It results in ultra-low energy buildings that require little energy for space heating.[1] A similar standard, MINERGIE-P®, is used in Switzerland [2]. Despite the name, the standard is not confined only to houses. Several office buildings, schools, kindergartens and a supermarket have also been constructed to the standard. Passive design is not the attachment or supplement of architectural design, but an integrated design process with the architectural design.[3] Although it is mostly applied to new buildings, it has also been used for refurbishments.
Hexayurt Photo Gallery from TIDES at NDU
12′ Hexayurt construction gallery from the STAR-TIDES demonstration in October.
There is likely to be a second run sometime in mid-November at Henderson Hall, if it all comes together.
New hexayurt models online.
Buckminster Fuller Institute Prize Application
FIRST DRAFT
PLEASE EMAIL ME YOUR COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENTS
It’s within 1% of the maximum length, but has a little bit of word-level slack that could be trimmed to get in an additional sentence. Larger scale cuts and re-arrangements are perfectly plausible also.
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Challenge Response:
Our goal is to produce a proven public domain plan for a $100 home, similar to the Dymaxion Deployment Unit, suitable for both emergency and permanent use. This building can be made from simple materials like foil-coated cardboard, or from sophisticated composites, depending on budget and application. Because it is public domain we anticipate the design will become a standard form for simple buildings all over the world. So far we have proven the concept and gathered considerable interest from major institutions, and with your support, we can finish the job by proving the design works in all major climates, and with a broad variety of local materials and manufacturing techniques. This is a validation challenge with extremely low risk and very, very high returns.
Furthermore, all of our work to date is online and in the Public Domain.
Let us start with the basics. In America, the Hexayurt shelter is specified to be made from 12 sheets of Thermax HD. Thermax is a common agricultural insulation product comprising a 4′ x 8′ x 1″ (or thicker) sheet of polyisocyanurate insulation (akin to styrofoam) sandwiched between two thin sheets of aluminum foil about the thickness of a soft drink can. It retails for about $25 to $40 per sheet, giving a 166 square foot microbuilding for $300-$500. A board weighs less than 10 lbs, with an expected life of 10 years.
To make a Hexayurt, six of these sheets are cut in half along their diagonal, and taped into six connected isosceles triangles forming a hexagonal cone four feet high and sixteen feet across. Six more boards are placed on their long sides and taped together into a wall, then the roof cone is taped to the wall. Many modern tapes have a breaking strain of 150 lbs per inch of width, and 10 or 20 lbs per square inch of adhesion, so a 3″ tape applied to all seams is sufficiently strong for this building to stand in 60 mile per hour winds. This structure has similarities to both the geodesic dome and the mongolian yurt. The advantage of this shape that is uses standard 4′ x 8′ building materials with no waste and minimal cutting or measuring.
To make this simple design work many critical details must be observed - correct formation of the anchor points which keep the building on the ground, correct coating of the tape to prevent ultraviolet light degradation, correct match of materials to climatic zone. We simplify here for brevity.
To reach $100 per home, we must turn to using local labor for the manufacturing processes, and switch to a different material: hexacomb cardboard. Hexacomb is a kraft-paper honeycomb material that was used for building permanent residences in California in the 1980s, and is widely used in the packaging industry. The honeycomb ships as a solid block which can be expanded by hand and glued to a paper-backed foil sheet to produce a panel. The panels may be filled with blown cellulose (shredded newspaper) insulation for greater energy efficiency. The reflective foil face helps to shed the sun in hot areas, greatly increasing the thermal efficiency of the shelter.
This process will allow us to create a kit home which fits in a 6′ x 1′ x 1′ box, costs around $100 per unit, and is erected with local labor. The Hexacomb-type core material can be produced in most countries, as can the foil facing materials and the tape. This approach is validated by Mark Jacobson (http://Pregis.com,) who has been working with these materials for over 20 years, and passes the “smell test” for practicability in the field.
Both the hexacomb cardboard and the Thermax these materials derive their durability from the aluminum layer which faces the sun, preventing ultraviolet light degrading the shelter. This makes them ideal as a replacement for disaster relief tents which are frequently used to house refugees, but rot in the sunlight after only a couple of years, while the refugees themselves often remain in place for decades. The same logic applies to housing for the very poor. An additional feature is that the completed building is light enough to be carried by four or five people for many miles, so it can be moved without being taken down, or the tape on the panels can be cut and the building re-erected in a different place. This property allows refugees who are sheltered in these buildings to be resettled in their original locations with their new homes if peace permits them to return home.
