Could Shelter In A Day's disaster shelter change the world?
Part 1 of a 6 part series

When I see reports about the thousands of homeless in Haiti or in cities worldwide or those tornado victims in Moore Oklahoma, I think, what would it feel like to have nowhere to go this evening...or tomorrow… or next month? After the earthquake in Haiti, I couldn’t sleep… for weeks. I’d toss and turn, worrying that something, anything had to be done. But what?

Imagine yourself living in a shack made of scrap metal, old plywood or sticks and tarps, or the rags the tarps have become. Just imagine the walls of your home blowing in the wind, no lock on the flap that is your door, no privacy, no security for your family or possessions, rain leaking down on everybody and everything you have left, maybe a storm coming. Now imagine how it feels to know nothing is likely to get better for the foreseeable future…

I know, I said I’d lift your spirits so… It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way

Food, Water, Shelter… Basic Human Needs

According to a Pew Research poll, after the earthquake, nearly half of Americans either gave or planned to give money for Haiti relief, at least 1.4 Billion…where did it go? It’s hard to say, and there’s the problem. This spring, I went to the Aid and International Development Forum in Washington D.C. and talked with insiders who know something about where donations go. Although a good deal went to food, water and temporary shelter, the overall picture for permanent relief and rebuilding is not good. They tell me that somehow even the best of intentions get mired in unavoidable costs.

What if I told you it’s now possible to affordably end homelessness?  Hard to believe?  To answer this we need to take it step by step to be clear… and I will reveal how, so Stay With Me. After all, it’s not every day you get to change the world.

Building anything, homes, schools, clinics, takes time and time is the enemy. Traditional building techniques use expensive materials, individually sourced and in greatest demand whenever the need is critical. Building also requires plenty of skilled labor, heavy equipment, tools, power and time…lots and lots of time. You and I know it’s frustrating to build anything…but we’ve gotten used to it because we don’t have any choices. We all know that time is money but we’re stuck in a rut. It’s aggravating, right?

Imagine you are trying to build just one simple house in the middle of nowhere but you need it now, or hundreds of houses for flood victims in say, Japan, or thousands perhaps in Moore, Oklahoma, or hundreds of thousands in Haiti because the need is so great. Now multiply that number by the total time to build anything including the foundation, tools, materials, the labor, and all the time related overhead like meals, lodging, transport, the list goes on and on and ... Wow.

It’s no wonder we, as a caring society, are overwhelmed. It’s no wonder government aid and disaster relief organizations and NGO’s with the best of intentions, can’t seem to make much headway.

Can we build Better, Cheaper, Faster? The old saying goes; choose any two. How do we get all three?

Check back next week for Part 2.

READER: 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 2 of 5

What can be done about deforestation in Haiti?

Haiti is suffering from a vicious cycle where poverty and overpopulation fuels the denuding of more and more ground. This cycle results in more ground being washed away which circles back to the beginning of the cycle. In general terms, Haiti needs better control of the rainfall they do receive. This means water projects, erosion control, dams and reservoirs, and irrigation, but all these projects are expensive and require lots of concrete and labor. Here’s the real problem standing in the way of progress… Haiti imports all their concrete (cement powder). There is always a ship anchored in the bay and lighters (smaller boats) ferrying the cement to shore where it is broken into individual shipments, loaded onto trucks and delivered throughout the country. All of this activity is expensive and made more so by the fact that it is all one-way traffic. The trucks return (mostly) empty, the lighters return empty and the ship returns empty.  All this is a real drag on the economy and it upsets the balance of payments because the country has few exports to offset the money drain from importing cement.

Cement is an indispensable commodity in Haiti. It would be hard to overstate that cement tends to come just after water and food in its importance to the economy and its reach into the daily lives of the people.  Because they have no forests and imported wood is costly, everything in Haiti is built with cement.

 The way it seems to work is this. If a family has a good week, they can afford the next bag or two of cement. Everywhere you go in Haiti you’ll see piles of limestone gravel next to piles of limestone sand. The cement is normally mixed on the ground with this sand and gravel to make concrete, poured into cinder block molds or poured into forms to build housing. Because every bag is precious and the need is far greater than the supply, all building materials are stretched to the limit and invariably, too much is attempted with too little, resulting in weak construction… which, by the way, fell down in the earthquake, killing hundreds of thousands. It sometimes takes years to build the family home, one bag of cement at a time and this piecemeal construction with its multiple concrete pours, also results in poor  quality. We all know that time is money. Taking years to build a house costs far more than it should because time has many costs associated with it. The important thing to understand from all this is; the high cost of imported cement is a major drag on the economy of Haiti, and the resulting poor quality construction was the major cause of the many, many earthquake deaths.

