A SCOTTISH entrepreneur is using a new slant on a century-old construction method to rebuild earthquake-devastated homes in Nepal. Derek Cowan and a team of volunteers are in the village of Thangpalkot, in the foothills of the Himalayas, on a mission to replace 86 destroyed homes.
Since he arrived in November, Cowan, from Kirkcaldy, Fife, has been utilising traditional construction methods which cost around £2,000 per house. Now he has turned to earthbags – a method first used for flood control and military bunkers more than 100 years ago.
The first prototype of a permanent structure using earthbags was unveiled in the 1980s, when Nader Khalili, an Iranian-born architect, filled polypropylene bags with moistened adobe soil and bound them together with barbed wire to bind them together.
Ten years ago Dr Owen Geiger, of the Geiger Research Institute of Sustainable Building, and the civil and mechanical engineering department of the US Military Academy at West Point carried out various strength tests on earthbags filled with sand, soil, and rubble.
Their report concluded that the method showed promise as a low-cost building alternative. The bags were “cheap, and easy to construct, they have proven durable under loads that will be seen in a single-storey residential home”.
Cowan told The National: “The biggest challenge we have is fund- raising, so I’ve been researching different viable options to build homes that are earthquake proof.
“The more I read and researched earthbags, the more I thought they were a great option. I found a man who’s been trained by Owen Geiger – he’s going to build two homes with me. The cost is well under $1,000 and the great thing is it uses soil and a clay mix instead of cement. And these bags are piled on top of each other using barbed wire to hold them together.
“We are using all the old window frames and roofs from the destroyed homes so all the old materials are being used – we’re recycling them if you like.”
Cowan added that material for two homes could be packed into one 4x4, which reduced transportation costs from $250 to $100 per home.
However, he added that the villagers still needed some persuasion.
“They hadn’t really seen this technology, but there was a project that built a few homes before last April and they withstood the earthquake then. These homes were almost like prototypes. They weren’t perfect, but they still stood after the quake. It’s fantastic I’m really excited about it – we can get homes for the price of one. We can build faster and build schools, libraries and so on.these are all possible and we are all really excited about it.”
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