The Hexayurt has been demonstrated to the American Red Cross, and many members of the US Department of Defense, including General Ward of Africa Command. It is universally thought of as being an extremely promising technology, with a great future ahead of it.
Beyond sheltering we come to the other needs of the poor, the refugees, and the displaced.
We believe that for an additional $100 per family, a basic but complete family utilities package can be provided, including water purification, solar cooking, energy efficient biomass (i.e. wood or dung) cooking, efficient electrical lighting, and a sanitary toilet system. The archetypal form of that utilities package is as follows:
The CooKit solar cooker, from Solar Cookers International (http://SolarCookers.org) or a similar device provides efficient energy capture for cooking, and for solar water pasteurization. (Water held at or above 160F for several hours is completely disinfected, and a simple solar cooker can do this almost anywhere in the world.) This is cardboard and tin foil, the same basic elements as the house.
A rocket stove or wood gasification stove (http://Appropvecho.org, http://Spenton.net) provides efficient biomass cooking. Neither design is patent encumbered. The WGS requires a little electricity (3W) to operate, however. $5 - $15.
Village solar based on AA batteries. A central solar charger station costing around $400 will charge 4AA cells in 15 minutes for a few cents per use. One system may serve as many as 80 households, making their per-home cost $5. 4AA rechargeable cells cost $5 in bulk. Every few days each household walks to the charger, waits in line, and charges their cells. This also allows for cell phone charging. $10 per household all told. Rayovac’s IC3 technology is ideal, although slipping out of availability.
An interior light based on either CCFL or LED technology, optimized to produce even light in an interior so that the human eye dark-adapts for maximum perceived brightness, is also run from the AA solar charger. $10 or less per household. Energizer Double Bright is an ideal base technology.
A simplified toilet. There are a variety of possible designs available, but for practical reasons, we favor an enclosed body thermophilic composting toilet. This is an area under active development by many parties, and our intention is to work with partners like Joseph Jenkins (Humanure Handbook) or Robert Patterson (BIPU) to deploy a suitable solution. $40?
You will note that so far we have not described any heavy engineering challenges. This is because there are none. Everything we want to do consists of testing extremely simple or off-the-shelf systems formally so that their efficiency and effectiveness can be proven, and building test shelters from a variety of materials in different parts of the world so that people can know, for sure, how these shelters and utilities systems perform in the field.
All of our intellectual property (so far) is in the Public Domain so anyone can replicate our work. The project is far enough advanced that the challenge is getting to the first 10,000 deployed units.
Our plan is to demonstrate that the system works, do a pilot project or half a dozen pilots, and document everything possible on video and in pictures and text on the internet. The simplicity and openness of the designs aids technology transfer. The Department of Defense is extremely enthusiastic (see http://star-tides.blogspot.com for an account of one demonstration where Hexayurts were built) as are the Red Cross, who value the idea for using Hexayurts for responding to natural disasters or terrorism in America. Up to 500,000 people per day can be sheltered using materials already in the building supply chain. We expect these groups and other NGOs, private companies and individuals simply to observe what we have shown to work, and copy the designs using the materials they have access to. There is no economic model beyond “publish” and, once that is done, get day jobs.
Our primary qualification is in this document: what we have done. I worked at the Rocky Mountain Institute as a volunteer, co-editing “Small is Profitable” and “Winning the Oil Endgame,” and co-authoring “A Whole Systems Framework for Sustainable Consumption and Production.”) Before this I was a software engineer. My partner, Lindsey Darby, has make significant contributions to this work, but is still in university and therefore has no long track record.
We hope you will appreciate and understand the practicality and simplicity of our work.
Andy Buxton and the SleepBreeze Personal Cooler
Andy Buxton just wrote an article on shelter cooling and the rational for the SleepBreeze Personal Cooler on Appropedia.
It’s a very useful piece of kit, and you should be able to buy one soon. I recommend subscribing to the BreezeBlog if you’re at all interested in product development, small business, manufacturing logistics, ergonomics, or just, in general, gadgets and science.
TIDES - the skinny!
If you’ve been wondering how the TIDES Demonstration at National Defense University went, the TIDES Summary - 2.5 mb PDF - 35 pages is a good place to start.
This is a first draft of the TIDES boards - we’re still missing some of the material on solar, and everything to do with satellite communications - but if you want to know what was going on at TIDES, this is a pretty good guide to what was there and what it’s good for.
Includes probably the best material I’ve put out to date on infrastructure and SSTR. The full print res file is huge (25 meg,) and here