Steel Pipe Geodesic Dome Project for Haiti Before Hurricane Season?

With more than a half a million homeless Haitians the need for a standardized quality steel-pipe geodesic home construction project is apparent. The fundamental frame can be made quite easily crushing pipe ends and through-bolting them according to some models, and the geodesic home frames can survive Hurricanes and Earthquakes with the virtue of being transparent, standard forms suitable for a coordinated international relief effort right away. Rust-proof painting of the steel pipe is useful.

It should be possible to ship a few loads of steel pipe to Haiti for local fabrication under supervision of dome construction specialists, local Haitian authorities and the U.N. Perhaps the Toyota corporation can spare a boatload of steel pipe, and perhaps China. The top steel pipe producers today may have some slack inventory with the global recession. The United States still has bolt manufacturers--this is an opportunity for upgrading the second and third world's inventory of modern American housing--Buckminster Fuller was a college professor in North Carolina.

The next disaster may be just a few months away in Port-Au-Prince when Hurricane season arrives. A quality geodesic dome may be assembled in just a day and later covered with plastic, fiberglass coated plywood with pipe fasteners, built up with epoxy layers or a variety of other solid sheeting from aluminum to composites. The dome frames may be set on tires and anchored into the ground, and a concrete floor might be poured later.

http://www.geodomehome.com/

http://www.dragishak.com/dome/dome.html

http://www.fiea.ucf.edu/~mgourlay/dome/

http://www.geo-dome.co.uk/

http://www.eham.net/articles/11300

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22633447/Geodesic-Dome-Plans

An international geodesic home construction project for Haiti could produce pipe sections of the right lengths locally from imported steel. Perhaps a regular job program manufacturing pre-fabricated domes could be an ongoing local industry. I think it would be the best quality at the lowest cost for ordinary homeless Haitians new home program that might be started.

Air ventilators may be built into the homes for cooling along with solar powered electric fans in ventilators. Steel pipe domes may be coated with ceramics, camouflaged, given sky blue painting over the epoxy coated plywood or other, surface planking. They may be used as greenhouses and hospitals, libraries and schools. They may also be joined together in more complex structures.