Could Shelter In A Day's disaster shelter change the world?
Part 4 of a 6 part series

Terrapeg is an award winning furniture line I developed first. It was the inspiration, along with the Haiti earthquake, for Shelter In A Day. It uses the same sustainable fiberboard materials, CNC cutting, and tool-free joint as the Shelter. It ships flat, is easy and even fun to assemble without tools (just the fiberboard hammer we supply), and comes in a variety of designs. We can even create a design to suit your needs. Beds, tables, chairs, student desks or church pews, in short, anything and everything you might need to furnish your new building we can supply with Terrapeg designs. This unique furniture is normally packed first on the bottom of the shipping pallet and then your building is stacked on top.

 (P.S. I just finished a design for what I call…wait for it… Outhouse In A Day)

Here’s the really important idea. It’s now possible to build a furnished home or a furnished clinic or a furnished school / church…in an afternoon. This literally changes everything for aid recipients as well as aid donors.

 Think about what this would mean to someone, anyone in need of a place to live Now, not next month. When disaster strikes, just forklift a complete, furnished home from a central warehouse onto a standard truck, drop it anywhere it’s needed, assemble the building in a few hours, knock the furniture together, move in and lock up. This will cost less than FEMA spends just to move a trailer to a disaster site, much less than buying that trailer. Compared to trailers, an organization like FEMA will save money even if we deployed Shelter In A Day in a disaster response and then allowed them to become private storage sheds when no longer needed as immediate housing.

Shelter In A Day with Terrapeg furniture is inexpensive enough to work well with micro financing. As an example, the mortgage payment for a 7000 (US), 30 year note @7% would be just 47/month.  Just think what this could mean in Africa, the favelas of Rio, Haiti or the slums of Soweto.  Even furnished this is about 1.50 US a day. A furnished house for the price of a sandwich, can you imagine?  Yes…we can afford to end homelessness.

What about water, power, solar?  Check back next week for Part 5.

READ Part 1
READ Part 2
READ Part 3

READERS: What are your thoughts?

About Shelter In A Day | Disaster Shelters
Winner of 2013 Aid and International Development Forum (AIDF) "Most Innovative Product Award." Shelter In A Day is the brainchild of eco-friendly, furniture designer Frank Schooley. Shelter's disaster recovery housing provides safe and secure, simple to construct, green homes for those displaced by natural disasters, such as hurricanes, earthquakes or floods. 

The disaster shelters are a solidly constructed, termite, rust and rot resistant house, with lockable doors and windows.  Homes are crafted from waterproof, recycled wood fiber material and can be easily erected anywhere, in one day. 

Disaster Shelter | Haiti Economic Conditions
Part 3 of a 5 part series

I’ve mentioned several ideas previously and introduced some concepts like the importance of cement in the Haitian economy. Let’s go a step farther. There are many in Haiti who don’t have enough to eat. This is mostly because they do not have a paying job. For the under-educated or the unfortunate there is sometimes agriculture but harvest is always too far away and the kids are hungry since yesterday.

I mentioned that limestone is everywhere underfoot. I have never seen so many rocks as I saw everywhere in Haiti. Limestone is fairly soft and the type found in Haiti is generally lightweight and very workable. Lets imagine that just three tools became available to anyone who wanted them, first, a rock hammer, second, a pair of plastic safety glasses and third, a simple gauge, to determine the standard size for a hand-chipped, limestone brick.

With these three things, costing probably no more than $20-30 US, anyone who wanted to, wherever they are, could go to work for themselves, in Haiti. It works like this:

Walk out to where the rocks are (almost anywhere in Haiti), pick up a likely stone, chip it till it’s the right length and fits through the standard brick gauge and bring it to a central collection point, located wherever they sell bags of cement. At the collection point your bricks are converted into cash and the chipper can convert the cash into a meal or anything else they need. The cement seller pays for and gathers bricks, stacking them on the same pallets the cement bags he sells were on.  Remember when I mentioned one-way cement powder shipping? When the next otherwise empty cement-bag truck heads back to the dock, the (palletized) bricks are aboard. When the next otherwise empty (lighter) vessel returns to the ship in the bay, the bricks are aboard.  When the ship returns to its home port, the bricks are aboard and become a commodity on the world market, a hand chipped, beautiful, limestone brick, imported from Haiti (at very little cost).

Some bricks will stay and be used in Haiti. We need not concern ourselves with that. A commodity always finds its best market. They can help to stretch that next bag of cement, and they are light colored and beautiful. Cement architecture always needs the help of a beautiful, hand-chipped brick to brighten it up a bit. Haiti can export a commodity (limestone) it has too much of. Anyone who wants work can hire themselves. Under-utilized resources are put to work. It’s a win-win situation for everyone. If I go to Home Depot to buy bricks, which would I choose: the squared-off factory-made cement one or the hand chipped limestone one at about the same price…Hmmm.

There are a few details that bear mentioning. Check back for Part 5 of my 5 Part Series on Disaster Shelter | Haiti Economic Conditions.

READ Part 1
READ Part 2
READ Part 3

READERS: What are your thoughts?

About Shelter In A Day | Disaster Shelters
Winner of 2013 Aid and International Development Forum (AIDF) "Most Innovative Product Award." Shelter In A Day is the brainchild of eco-friendly, furniture designer Frank Schooley. Shelter's disaster recovery housing provides safe and secure, simple to construct, green homes for those displaced by natural disasters, such as hurricanes, earthquakes or floods. 

