PODPASSIV Life Shelter – www.podpassiv.com

The Podpassiv shelter is a prefabricated building supplied in kit form that offers a semi permanent solution to housing needs in disaster zones where supplies of potable water and electricity are unavailable. The building is manufactured in a composite GRP that carries the necessary certification for compliance, resistant to extreme temperature and weather conditions and has a life span in excess of 20 years. Podpassiv can be utilised again and again, unlike tents or timber shacks.

The building consists of only four moulds; wall section, upright / horizontal posts, roof / floor trays and a door panel section. Erection takes only a few hours and requires minimal tools, utilizing available unskilled labour.

The shelter can be easily sterilized and used for a huge variety of purposes.

Rainwater is collected via the roof and channelled into the front wall section for collection. A water filtration system provides potable drinking water via a tap and an internal sink collects waste for irrigation. Solar lamps in the roof provide 8-10 hours of lighting.

Unlike tents and other temporary housing solutions, the Podpassiv shelter is robust, secure, waterproof and provides the 5 basic humanitarian needs required for survival, providing dignity and security when and where people need it most.

The Podpassiv shelter was conceptualised in July 2010 with the specific aim of providing a robust housing solution for families displaced through recent worldwide disasters.

The homes are to be constructed using tough, weather and corrosion resistant GRP composites manufactured by the fully automated pultrusion process. The profiles meet all the requirements of EN13706 with quality and environmental control systems registered to ISO 9001 and E14102 and fire retardant to BS 476. These damage resistant, durable materials have a service life in excess of 20 years.

With recent and frequently occurring natural disasters the Podpassiv shelter has been designed to offer a speedy, semi permanent solution for areas without supplies of potable water and electricity. The homes can easily be erected and dismantled allowing them to be sanitised and recycled for use again and again, reducing costs and material use.

Minimal on site works are required for erection and no foundation base is required.

Charlie Greig is a designer and provider of innovative semi permanent and permanent housing solutions, using off site methods of construction (MMC) and assembly techniques providing high quality and value for money. Company founder Charlie, has herself carried out innovative projects in all sectors of the housing market over the last 15 years.

In March 2010 Cub, was launched at the Ideal Home and Grand Designs shows, demonstrating an off-the-shelf solution to permanent carbon neutral living for the UK market. In only six months, Cub homes have achieved enormous interest and market presence, are currently the highest accredited modular housing system on the market and come pre certified to code levels 3,4 and 5 under “The Code For Sustainable Homes.” This is through a pilot scheme set up by the BRE, (Building Research Establishment.)

The Technical knowledge gained by creating Cub has been utilised to design a sustainable “bare bones” version of housing that incorporates the 5 basic living requirements for survival, shelter, insulation from heat/cold, potable water, solar lighting and weatherproofing at a cost that complies to aid agencies and NGO requirements. The homes pack into a compact unit for shipping and can easily be erected by two people in only a few hours.

Charlie has created the concept, filed the patent, which is pending, and submitted a community design copyright application for design protection. The mechanics of the design are in the final stage of development and a prototype is expected to be completed and ready to show in the spring of 2011.

The shelter can be adapted and utilized in many sectors of the market and these are to include, disaster housing, aid and healthcare, field operating and communications, aid worker bases, defence and military use as well as private garden use, leisure and other applications. The homes will perform in any region worldwide and therefore will attract interest and sales globally. Additional buildings can easily be bolted together to provide an alternative use for medical and school applications.

Aid agencies and NGO’s currently rely heavily on plastic sheeting, tarpaulins, tents and timber based temporary buildings for use in emergencies. Longer-term buildings tend to be built, where possible, from locally resourced materials.

The main issues with adopting the above situation for emergency housing are many fold and those aid workers on the ground in places like Haiti, Pakistan and Africa generally are crying out for a solution like Podpassiv.

Tents, tarpaulins and plastic sheeting provide little protection against storms and heavy rain and are un-hygienic if used for more than a couple of weeks. Timber shed type structures do not fair much better.

These existing solutions have to be replaced very regularly, which is not cost effective either. “Local” materials for more robust forms of accommodation are either unsustainable or scarce in emergency aid zones. What little timber there is, is being used for wood fires etc.

The health of occupants of tents and other sheet forms of shelter is not helped by the fact that water and sewage can flow through at floor level, whilst in flood conditions they offer no protection at all. They also do not have the Podpassiv advantage of free lighting and potable water.

It is time to look at using new technologies for forms of Aid and temporary accommodation that are robust, clean and reusable – Podpassiv.

Prototype to be launched in Spring 2011

Technical information is available at www.podpassiv.com