Paul Bartone

Vinay Gupta  to	Paul Bartone , Marcin Jakubowski , cc	Charles Setchell , mhess@usaid.gov, scatlin@usaid.gov, Melissa Sinclair , "Wells, Linton III" , "Hurtado, Juan, CIV (L)" , Charles Setchell , Justin Power , Wells II Wells , date	Tue, Apr 1, 2008 at 9:10 AM subject	Re: Low-Cost Brick Maker?

Marcin of Open Source Ecology has a diesel-powered open source brick making machine which also may be of interest.

There is some video of the prototype here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ77i6ukirA&eurl=http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/?paged=3

and you can find a much more complete write up of the engineering here: http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=CEB_Press

It's about 5% - 10% of the cost of the closest equivalent system, and as it matures all of the intellectual property is published in an open way.

I think this will be quite an important innovation as it matures. They should be building the first house using the open source compressed earth block machine as soon as building season opens up on the farm in Kansas.

Vinay

-- Vinay Gupta - Designer, Hexayurt Project - an excellent public domain refugee shelter system Gizmo Project VOIP: 775-743-1851 (usually works!)             Cell: Iceland (+354) 869-4605 http://hexayurt.com/    Skype/Gizmo/Gtalk: hexayurt      Two's company. Three's Musketeers

On Apr 1, 2008, at 3:38 PM, Bartone, Paul wrote:

Hi Chuck,

I'll be in Honduras from about 16-24 April to participate in a "Crisis    Management Experiment", a cooperative activity between US SOUTHCOM and the Honduran FEMA and parts of their military that are dedicated to   working on domestic disaster response. The activity is aimed at finding new and more effective solutions for responding to an earthquake disaster. I'll be demonstrating some emergency, low-cost shelter solutions including hexayurts build with local materials.

In addition, this would be a great opportunity to demonstrate the low-cost brickmaker you described earlier, and perhaps other items that you think might fit well in this part of the world. There'll also be   some follow-on cooperative activities with the Hondurans and other Central and Latin American countries, and we'd like very much to have your expertise and knowledge to help inform our efforts.

If you think it's possible to ship a sample brickmaker to Honduras for us to demonstrate, I can get a shipping address.

Alternatively, I know that Lin has asked for drawings and/or multiple photo views to build a sample brickmaker prototype. I understand your time is tight, but there still might be time to build a demonstration model, either in the States and ship it, or perhaps right in Honduras.

Thanks for whatever help you can provide!

Best regards,

Paul

Paul T. Bartone, PhD.   Senior Research Fellow Center for Technology and National Security Policy National Defense University

Ps. Lin also mentioned the possibility of establishing a closer relationship with ReliefWeb. I'd appreciate any advice or suggestions you might have as to how we can accomplish this!