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Construction Guide
Shelter 2009
biological fiber section

Shelter, Sustainability, and the Rural Poor

page 6

The trusses lash together and become the outline of a roof. The blue girders represent outside walls and are three meters long. Previous test models are visible in the background. Repairs on the end of the larger one established that new material can be added years later.







Although the economic analysis leading to here will always need further polishing, the shelter technique itself is so easy and reproducible I do not know why it took so long to develop. I wondered if perhaps it was a stretch to think about many millions of shelters until becoming aware that the Red Cross and others in the humanitarian community are also planning for many millions of shelters.

While large quantities of mass produced emergency shelter are needed for disaster relief, no single entity can accomplish what the rural poor can do for themselves using this technique, note that it can be scaled to very large, eg hospital, school, etc. Ferrocement.com presents all this open source because the issues addressed are chronic and approach overwhelming emergency. Planet Earth needed you working on this yesterday.

Further reading about this work may be found in the main biological fiber section. Though a few of the photos are repeated, there you find a more detailed examination of truss connections and further consideration of materials, including the super-fast five-cent joint-wrap, using cement, acrylic and utility muslin.

You can help by forwarding this link to locations focused on developing prototypes and training trainers to establish highly competitive microbusiness. Now is a good time to talk with political leaders about strategies to harness the income and profit streams generated by a wide range of economic opportunities not readily available to private enterprise; e.g., forest re-growth income, environmental benefits realized by building like this instead of using lumber, and the transfer of individuals from poverty to productivity, including, the unknowable percentage of micro-entrepreneurs who will become master artists and bring national prestige that contributes immeasurably to general wealth. These are real generated income streams that result from avoiding real costs and creating added value realized by all of Nature, they are just a few of the known sources of externalized profit.

Recent extension of this work can be accessed under the title Shelter 2009 ... very low cost shelter example ... includes economic analysis.