[GSBN] building in Haiti

[Derek Roff]

Congratulations, Bruce, and to the other members of your team,

I'm concerned about meeting your definition of "durable".  Using a 
standard claw hammer and a pair of wire cutters, in about fifteen 
minutes, anybody can remove person-passing rectangle of plaster from a 
wall covered with standard-thickness Portland cement stucco over heavy 
stucco wire.  If standard Portland cement stucco doesn't meet the 
definition of "durable", I don't think other plaster options will 
either.

PS.  I love to hear more about the competition that you won.

Derelict

Derek Roff
Language Learning Center
Ortega Hall 129, MSC03-2100
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001
505/277-7368, fax 505/277-3885
Internet: derek at unm.edu



--On Monday, February 28, 2011 2:09 PM -0800 Bruce King 
<bruce at ecobuildnetwork.org> wrote:

> Howdy, Baleheads --
>
>
>
> Ecological Building Network (EBNet) has won an international
> competition for the best new housing ideas for Haiti, and we’ve just
> been asked to build our model in a very prominent location.  I am
> both proud and puzzled to say that our apparently unique winning idea
> is:  use Haitian materials and Haitian people to build a Haitian
> house. Everyone else in the exposition will be importing
> prefabricated contraptions, at least so far as I know.
>
>
> After a lot of meetings and discussion among a lot of knowledgeable
> folks -- including a bunch of you -- we arrived at an optimal
> "natural" design we think best suited to the culture, economy and
> climate of Haiti.  The EBNet model home will use the most abundant
> and inexpensive local resources?concrete rubble, bamboo, and the huge
> local labor pool?to make seismically safe houses at or below the cost
> of conventional (and unsafe) masonry houses.
>
> With that all said, two questions:
>
>
> 1) We expect to use a thick, fiber-rich earth plaster over bamboo (or
> possibly metal) mesh for a lot of the walls, but need to give it a
> very durable finish (see wall section in the onliine link).
> "Durable" here means not only resistant to abrasion and driving rain,
> but also forced entry;  it has to be and feel secure against
> intruders.  I seem to recall some discussion on this list about lime
> and lime-cement plasters over earth, and Bill Steen reporting that he
> could never get that to really work -- too much delamination despite
> efforts to bond things.
>
>
> Anybody have thoughts or suggestions?
>
>
> 2) We have to raise $75,000 in a pretty short time, so any leads or
> suggestions are most welcome.  We seek both philanthropic support and
> commercial sponsorship at this prominent exposition.
>
>
>
> Thanks, and cheers all around,
>
>
> Bruce "Mr. Natural" King
> Director of EBNet
> Ecological Building Network
> the art and science of building well
> bruce at ecobuildnetwork.org
> PO Box 6397
> San Rafael, CA 94903 USA
> (415) 987-7271
> follow us on Twitter: @EBNetwork