Awesome, low cost, quick assembly Emergency Shelter

Don't know if this has already received it's own post, but if not it deserves one. It looks like the plans are public domain too. While you're there check out the excellent sustainable wiki site it's on:

http://www.appropedia.org/Welcome_to_Appropedia




What is it?

The Hexayurt is a refugee shelter system based on work done at the Rocky Mountain Institute. It uses an approach based on "autonomous building" to provide not just a shelter, but a comprehensive family support unit which includes drinking water purification, composting toilets, fuel-efficient stoves and solar electric lighting. Other systems can be added in a modular fashion. Here is a one page summary (pdf).

Is this for real?

Yes. Both the American Red Cross and the US Department of Defense have examined the Hexayurt system in detail and found that it has considerable merit and utility. I hope that we will see it in use by international agencies within two years.
The best place to get started is to read the slides from the presentation Vinay Gupta gave at the Pentagon in December 2006: Pentagon Presentation (pdf) - 20 pages, not much text, and the best summary of the system we currently have online.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/3083/Hexayurt-presentation


Projected Costs

Shelter: $200 - $500+ per single family unit depending on size, climate and use duration
Infrastructure Package: around $100 per unit
Materials

Permanent use: Thermax HD (Dow)
Temporary use: laminated hexacomb cardboard (Pregis)
On site fabrication: Tuff R (Dow, widely used)
Units

There are three shelter sizes, of which the middle size is shown.

Stretch Around $100 per unit, 6' high, 72 sq ft
8 foot Around $200 per unit, 8' high, 166 sq ft.
12 foot Around $300 per unit, 12' high, 166 sq ft. Resembles a space age cabin, full standing height throughout.
Assembly

Units take a team of three people around an hour to assemble. They are assembled using a 6" wide, 600+lb bidirectional filament tape, and anchored to the ground like tents. No heavy lifting, ladders or scaffolding are required.

Manufacture

Any wood shop or packaging factory can be taught to manufacture units in an afternoon. In emergencies, basic units can be manufactured on site with hand tools in half an hour each (only six cuts are required for each unit.)

Infrastructure Package

1 Wood Gasification Stove (burns wood for cooking, 3x more efficient than clay stoves)
2 Cold Cathode / LED Flashlights (energy efficient area lighting)
1 Composting Toilet (model depends on location and we are still researching options)
1 Water Purifier (type depends on location)
Rechargeable AA batteries (for stove, lights, radios etc), for use in solar charging stations.

Cont'd

http://www.appropedia.org/Hexayurt_project

a campaign to buy loads of these through contributions; there are so many people in need of a roof over their heads instead of a piece of cardboard.

and write it off as charity.

profits. Hell, I don't even wonder.

Other companies do it, so why not Dow?

Just in case. *shudder*

Charities need to start laying in the supplies, I think, and training people how to make these. These look good.

He developed an ultralight, hygienic modern bathroom that could be airlifted to areas recovering from disaster, or just suffering from poverty. Most of the money was provided by an aircraft company, Piper Aircraft IIRC. At the time he did this (1930's), many Americans still did not have indoor plumbing, and many urban apartment dwellers had to share bathrooms with other tenants.

His seedpod geodesics were meant to be airliftable to anywhere in the world on short notice, and unfold or unpack to create large buildings from a shipping container that could fit on a flatbed truck. I've often wondered what the impact would be of developing an airliftable field hospital that could be inserted by helicopter at the site of an earthquake, landslide, flood, fire, etc. The idea has been around for more than half a century, but in the absence of a clearly discerned profit motive, nobody's acted on it.

See The Dymaxion World of Buckminster Fuller, if you can find a copy.