Slashdot Mirror

http://hexayurt.com/

it's a free (libre) design, i'm surprised it wasn't mentioned in the original post. the modular design (it's hexagons) allows for yes, things like solar-panel hexagons, WIFI-pre-installed hexagons, lighting-pre-installed hexagons and so on.

Nobody knows why Ikea ignored the hexayurt designs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexayurt , http://hexayurt.com/ ). NIH?

There's the Hexayurt Project, which is basically an updated geodesic dome and can be built up to 450 square feet for each module using only hand tools and a screw gun and the Wikihouse which is a fablab style design which relies on a router.

A typical deployment for a family home would be three hexayurts made out of polyiso foam and then sprayed with ferrocement. Cost is probably around $1500 for that approach, but that's first-world costs. With hand-plaster rather than sprayed ferrocement, I think a developing world unit could well hit $1000.

And, of course, a simple plywood hexayurt for disaster relief is $100 per family, half the price of a disaster relief tent.

Right now, stuff like the Hexayurt is being deployed in Haiti. So if your area is struck by a massive disaster there will be millions of people lining up to help you. But what about the people who live in impoverished (but otherwise not destroyed) areas?

I imagine the best solution would be some sort of modular apartment block. I doubt you could put it sideways in a C-130 and just plop it down somewhere, but it would ideally be something that could be built in a fraction of the time it would take to make a full-on apartment building. Here's how it would work:

• The whole thing would be a structurally sound apartment block that could hold around 20 families. So maybe 5 floors with four apartments on each.
• The roof would have a water tank that connects to a sprinkler system as well as a common indoor water pump. Water that goes to the pump itself passes through a standardized filter. There would also be a rain/condensation collection system on the roof.
• An array of solar panels to provide power for the high-efficiency (and again, standardized) lights in the apartment.
• Three or four power-generating bikes in a room adjacent to the batteries (which are hooked up to the solar cells). In the event of low power, people can get on the bikes to get the batteries charged up.
• Durable - but not valuable as scrap - construction materials. For instance, the main frame of the building could be made of steel, but the pipes could be PVC. Power wires and whatnot can be encased in PVC piping to make it less enticing to strip and sell them.
• Using Science to adjust to the local area - Building in a desert? Paint the building white so that it doesn't absorb heat. Building in a cold zone? Paint it black so it absorbs and retains heat. Etc.

This is gonna be the stuff of the future and probably the best way to handle the "slums" situation. We standardize it, we drop it in, we let the people take care of it.

http://hexayurt.com/

Its Pyramid Power, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_power, increases gas mileage.

Although Pyramid Power got busted for razor blades and apples, they haven't tried it yet for increasing gas mileage.

If it doesn't work, it will make a cool fort for the kids to play in.

Maybe build a mini Stonehenge in your backyard, and get a Druid to bless your car?

May those who help most win so they say.

I made three entries - the hexayurt, the infrastructure package, and the low cost medical care.

The Hexayurt
The hexayurt is a reasonably well tested next generation disaster relief shelter built on free/open source principles and industrial supply chains. It comes from work done at the Rocky Mountain Institute. The basic idea is to take 12 standard 4âx8â industrial panels, cut six in half diagonally and fasten them into a cone (see the site for pictures) and use six whole panels for the walls, giving a durable shelter of 166 square feet, big enough for 5 people at UN standards. These shelters will survive 80 mph winds easily.

The emphasis on using standard industrial materials is the key. Nobody can afford to carry extensive stocks of emergency housing for disasters in the developing world, which often displace millions of people. Airfreighting tents is expensive and inefficient, and tents are lousy shelter for long term use, which is all-too-frequently how they are deployed. The Hexayurt idea is that industrial cities near regular disaster zones (Bangaladesh, strife-torn areas of Africa, the hurricane belt) take their existing industrial infrastructure and add a few simple new skills so that before or after a disaster they can mass produce a simple, long-life shelter for affected populations. This is a step towards disaster relief self-sufficiency at a regional level, so that these areas begin to be able to cope without being so reliant on patchy and poorly-funded international relief effots.

The Hexayurt concept has been tested by US DOD, and is an integral part of the STAR-TIDES program. American Red Cross and Netherlands Red Cross both think it is a great idea and have supported its development, and AMURT is considering the system. All of this has been done by a persistent self-funded open source development effort.

http://hexayurt.com/

The Hexayurt Infrastructure Package
The hexayurt is a free/open disaster relief shelter which has its own entry. However, a shelter alone is not enough to really help people after a disaster. If you have 100,000 perfectly good shelters in a field, the next problem you face is water and sanitation: without some deployed solution, people will get sick and die.

There are lots of appropriate technology solutions to sanitation, cooking without wasting wood or generating toxic smoke, purifying water to drink. All of them are under-funded, under-tested, and under-adopted. Millions to tens of millions die every year because this âoeappropriate technology infrastructureâ is not being properly funded, and the result is needless loss of life.

The key is to understand that credible candidate technologies exist to provide all the same basic essential services that people enjoy in the developed world on a budget of maybe $200. Furthermore, the services can be provided house-by-house. For example, rainwater is collected on your roof, then purified using a biosand filter to give you safe drinking water, rather than having a water purification factory down the road and pipes. These systems are basic, and some need work, but some combination of SODIS, solar water pasteurization, thermophilic composting toilets, sulabh toilets, solar cookers, rocket stoves, gasification stoves, biosand filters, microsolar, microwind and microhydro will provide all the basic essential services of life in nearly any climate anywhere in the world. What hasnâ(TM)t been done is a global systematic program of testing each of these individual technologies in each region of the world, making local adaptations, cleaning up and publishing the designs, making training videos, running educational courses, and looking for chances to integrated, combine and synthesize systems into whole packages which are proven to provide all essential services in the field. This is our proposal.

is turning into quite a movement.

http://appropedia.org/ is like wikipedia but, predictably, for appropriate technology.

http://hexayurt.com/ is a nice little emergency shelter (that's my project.)

http://globalswadeshi.net/ takes Gandhi's ideas (like the spinning wheel) and generalizes them into a global picture based on appropriate technology innovations

http://akvo.org/ does water technology

http://openfarmtech.org/ does a wide range of systems for a very high standard of living

and there's a lot more out there.

http://www.globalswadeshi.net/video has a series of video interviews with people working on appropriate technology in this general vein.

not from a charitable approach, but from a foreign policy approach.

http://www.guptaoption.com/2.long_peace.php - Winning the Long Peace

http://www.guptaoption.com/5.open_source_development.php - Saving the World through Open Source

(also relevant: http://appropedia.org/

Basically, if governments or foundations pay for open source innovation in key areas, like solar cookers and efficient cooking stoves, rural water purification technologies - hell, basic sanitation - they can get a very great deal of leverage on the fundamental problems of the world for only a tiny fraction of the money it would take to try and solve them directly.

It's like Linux or Apache - even counting corporate funding, not that much money went into these things, but the value created in the developing world is *huge*. Can you imagine trying to run the IT infrastructure of the developing world, where techs are rare and expensive, on Windows?

Well, we could do the same for infrastructure in general.

More at http://hexayurt.com/ - click on the infrastructure links.

A lot of these sorts of technologies were aggregated (PDF) by the Hexayurt folks. The hexayurt is itself one of these technologies. A roomy shelter costing just over $200, takes just a few hours to build, and has the R-value of a typical house.

http://hexayurt.com/