Solar Reflective Paint

SDSS students working on house for Haiti

The old arena in Port Elgin is home to a unique project and to a unique partnership.

Construction Technology students at SDSS have just completed the first phase of a building project. They have designed and built a panelized house that could fit five at a time into a shipping container and sent to a developing nation. This particular house is earmarked for Haiti.

This is no ordinary house; it has several unique features. It is resistant to rot, mildew, and termites, it can withstand earthquakes, and the panels of the house have been field tested to withstand 256 kilometer winds (equivalent to Hurricane Katrina). The 440 square foot main structure can also be assembled in one day by unskilled labourers.

The Grade 12 Construction students started the project by designing and building an 8'x8' proto type wall panel. Brent Freiburger of Genivar Engineering designed an engineering field test to measure resistance to wind. The test involves placing weight on the wall and measuring the deflection. A total of 12,660 lbs was required to equal 256 kilometers per hour of wind. To get this amount of weight the students contacted the Saugeen Shores Fire Department. They sourced a pool that the fire department uses to temporarily store water; the pool was placed on the wall panel as specified by the field test. Students conducted the field test, carefully measured and recorded the amount of water they pumped in from the Fire Department tanker, measuring the deflection of the wall. The recorded information was calculated as specified by the field test, to determine the strength of the wall.

The first wall panel broke at the equivalency of a 190 kilometer per hour wind. The panel was taken apart and inspected. Improvements were suggested; a second wall panel was tested and withstood an equivalency of 220 kilometers per hour. But the panel was deemed to be too heavy to be practical to assemble without heavy equipment. A third panel design was put forward; consisting of half-inch plywood panels filled with poured in place polyurethane foam. This panel held the equivalency of a 256 kilometer per hour wind for one hour. The panel bent (deflected) more than its overall thickness, but popped back into its original form after the test.

The Grade 12 students then made drawings of the individual panels, figured out the material requirements, and tendered the mater ial to lumber yards. With the plans complete d and the material delivered, work began in earnest. The Grade 12s built the first couple of panels, solving many small design problems on the way. Once a system was established, the Grades 10 and 11 construction classes joined in, providing the much needed work force to finish the structure quickly.

Solar reflective paint

EGLR 2006

The Shell Bitumen industrial handbook

Building failures, a guide to diagnosis, remedy, and prevention

Spacecraft Thermal Control Handbook: Fundamental technologies