Chile Forum

Charles' recent post, about impending winter in Southern Chile, deserves attention. If you're not in Chile right now, chances are you're in the Northern Hemisphere and eagerly anticipating spring. The people who we've been helping through airplane aid efforts are every day closer to winter. From what I've seen this forum do in the past week I am hopeful that even more can be accomplished.

The first thing that comes to mind is shipping containers. I saw enough pictures of containers swept into buildings by the tsunami to know that empty containers abound. Its a tried and true concept, just google it if you're not familiar; and they're earthquake proof!

So (in my over-achieving mind)....

1. - Locate empty containers - find the owners - get permission to relocate - offer the 'in kind' value for donation
2. - Find a company with the ship to pick up the containers and move them up/down the coast to the affected areas
3. - Place the containers
4. - Have the tools in place to retrofit and competent volunteers to make the modifications

Its not the most eloquent solution, but it is a possibility.

Chime In

Brainstorm

Lets see just how far we can push this effort.

Ok - scale that back a bit... on the phone with my father (contractor extraordinaire in the PNW) he says "find surplus military tents" - heavy duty canvas - with ability to retrofit and incorporate wood burning stoves (I'm assuming some of those stoves survived...) this seems feasible --

how many people are we talking about for housing...

does anyone in Chile have these tents? enough?

- going to let this percolate -

can't wait to read your ideas in the morning! YEA ALLCHILE!

My mother in law lived in an Army tent with her family for almost a year in Chile in the 1930"s after that earthquake.
Don't clobber me if this is a bad idea, but would those FEMA trailers that nobody seems to want here provide what's needed? The insulation would emit fewer odors in the cold weather of a Chilean winter as opposed to a sweltering Louisiana summer.

I did extensive research on the shipping containers for housing a few months before the earthquake. They can be good, but they do need modification.

I will get back to this conversation when I have a min.

Looking into surplus military tents in France (my father is a retired officer there). The French have just sent a lot of stuff to Haiti so I don't have high hopes.

I thought those FEMA trailers gave off toxic fumes like formaldehyde.

We are working up a preliminary phase 3 plan (think we are still handling phase 2) of the allchile.net project for dealing with the housing problem.

For what it's worth, we looked into the container option because we lost 3 houses in the 27-Feb quake. The reason we didn't do it is because our farm has no shade and temps get very high in the summer-- metal containers would require a lot of insulation. A good option for less sun-soaked parts, though. However, what we have discovered is straw bale housing. A friend of ours is an architect and his dad is a prominent seismological engineer, so we asked them to help us make a decision and it turns out straw bales are extremely earthquake resistant, as well as excellent insulation. You finish them with stucco the way you finish adobe, so they don't look much different, but they stay upright in the most extreme quakes. Plus, straw is incredibly available and cheap, especially right now in this country right after the harvest. If anyone's interested, I'll post updates about it-- we have been removing the rubble from the old houses and hope to raise the straw walls in a week or two.

yea, we are very interested in any ideas, plans, research, suggestions, anyone might have. We are looking for cheap local solutions. Ideally something that can be replicated by people themselves or with little help. Green is ideal, fast and cheap are priorities (not mutually exclusive in anyway).

Mud Filled Car Tyres, Same effect.....

zer0nz wrote:Mud Filled Car Tyres, Same effect.....

Yeah, in fact we are considering building our foundation from those. The other two houses already have foundations in good states, but we are changing the location of our place (IE NOT on a hillside!!!) Our house will go up much slower, but I should have much more info on the employee houses within days. I can put together some links and stuff on the research we've already done on the straw bales...

There is an earthquake dampening technique shown to work to a 10.0 on a shake table test, using car tires filled with 3/4 inch river rock as a footings for a house.

There is another one that cuts car tires in to section, stack them about 10 cm thick each, and then uses them as a dampener between the foundation and the structure. Also showing to handle 9.0+ on a shake table.

Both could make use of the thousands of old car tires.

Brilliant ideas. I am definitely researching the straw bale construction further.

Concerning shipping containers as housing we have a book title if anyone is interested. The title is "Intermodal Shipping Container Small Steel Buildings" by Paul Sawyers. It gives lots of diagrams, build times, photos of interiors, costs ,how to do roofs and forms etc. about 100 pages. he lists a website and email, but i can't post this so if u can't find it by google then email me if u want that contact.