Originally printed in . . .

Aerospace Material Offers Advantages for Farm Worker Housing

Daniel McMann

A seasonal worker arriving in a farm area, a family in a remote village, a victim of a natural disaster, and a homeless person in an urban community may all face the need to have shelter quickly. They need protection from moisture, dirt, and insects that contribute to disease and threaten their very survival.

Daniel McMann, an architect in Santa Ana, California, has developed plans for housing fabricated of aerospace material that may meet such needs. Farm employers or housing developers who would like to consider further the application of this technology may contact Mr. McMann by phone at 714/979-4333 (or fax 714/957-6819).

There is great need for affordable, adaptable housing throughout the world. Duration of need ranges from very short-term to permanent. Natural and man-made disasters have created urgent housing shortages affecting all segments of society. Among the more predictable needs for cost-effective shelter are those of seasonal agricultural workers. Farm workers arriving for temporary jobs in an area too often find the decent housing stock fully occupied or prohibitively priced.

Many new arrivals as well as more settled residents end up having to accept housing that is substandard, overcrowded, unsafe, or otherwise illegally maintained. They may make their homes in a garage, shed, cardboard shelter, or family car. Their substandard or nonexistent plumbing and sanitary facilities add to discomfort and health problems. Affordable housing in rural environments has tended to be on transitional land (between other uses) with inadequate sanitation and utilities and relatively high exposure to fire and flood.

Materials and production techniques developed by the aerospace industry under national defense contracts now offer considerable promise for meeting the housing needs of farm workers and others. Seventy-pound panels of a thermoplastic matrix composite material can form the basis of a simple stand-alone shelter that is durable, well equipped, easy to assemble and disassemble, storable, relocatable, and economical. The composite is the only panel material, serving as structural system as well as exterior and interior enclosure skin. It has an integral color and a finish that provides long-term protection with no regular maintenance. Panels resist fire, moisture, effects of sun, and breakage.

The material can be shaped to provide watertight framing for all panel openings. Panel doors, windows, fasteners, and accessories can all be fabricated from the same family of materials. Mass-produced panels would each have standard openings for windows, doors, skylights, satellite dishes, and cover plates (if the opening is not needed). All openings except those for doors would be of the same size, to make most interchangeable. The accessories would be attached with a reversible adhesive rather than a hardware or mechanical fastener, so that all such items could be easily removed and replaced. In contrast, use of mechanical fasteners would particularly increase the difficulty of making repairs in remote locations.

A cavity between the enclosure surfaces of the panel can be used flexibly. Most of it would be filled with a foam insulation, but compartments within it could be used for such things as communication equipment, batteries, and water or waste storage. Power for a shelter built from these panels is provided by a photovoltaic (PV) system, the main elements of which are several wafer-thin PV panels on the exterior surface and a storage battery. The PV panel is connected to the battery, and the battery to outlets throughout the shelter, by wiring that runs through each panel cavity and by conductive fasteners from panel to panel.

The conductive fastener joining and passing power to adjacent panels is threaded into a bolt that is part of each panel. It has a thumb-turn mechanism that allows for connection of panels by hand, or simple tools at most. An unskilled person can work with these fasteners and assemble a shelter.

This kind of shelter system can be neatly shipped, stored, and delivered even to remote sites. Standard panel size is 8 feet by 8 feet by 3 inches. As many as 250 panels can fit into a standard shipping container for travel by land, sea, or air. The number of containers that can be taken in a load ranges from one per helicopter and two per truck up to 1,000 per container ship. Thus, the number of panels per delivery ranges from 250 to 25,000. Containers can be used to store panels near sites where they are not needed year round, or

 

Back to: Contents | LMD Main Page | APMP Home