Wonder Grass's small scale operations

Wonder Grass artisans have started to fill our design studio with some great furniture. With the help of our American designer we have combined the craftsmanship of the Shaker style from the east coast of the United States with that of the time test skill of the Indian artisans working with bamboo. We will have some great chairs completed in the next week, and our design studio as well as meeting area will be complete to house our innovation. Below are some good photos of some of the chair. Just a sample of some of the fine work we have done.

Although this is not what Wonder Grass does
as a main product line, we can understand
bamboo as a scale that we use everyday.
Additionally, we pride our selves on using bamboo to the maximum efficiency possible, being the replacement of wood.
We will have photos of some great work coming our way soon. Our arch is coming along good, and the housing project is receiving it's first two wall, we just hope we can make it in time for the monsoon season.

Wonder Grass Becomes Finalist for Sankalp Social Enterprise Awards & Investment Forum

The Sankalp 2010 Awards and Investment Forum is an annual Intellecap initiative committed to catalyzing entrepreneurship in the social enterprise space. Sankalp actively facilitates collaboration between established and budding entrepreneurs, investors, thought leaders and sector stakeholders interested in contributing effectively towards this fledgling yet fast-growing industry.

Wonder Grass has become one of three finalist for the Technology for Development sector of the Sankalp 2010 forum. Wonder Grass Ceo Vaibhav Kaley will be presenting the work and spirit that makes Wonder Grass at the annual forum held in Mumbai. The jury will announce the winners shortly after the presentations and a prize and publicity will follow. Below is the link to the finalist and sectors being awarded this year. We all hope for the best and give congratulations to our fellow nominees.

http://sankalpforum.com/Sankalp/finalists.php

Wonder Grass Receives Some Special Recognition

Wonder Grass (Low-cost housing) soaring temperatures and streams running dry in Nagpur do not deter Vaibhav and Nachiket Kaley from expecting their business to yield a rich harvest. The Kaley brothers are betting on a master plan, where bamboo becomes the cure for all ills in India’s housing sector.

Two years ago, Vaibhav, 33, an interior designer, along with his brother Nachiket, 28, an IT professional, decided to follow in the footsteps of their father, Vinoo Kaley, known as the ‘bamboo man’ and set up Wonder Grass, to provide low-cost housing options using bamboo as the main construction material. The walls of the houses are sometimes plastered with cow dung and mud to give a cemented look. The structures, the brothers claim, can withstand mild earthquakes and cyclones and are good options for coastal areas. “The time has come for bamboo. The market is opening up for sustainable living solutions,” says Vaibhav, director, Wonder Grass.

So far, they have done well. Turnover has trebled, while profits have increased manyfold too. The company has revenue targets of Rs 20-25 crore in a 8-10 year timeframe. They already have a bamboo auditorium project for an educational institution at the Andhra Pradesh-Orissa border and a housing project in Vapi.

With a marketing office in Bangalore and assembly line operations in Nagpur and Belgaum, the firm is looking at scaling up operations and will soon have 100 artisans working for them. To retain manpower, the Kaleys set aside 20 per cent of equity in a trust that will share profits with the workforce.

A low cost of Rs 400-450 per sq. ft, as against Rs 650 per sq. ft for a low-cost brick-mortar dwelling can be a driving factor for the bamboo houses.

Prasad Sangameshwaran

This article can be seen on the following link on the "Business World" website:

http://www.businessworld.in/bw/2010_03_23_The_High_Five.html

Prototype Housing Begins!

We have just finished our foundation for the first Wonder Grass bamboo house that is a model for the rural Indian citizen. We will construct phase 1 and complete it by the end of May, ready for the monsoon season to hit us. The plan is a simple one, but we have put a lot of careful considerations into it, that makes it rather complex coming from a designers point view. We have a main room roughly 12ft x 15ft that will serve as the main living/sleeping area for a small family or couple living in a rural setting. Off of that we have a 12ft x 6ft veranda that serves as the entry. Traditional Indian homes ranging in the central region, have hip roof slanting down towards the entry to shield against monsoon season as well as create a vertical threshold that visually heightens the view while walking in the house. Designing a house that will hopefully reach thousands if not millions in some years, the needs and priorities of such a project needs to start with what a rural Indian see's as a basic home for themselves. Several factors determine what needs a rural house should address, however the most important is durability. For the last 80+ years the Indian rural home has been constructed out of brick, mortar, and cement. This has led to a changing attitude towards housing. We have organized surveys to understand this perception, and we understand that introducing a bamboo structure into a cement lifestyle will not work unless there keys issues addressed. Durability, there must be a instinctual feeling from just looking at the house, that it will last for a full generation. Secondly, there must be a sense that there is low maintenance. Brick and mortar homes or cement boxes need little maintenance unless there is dirt on the floors, or an earthquake occurs. Otherwise, people have adjusted to living in essentially, large prison blocks. And thirdly,it needs to be cheap. This can sometimes be hard when building with bamboo, but we at Wonder Grass have been able to save money be implementing ms joints, improving structural members as well as adjusting size requirements per stage in the expansion of the house. The brick and cement plinth rises from level ground about 18in above grade and we insert the bamboo columns directly into the plinth. They are surrounded by cement, and will never be removed. We erected our first wall on the north wall, and it was in two parts, because our plan is to have prefabricated parts made at our building centers, and then transported to the work site to be erected. This saves time and decreases labor costs. Our wall system will comprise of some less then mainstream methods thought up by our design team. The system is designed to accommodate future structural expansion. The will make the house grow out and up. Growing out is easier then going up, especially with bamboo. Our system has been explained many times in past posts, but it never hurts to describe the expansion. Those "V" members you see on the end beams will have pieces that can be replaced with other longer members that can support columns for the first floor on the exterior load bearing walls. This is a trial or prototype house so we will learn as go, and hopefully create as many solutions to the problems faced. We have done similar construction techniques likes these before on our projects in Wardha housing cluster project, as well as several other projects spear headed by Vinoo Kaley in the 90's. The right moves take by our design team are using joint systems that have never been used to ou knowledge in the world for bamboo. We have tested them, and are currently underway mass producing them to compliment our project.
We also have underway a project that is really taking off with some great results. We have recently taken on a project of building a 80ft long bamboo inverted arch.
This arch will reach a span of 80ft. will be made in two parts. Each part being approximelty 40ft in length. We have started to push our projects out of small scale structures into some really large extreme assemblies of bamboo that can be seen with some selective works around the world. Wonder Grass really wants to see the limits of our artisans and bamboo compliment each other to make India a great showcase for bamboo building. More to come, check back when we have the rest of the walls up and the arch complete!