The interesting thing is, cement is simply cooked, limestone powder. The whole Island of Hispaniola is made of limestone…it’s literally everywhere, underfoot.  So you might ask, why doesn’t Haiti produce their own cement? The answer in a word is… energy. It takes energy to cook limestone powder at almost 900 degrees C to make cement, and Haiti doesn’t have any available. All their oil is imported and there is no local, natural gas industry. The result is that it’s still cheaper to import cement made where fuel is cheap than to import fuel and make cement even if the raw material, limestone, is practically free.

What they do have in Haiti is limestone, inexpensive labor and sunshine, lots of sunshine.  Putting these ideas together we come to the really important question, is it possible to cook limestone with solar power?

The exciting answer is…YES. I’ll tell you how in Part 3 (coming soon!).

READ: Part  1.

READERS: What are some suggestions you might offer?

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. 

About
Frank Schooley, Designer | Disaster Shelter

On the day of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, furniture designer Frank Schooley was saddened and moved by the destruction he saw replayed on the news.  It’s been estimated that 3 million people were affected by Haiti’s earthquake with approximately 316,000 souls perishing and 1 million Haitians left homeless. Haiti’s government also estimated 250,000 personal residences and 30,000 commercial buildings were either severely damaged or just collapsed altogether. Over three years later, sadly not much has changed. A traveler to Haiti today will find that the same disastrous construction is being rebuilt in the same dangerous way.

Being an industrious furniture maker, Frank knew he could help. Using the same techniques and materials he originally developed for his eco-friendly furniture line Terrapeg, he immediately starting drafting plans for a disaster relief shelter he calls Shelter In Day.

Learn more about Frank Schoolye's innovative disaster shelter or contact us today.

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. 

We are excited to announce that Shelter In A Day won AIDFs 2013 Most Innovative Product Award for our disaster shelter.

Shelter In A Day is the perfect home for Haiti or those displaced by natural disasters. Shelter In A Day's disaster recovery housing provides safe and secure housing in a hurry. 

Shelters are incredibly easy to construct. Our green disaster recover shelters are a solidly constructed, termite, rust and a rot resistant house, with lockable doors and windows. Homes are crafted from waterproof, recycled wood fiber material and can be quickly erected anywhere, in one day, without tools, or electricity.

Frank Schooley, owner of Shelter In A Day Day said “We’re absolutely thrilled to have won this. We were not expecting to win and we appreciate the recognition.”

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 1 of 5

After several trips to Haiti after creating my disaster shelter, Shelter In A Day, the thing that stands out about Haiti's economic conditions are the lack of jobs. Sadly, no matter where you go in Haiti, there are always plenty of people around who obviously need something better to do. It was in Haiti that I first heard the word ‘funemployment’ which means that you have work you are doing but there is no paycheck involved.

I met and talked to people all over the country and there are several impressions that worked their way into my mind: First, The Haitian people, as a whole, are the happiest and friendliest people I have ever encountered in my travels. Second, they love to be busy and if there is no work, they will stay busy somehow (funemployment). Third, they have a deep respect for education as the way forward for their people.

The dysfunctional politics of Haiti can be mostly blamed on the economic conditions that prevail. There is not enough economic activity in general and almost no exports in particular. This results in a small tax base and chronically underfunded government. This was made far worse when most government buildings were destroyed by the earthquake. The overall economic conditions can be blamed on many things but from my perspective, much of the fault can be attributed to the fact that Haiti and the Haitian people have always been victims of their odd geography.  The Island of Hispaniola which contains both Haiti and the Dominican Republic (DR) is situated in the tropical trade-winds. Haiti is downwind (west) of the DR and ringed with mountains along its windward borders.  The moisture laden, northeast (winter) and southeast (summer) trade winds are forced upwards by the mountains on the DR side.  This causes them to drop their moisture on the way up. The result is that most rainfall occurs in the DR making that country relatively lush and Haiti gets what rainfall is left, which isn’t enough to support the population agriculturally without irrigation. This rainfall difference is dramatic when seen from the air. The border is starkly delineated by greenery on the DR side and bare ground on the other, and deforestation is spreading, compounding the misery of the Haitian people.

You might ask where is this going?  What can be done?  To find out more check back next week for Part 2 in our 5 part series - Disaster Shelter | Haiti Economic Conditions.

READERS: What are some suggestions you might offer?

About Shelter In A Day | Disaster Shelters
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. 

Recently big advertising agency DDB created a new ad campaign for a Haitian charity called WATERisLIFE. And as you can guess by their name, WATERisLIFE's mission is to bring clean water to developing countries. 

Sounds like a very noble cause, right?  That was until DDB created a new ad campaign that's meant to poke fun of Twitter users who use the "#FirstWorldProblems" hashtag to complain about mundane and trivial things ... like ...

