Waterless Toilet & Outreach & R+D

We had another 200 students from a local elementary school come and take a tour of our guesthouse today. They were excited and liked climbing on all of the understory floor joists that resemble monkey bars. We tried to tell them as much as possible about the positive sides of building with bamboo. Hopefully, as the next generation grows up and wants to start a new family, they will look towards bamboo as a building material.







Our waterless toilet design is starting it's beginning
phases. We just starting digging for the foundation
today, and we chose a
site spot far from the work site, but near some sloped ground to take
advantage of the slope. This design is spearheaded by one of our architects, Sayali Andhare. She has researched and studied water toilet systems extensively, and found that this is exactly what Wondergrass should be implementing along with a bamboo house.








Here we have dug for the foundation, and tomorrow we will start laying down some precast concrete panels. We have been experimenting with some panels and the best way to reinforce them. We will now try to use G I sheet, for the interior reinforcement. It is relatively cheap, and is strong laterally as a tensile memeber




Our design for the waterless toilet uses a nice water catchment
scheme, that goes well with the rainy seasons of India. It will use bamboo as the structure and roof, as well as the paneling for the four sides. While the foundation will be of cement/brick.
This is going to go really well for the area currently surrounding the village of Payt. We are trying to forecast the acceptance of this facility in Indian house holds, and we are not sure how this will be viewed. This is a healthier and smarted choice for the proper disposal of human waste.






We have also started looking our structure for the new housing prototype for the bamboo house. We thought of extending the members of the truss, and using their strength as a way to stabelize the story above the ground floor. These members would be holding the wall, and they are secured at several points other than the bases. Further research is in development.