Kubonismo©

Yesterday was world water day , and as we near the "Supposedly Hydrogen Economy" then water will be a scarcer commodity.

The theme of this year’s World Water Day is Coping with Water Scarcity. The United Nation’s prediction that by 2025, 1.8 billion people will live in regions or countries with “absolute water scarcity.” Drinking water, agriculture, sanitation and sustainable industry – none are possible without access to water and all are required to lift regions out of poverty.

One way of resolving our water problems is through the effective and efficient use of water. I’ve completed the floor plans Ate Emy’s house in Hermosa, Bataan,

The hybrid kubo/earth ship construction is built using worn-out trash dump destined automobile tires and other recycled materials. Cooling and heating is provided by the planet through the massive thermal blanket that surrounds the house. It has an extensive water system that provides both cold and hot water though a passive solar water heater system. Rain water is collected from the thatch roof and silt-filtered in to a collection Cistern, the clean water is used throughout the house, the waste water (gray water) generated at the kitchen and the baths are routed to an indoor filtering pond where water-loving plants break down and use the waste water as fertilizer and creates clean gray water to be used for flushing the toilets, liquid and solid waste from the latrines are routed to the black-water systems, to be broken down into non-hazardous soil and enriches the surrounding flora facade. 

The whole system is able to provide the house its yearly water needs. plans are available for additional dry wells for additional storage from run-off during monsoon months. The system simulates the previous job of a tropical rain forest in filtering, storing and distribution of crystal clean rainwater.

This house will use approximately 500 tires and 2000 glass bottles destined for the dump. Using recycled materials lowers down construction material costs and uses a resource that people have classified as unusable. It effectively reduces landfill use. It doesn’t look like we will be getting rid of automobiles soon, so there will always be throw away tires available.

I’m done with the floor plan after modifying my original plans from a 2-story bungalow into a 1-level unit. I’ve removed the second cistern and instead increased the diameter of cistern #1, consolidated both baths into a bigger room complete with bathtub, 2 showers, 2 toilets and dual sinks. Ive also situated all water system facilities close together to reduce piping costs. The finished plan is a 900 square feet 4 bedroom, 2 bath, hybrid earth-ship/kubo construction with natural lighting in mind.

Another side effect of building this way is that the inside walls are leaning away and provide more room as you go up towards the roof. Hopefully once we start with this project people will see that there are other ways of building their homes, back to basics again without sacrificing comfort. It is a high-tech way of building a house, make that retro-tech way of home building since we are just using what is already available for thousands of years and implementing them in a new way that resolves some of our problems at this time. So Yesterday starts the plans for Kubonismo and as soon as I head back to the Philippines, it will materialize.

I’m currently reading for the third time:
The War with Earth by Dave Grossman & Leo Frankowski
I’ve lost this book on my way to the Airport.. Damn, gotta get another copy

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 at 10:06 pm and is filed under Kubonismo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.