Unfortunately though DDB and WATERisLIFE have since been skewered by some on the blog-sphere for poking fun of those in need. 

DDB responded in a press release that it hopes to "eliminate the "#FirstWorldProblems Twitter hashtag," because it "showcases concerns that seem important to those living in wealthy, industrialized countries, yet are, fact, trivial compared to the issues faced by those struggling to survive in many parts of the world."

I personally think the ad is genius.  DDB hi-jacked an already in place and well utilized hashtag.  They then directed tweeters to a minute long YouTube video (pictured below) that in roughly a week has more than 1.5M hits - and better still - put a huge glaring spot light on the serious issues that still remain in Haiti and a charity trying to help.

So while there are those who may complain...when was the last time an ad campaign elicited so much chatter about a worthy cause?

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 recover 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. 

Shelter in a Day is made from fiberboard, but not just any fiberboard. We found an exterior grade fiberboard that is waterproof and has a borate treatment throughout that makes it termite and rot resistant. This borate treatment also makes the material more difficult to burn. Fiberboard is a man-made, recycled wood product that has fibers running in every direction which makes it strong in every direction. This absence of a single direction wood grain allows new designs and stronger joints. Wood fiber is the earths’ most basic renewable resource and fiberboard is made from pre-consumer, recycled wood chips, the waste product of lumber production. These chips are heated to break it down into individual fibers which are then pressed mixed with an acrylic binder, and baked strong sheets of various thicknesses.

I never really understood how strong fiberboard was until we ran some basic tests to try to get an idea of the strength of our new Shelter. We use a new, easy to assemble mortise and tenon joint with a locking peg to build our Shelter. We took a single tenon loop (the ‘tab’ of our Tool Free Joint) and hung it in a steel fixture so that weight could be hung from it for testing. This loop has a thickness of one inch and the amount of material around the loop was one inch, resulting in a load bearing cross section of one square inch of fiberboard. Then we added weight to the loop using six of my largest friends sitting on a wood beam and at maximum capacity of the beam, we had over 1,300 pounds of live weight on one square inch of fiberboard, without distortion or failure. It is important to keep in mind that this loading represents the worst case scenario for loading of the joint, a straight pull. In practice, the joints of the Shelter will never have loads applied in a straight line, they will load at various angles where the joint is much, much stronger. There are a 350 or so of these joints in a Shelter. The tool Free Joint and the fiberboard materials are a new technology for building construction.

Shelter In A Day is the brainchild of eco-friendly, furniture designer Frank Schooley. These emergency disaster relief shelters provide safe and secure, simple to construct, green housing for those displaced by natural disasters, such as hurricanes, earthquakes or floods. 

The 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. Shelter In A Day is the brainchild of eco-friendly, furniture designer Frank Schooley. These emergency disaster relief shelters provide safe and secure, simple to construct, green housing for those displaced by natural disasters, such as hurricanes, earthquakes or floods. 

The 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.

Our test model disaster relief house (recent picture above) has withstood Florida's elements the last 20 months beautifully. 

Mango for everybody...$20 US Mango smeared smiles..Priceless!

An Orphanage for Haiti

The Good Samaritan Orphanage is located in Grand Groave Haiti, about 45 minutes drive west of Port au Prince. The orphanage is home to about 70 kids and young adults, about 10 adult teachers, administrators, cooks and
helper/drivers, all under the direction of the Reverend Enock Deroseney, a saintly man if I ever met one. He also runs a school for most of the surrounding children with about 200 students, five days a week. The school,
dormitories, kitchen and church all fell down during the earthquake , the  epicenter was just a mile or two away, but fortunately, no lives were lost.

Since then, they have struggled to house and feed everyone. Housing consists of  wood frame cabins with blue tarp walls and tin roofs. Most have dirt floors. The tarps and other materials were donated when relief efforts flooded in but those tarps are in tatters now and replacements are scarce. Showers and laundry are all outdoors but the water is clean, coming down the mountain from a spring. Several outhouses are spaced around the camp but usage is light with only a single daily meal of rice and beans, eaten under the trees or wherever a seat can be found in camp.

Good Samaritan feeds a noon meal to the students and an evening meal to the orphans, their only meal of the day. When I visited in May, 2012, the kitchen consisted of a wood frame shack with a mud floor, mud up to the ankles of the cooks, and no running water. This kitchen was a new and welcome improvement over the previous kitchen, a charcoal brazier set up under a large mango tree. That 'kitchen' served 300 meals a day for over two years.

The site is beautiful, about a mile from the sea and about 1,000 feet up with an incredible view, but the road is long, rocky and very steep, far from the main highway and a real car killer. The orphanage owns about an acre of land but most of the camp is outside of that and the site too steep for expansion and will never have a power line in the foreseeable future.

