(growing homeless populations in the US might make these emergency homes pretty tenable here… – promoted by eli_beckerman)

Thomas Bjelkeman Pettersson on the global swadeshi ning is working on a “flat-pack emergency home” which includes most of what you need for a functional emergency (or camping) home.

We intend to actually put together a working demonstration and show that this can be done for under a couple of hundred dollars/euros.

The demonstration will most likely include the following:

Housing / shelter

Hexayurt – our favorite emergency shelter system

Water purification

Siphon filter – an in production unit, costs around $10, made in India.

Chlorination

Light and power

Nova S201 – solar light and mobile phone charger

Add a hand-crank or pedal-powered generator to the solar and you have a reliable supply of electricity day or night, by sunlight or muscle power, a secondary solar source.  Solar IS Civil Defense

Add a bicycle and you have transportation too.

Sanitation

PeePoo bag – lowest cost sanitation solution, which is also a treatment system and creates compost.

For more permanent situations, like refugee camps, perhaps Gobar gas would be a better solution, small anaerobic methane digesters to handle human and animal waste.

Food cooking

SolSource – a new parabolic solar cooker, which has a supposed production cost of $10.

Candidate technologies

Food cooling

Solarcool – a potential candidate for food cooling. They have working prototypes of cardboard solar powered refrigerators.

Vinay Gupta is the designer of the Hexayurt and here are his latest thoughts on village infrastructure systems  [pdf alert]

Global Swadeshi was established by Vinay and has over 300 members building global self-reliance, swadeshi, for sarvodaya, the betterment of all.  It’s an example of  Gandhian economics.

cross-posted to dailykos, bluemassgroup.com, and eurotrib.com

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