User:Hnoteboom/sandbox

Building regufeecamps with sand vacuum plastic sheet for insulation. Intro: Most short-term refugee-camps are build with tents but many times but many stand for years. For most climates, this does not suffice. Allready there are incentives like by #REDIRECT Ikea-foundation that offer better and more permanent housing. We want to offer our contribution. General idea: to make blocks of sand like vacuum-packed filter-coffee. Sand is quite abundant, the only material needed is plastic sheet. The equipment needed is a sieve, a mould, a pump (from refrigerator?) a sealing-apparatus, electrical power and many hands. Most of all, sand and vacuum are good insulators. In this way, we have made "bricks" and tested them with a pressure comparable to 3.6 m height; they didn't deform. This is in line with fysics, that predicts even more, for dry sand about 5 m at -0.8 bar. For SAFETY reasons however, we strongly recommend not to build higher than the lower floor. Materials: The sand must be sieved and dried. For plastic sheet polyethylene (PE) can be used but the vacuum will not last too long, depending on thickness; anyhow, a good "clean" quality is needed, at least 100 micron. By far better is #REDIRECT PaPe, combining stretch and impermeability. Wholesale, it can be bought at any size and thickness. We suggest tubes of about 30 cm or 12 inches and 100 micron. The basic dimensions of a block should best be 1-2-4, ask builders. A tube of 30 cm would make up to a block of 10 x 20 x 40 cm, or about 13 kg. Hnoteboom (talk) 21:15, 7 May 2015 (UTC)