Enock owns a larger site in Petit Groave, about 10 miles away, right on the main  highway. This site is beautiful with banana groves and mango trees and a grand church building that survived the earthquake in fine condition. Built off the side of  the church are three big classrooms and on the other side is most of a house, under construction.  The site has good water, a perfect place for a septic field, and a central courtyard just perfect for that never-ending soccer game. Electric power is on its way down the highway, less than 1/2 mile away.

We want to move the orphanage to this new site. I took basic measurements and have come up with a site plan including 10-12 cabins and a mess hall big enough so everyone can eat together. The plan also includes bathroom/shower buildings spaced between and a short distance from every cabin, and kitchen building and a bakery building so the orphanage can realize their dream to set up a for-profit baking business using machines they already have.

All the buildings are designed, secure Shelter in a Day units, 12 x16 feet, with Terrapeg furnishings and will feature concrete floors and steel roofs. The cabins will sleep six on two stacks of three bunk beds. There will be a table
with six chairs designed for the children with book/papers storage under the seats and wall lockers for clothes and personal items.

The mess hall will have tables for six and the same chairs so the space can double as classrooms.  Shower buildings will have flush toilets with a septic field on the low end of the property.

Because the Shelters are easy to build, this entire project can be built in a month and will cost about $200k a figure that is close to the average price of one US home in 1999. The plans are ready, the site is ready, the kids are ready…all we need is the money to make this happen.

Frank Schooley

Terrapeg / Shelter In A Day

Shelter In A Day is the brainchild of eco-friendly, furniture designer Frank Schooley. These emergency disaster relief shelters provide safe and secure, simple to construct, green housing for those displaced by natural disasters, such as hurricanes, earthquakes or floods. 

The 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. Shelter In A Day is the brainchild of eco-friendly, furniture designer Frank Schooley. These emergency disaster relief shelters provide safe and secure, simple to construct, green housing for those displaced by natural disasters, such as hurricanes, earthquakes or floods. 

The 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.

Our test model disaster relief house (recent picture above) has withstood Florida's elements the last 20 months beautifully. 

I finally had a chance to visit Haiti in the spring of 2012, almost 2-1/2 years after the devastating earthquake there in January of 2010.

I spent a week moving around and talking to people about housing and their lives since the quake. I came away with many impressions, most good and some not so.

Here’s what I learned:

• The Haitian people are the happiest and friendliest people I have encountered in my extensive travels
• The land is much greener than news pictures led me to believe. There is agriculture happening everywhere
• Everyone I saw or met was busy doing something useful. There is not much paid  employment available and many people are ‘funemployed’ or working at something useful but not getting paid to do it.
  
• There is new construction everywhere and they have a unique way of building. Haitians build with whatever they have and the overriding tendency is to build as much as possible with what they have.  Consequently, most construction is concrete block.

Sand and gravel is readily available and any extra money is used to buy a sack of cement. This is usually mixed on the ground and the concrete is shaped into homemade blocks. When there are enough blocks some mortar is mixed and the blocks are stacked and set. Once in awhile, a few skinny rods of steel reinforcement are added but typically, too few and too far apart. The resultant construction is adequate, unless and until another earthquake happens.  Many, if not most, of the deaths in the disaster were from these typical, under built, constructions falling.

These behaviors are ingrained in the culture deeply enough that the bad results have not changed anything. If you think about it, this is basically all they can do. If they attempt to build with say…wood for example, typically the construction takes too long because materials are imported and too expensive, and unfinished worksites are too much of a temptation for anyone who knows what to do with a 2x4 or sheet of plywood.  Many are in desperate need for life’s basics, especially shelter for their children. So it’s back to concrete and a home can take years to build if the family is poor, and most are. I was told that a home can cost 30k or more simply because of the time it takes to complete it one bag of quicklime at a time.

I lived in an orphanage for a week and experienced firsthand how they live and how they build for the climate. What’s important to Haitians is first of all security, windproof construction and good ventilation, and pretty much in that order. What’s needed in Haiti is a new way to build given the scarce resources available and the climatic realities that exist. The idea that a house can take years to build is not working well for them and traditional construction methods have proven deadly.

Shelter In A Day is the brainchild of eco-friendly, furniture designer Frank Schooley. These emergency disaster relief shelters provide safe and secure, simple to construct, green housing for those displaced by natural disasters, such as hurricanes, earthquakes or floods. 

The 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.

Shelter In A Day is the brainchild of eco-friendly, furniture designer Frank Schooley. These emergency disaster relief shelters provide safe and secure, simple to construct, green housing for those displaced by natural disasters, such as hurricanes, earthquakes or floods. 

The 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.