Structural Testing Results In

With the kind of help of Geo-Tech Industries we have completed our results for the structural testing of bamboo building parts. We now have a quite extensive record for all of our structural pieces which will help us prepare for our housing proto-type housing projects. We tested our members with qualified structural engineers present, as well as appropriate technology that Geotech was able to have us use while there. We are again grateful for their assistance. We found the results to be quite fascinating and matched our presumptions before hand. l

As we progress further with some of our other projects we will
be using the results to make sure that our designs work and
don't fall down.



This is assisted by two student interns from a civil engineering
college in Bangalore. They stayed there for some time, in the
work site in Peth. Nagaraj, and Kiran gave their time and help
in analyzing the structural parts before hand, and verified it
at Geo Tech Industries.

A visit to Auroville Bamboo research Center

One of our interns from America was able to visit and meet several great centers around southern India that shared in the passion of bamboo. One great center was the bamboo research center at Auroville community located near Pondicherry, India. Auroville was started some 40+ years ago, and in that time they have made some really great structures, as well as innovations from bamboo. I had the pleasure of talking to one of the site workers, and even though my tamil was as good as his english we still were able to talk about bamboo and what each other has done. The articles and furniture was great quality, and some things we have not seen before. There was a great innovation of bamboo soap that had an amazingly fresh smell, and I'm sure it would feel great on the skin. The soap was made of powdered bamboo charcoal, and I assum mixed with oils, and other organic non-toxic cleaning chemicals.
As you can see in the picture below is the charcoal is kept in a barrel and heat is continually circulating through, so as not to ignite, but keep it warm enough to burn out all of the impurities. Something we at Wonder Grass feel is a great idea.
The American pavilion at Auroville also had a great structure that was a composite building with cement on the ground floor, and bamboo terrace-top with bamboo as it's reinforcement. This structure was a really good example how to use bamboo with other materials such as cement, and wood, as well as fiberglass and ferro-cement. The nice aesthetic feel of bamboo is that it is light-weight and makes a building structure seem graceful and attractive without weighing it down with heavy columns like cement structures do. It had a wonderful feel and
gave the occupant a nice view from all directions.
It is constantly a nice reminder that there are other people in the world and India that do great work and continually try to push into the serious building areas. Something that is not easy to do at all.
We hope to create an online directory or network primarily for people in India but also surrounding countries, so that progress, business, and implementation of bamboo can be sped up with more collaboration and cross communication between many fields, for example, college students to working designers who use bamboo. We hope to have that up and running in months time.

Statistical Analysis of Rural Survey

We have concluded the survey of rural Indian citizens for use in our research for the rural housing prototype. The above picture shows the current living conditions in respect to building materials of the persons interviewed for the survey. Overwhelmingly the majority of citizens live in brick and cement homes. With brick and mud coming behind and after that bamboo+composite and mud come in last.


We also conducted a study of current uses for bamboo in the rural sector and found that bamboo was used not only for housing., but furniture, curtains, and doors and window. This gave us a perception of the used and acceptable limits that people believe bamboo can do.

General Information About Housing in India
(2000-2001)
(Rs. in Million)
Particulars			2000-2001
No. of House Holds in India (in Million)			177.74
Stock of Houses in India (Million)			168.5
a. Stock of Rural Houses			118.7(70.4%)
b. Stock of Urban Houses			49.8(27.0%)
c. Constructed under Indira Awas Yojna			5.69
Type of Houses Occupied
a. Pucca Houses (Million)			41.61
b. Semi Pucca (Million)			30.95
c. Kuccha (Million)			27.44
Housing Shortage (Million)			32
a. Rural Houses (Million)			24.47
b. Urban Houses (Million)			8.7
Cost Distribution Ratio of Various
Components in Building Construction
a. Materials			73%
b. Labour			27%

Of those surveyed 32% were below the poverty level in India.