The disaster shelters are a solidly constructed, termite, rust and rot resistant house, with lockable doors and windows.  Homes are crafted from waterproof, recycled wood fiber material and can be easily erected anywhere, in one day. 

Could Shelter In A Day's disaster shelter change the world?
Part 3 of a 6 Part Series

Just imagine how many ways our disaster shelter will change the lives of homeless people everywhere.  It’s now possible for your group, club or congregation to take up a collection, buy and ship a complete structure, fly down for a weekend to wherever it’s needed, take a day and build it, turn it over to a family, community or church… and be home for work on Monday, with the astonishing pictures. No need for you to wonder where your money went. No need to worry it was diverted, misused or wasted. Just imagine the satisfaction of knowing you helped someone in need easily and directly.

 Imagine if we multiplied your satisfaction by hundreds…even thousands. What if every church congregation in the US sent just one house to Haiti? Wouldn’t that feel fantastic. We could with your help.  Just think of the changes to peoples’ lives if housing and security concerns were gone.  Suddenly, they would have time for more productive projects... like providing for their family.

I’m working closely, with Community Mission for Hope, a non-profit engaged in medical and educational missions to Haiti, on funding initiatives to build two schools and an orphanage in Haiti. The first school, located near Jeremie across a bridgeless river and up on a hill where there are no roads, is a good match with Shelter In A Day because everything must be hand carried across the river to the site. I figure construction for the school classrooms and kitchen building, for 100 kids, will take just a few days. The orphanage in Petit Groave we want to build, again for about 100 kids will take a bit longer but features a school, cabins, mess hall and a for-profit bakery, shower rooms and septic field. Quick build times save money in many ways.  That’s the power of Shelter In A Day.  Wanna help?

Ok Frank, you’ve got my attention… but what does it cost?

You would think that a building that was this innovative, that saved so much money, would cost more than standard construction. Remember, this is not some temporary, get people under a roof, any roof, transitional shelter. Shelter in A Day is a permanent, solid wood, strongly built house. But it doesn’t cost more. In fact it costs less. Since it is computer cut to save labor costs, is made from recycled wood fiber which is plentiful and low cost, is not assembled at a factory, stacks in a small bundle and goes up in an afternoon, it saves your hard earned money at every step. Everything is included, hardware, doors, locks and windows, even those vital screens. There are no hidden costs and nothing for your team to scramble around trying to find except for roofing, and maybe flooring... we’ll get to those in a minute.  Just think, this house would be a bargain at 10k, (USD) but in fact, it costs half that, just 5k for the base model with a 12x12 ft. floor plan. Yes, this home costs less than the price of a decent used car.

Here are some specifications:  (Don’t get distracted with the details because I still have something important to tell you about.)

Footprint, base model: 

  12x12x8 feet tall,  144 sq. ft. Ship wt. 3000#

 (3.66x3.66 x2.44m,  13.4 sq.m             1366kg)

Ships: palletized for forklift handling…48x91x40 inches total   (1.2x2.4x1m)

Center, add-on extensions are:      (allows footprints extended to 12x16, 12x20, 12x24, 12x26 etc.)

4ft,             48 sq.ft. each                           600#

(1.22m,     4.46 sq.m. each                       272kg)

Each extension adds 6 inches to pallet height

Shelter ships: 8 ea. Per 20 ft. standard shipping container,     16ea. Per 40 ft.

Extensions are 995.(US), each 4 feet. There is no practical limit to how many extensions you can add to building length. Building width is limited to 12 feet (3.66m) due to material size.

Since we’re looking at details, it’s time to talk about the roof.

Shelter In A Day’s roof is structural, but not waterproof. There are several good ways to handle the waterproofing depending on intended use and local practice and it’s cheaper and better for a variety of reasons to source it locally.  Roofing options:

The least expensive and easiest roof comes in a five gallon bucket of trailer type roof paint. It is light colored, reflects sun and heat, inexpensive (about $100 in the US) and is very easy to apply. Low cost and it works great as long as you do not want to disassemble the building later.

A steel roof is best for the tropics where heat gain is an issue. It is inexpensive, (about $350 in the US depending on size) long lasting, locally sourced and simple to install. Just attach 3, 2 inch tall wood battens on each side of the roof and attach the steel. Because it is 2 inches above the structural roof and allows heat to escape, the Shelter stays as cool as a cave inside, even in the hottest sun.

Suppose you want the option of moving or storing the building between uses for refugee populations, military uses or disaster relief, then a canvas roof is best. A military specification tarp or a truckers’ tarp will work well and installation is simple because the building structural members are pre-drilled for tie-downs. (Price will depend on specs and building length but budget $300-500 in the US.)

OK, I said I’d tell you something important…here we go…

READERS: What are your thoughts?
READ Part 1
READ Part 2

Check back next week for Part 4

About Shelter In A Day | Disaster Shelters
Winner of 2013 Aid and International Development Forum (AIDF) "Most Innovative Product Award." Shelter In A Day is the brainchild of eco-friendly, furniture designer Frank Schooley. Shelter's disaster recovery housing provides safe and secure, simple to construct, green homes for those displaced by natural disasters, such as hurricanes, earthquakes or floods. 

The disaster shelters are a solidly constructed, termite, rust and rot resistant house, with lockable doors and windows.  Homes are crafted from waterproof, recycled wood fiber material and can be easily erected anywhere, in one day.