Coraplast structures

[Wise Old Owl]

Saw this video and was surprised ... if you are as north as I am... consider a lining of insulation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hG0aRjKDnKo

[welderguy]

Saw this once posted someplace else and thought that stuff would make a neat deer blind too.

[Tokwan]

Nice.....looks like a good play house for me.

[Davy Jones]

Goog but I cannot imagine the real utilty... If you can bring it from home (so you are not in a emergency situation of surviving) why you cannot bring other more useful stuff?

[hunter63]

I seen these before....and I do think that every architectural class in the world designs one every semester.
Sell you design to "house the masses....?"

Vid was playing slow so I quit....just seems to me that it would be hard to carry, deploy, and be useful for any length of time.

I was impressed by this one.....from scrounged material....add duct tape, maybe a blue tarp....
Guests can not see images in the messages. Please register in the forum.

Or these, I carry one in each of the bags......

Guests can not see images in the messages. Please register in the forum.

[canid]

It's an awesome material if you don't have to buy it new by the sheet. It can be surprisingly expensive.

I don't see why it's utility vs other useful materials should force an either or decision. It's just one more cool material you can do a lot with.

[Rick]

I don't know how UV tolerate the material is but if you spent a lot of time in a hostile environment (Alaska, Rockies, etc) then staging one might give you a place to shelter if things went bad.

[welderguy]

Since it is so light weight and apparently could be constructed with simple hand tools and zip ties, might be something to throw into the back of an suv or truck as a back up shelter. Would pack flat so it could lay under other gear. could be tore back down and reused several times. And as rick said if it has long term UV resistance then could be left in place at a BOL or permanent camp site!!

[welderguy]

Dang!!! a 4mil thick 4ft by 8ft sheet is 70 bucks, I thought the maker/author of the video said it was under a hundred buck ( maybe I misunderstood!!!)

[Rick]

Probably East Caribbean dollars.

[canid]

It can be gotten cheaply at times from discarded signage. Might be in a degraded condition at that point, as well as in smallish pieces but that's how some people get their for cheap/free. Campaign signs are often made from it and are naturally just more trash after elections.

[TXyakr]

Not sure why you need a lock when a small utility knife will open a side door in it in about 20 seconds?

Reminds me of the thousands of displaced indigenous people I saw living in cardboard shelters near Lima, Peru. We were visiting some people who my mother once worked with on the other side of the Andes. These folks are very resourceful all on their own. It never really rains in Lima, just mist so plastic over cardboard seemed to work, but it was very dusty.

[hunter63]

Well, after all people lock convertibles, Right?

[hunter63]

I don't know how UV tolerate the material is but if you spent a lot of time in a hostile environment (Alaska, Rockies, etc) then staging one might give you a place to shelter if things went bad.

It is my experience that anything the even looks like storage will be overfilled very quickly......but yeah a stash shelter may be a good idea....
Bear proof?.....I don't know.

[LowKey]

4mm coroplast is about $16 per 4x8 sheet. It sure isn't twinwall/polygal.
What he isn't describing is what that floor is made out of. Looks like metal angle iron and/or some different material for the floor.
Bet it leaks too, unless he's sealed those zip-tied ceiling seams with something.
You aren't going to be leaning too heavily against that back wall. The stuff is tough but it doesn't take much to buckle the fluting.
The material is not very UV stable. It's made for short term CHEAP signage. You mostly see it these days as election signs and real-estate signs.
Certainly not bear proof. It cuts using a matte knife. A sturdy exacto knife works too.
It also is not fire-retardant. At least not the generic stuff. You can get fire retardant coroplast for a premium price (sometimes known as Firewall.) Even the fire retardant sheet melts and catches fire, but it self-extinguishes and does not drip flame like many plastics.

[Batch]

We buy 4' X 8' sheets of coraplast all the time by the bundle. Which I think is 10 sheets. I am not exactly sure what we pay for it. But, my purchaser told me it was around the same price as 4' X 8' sheets of cardboard. Which, I think he told me was around $8.

One of the many uses we use it for is when we have to remove a plastic face from a pylon signs tenant panels. We'll cut and slide the coraplast into the opening to keep the rain out. You can easily cut it with a knife. I use to keep a piece folded up behind the seat in my work truck.

Looking online I found it by the sheet for $9.69 a 4' X 8'. http://corrugatedplastics.net/4mmCor...ticSheets.html

[TXyakr]

I'm sure there is a small niche NGO "market" for this idea but I saw several possible problems:

Trapped moisture is worse possibly than the worst tent I have ever slept in. With an electronic fan the moisture a human body gives off could get bad, even in ideal conditions like overnight in a high, cold desert.
But in New Orleans without forced air this quonset hut of barely vented plastic like material would be a freaking stream bath. Perhaps he was hinting that the folks needed to lose weight, if so that is extremely rude. There was an article in The New Republic back in November about NGOs that some friends working overseas pointed out to me. It notes the problems of "solutions looking for 3rd world problems". Written by a guy who worked for Play-pump. Mostly an expensive fail.

If you have ever spent much time in a small metal storage shed or been foolish enough to try to sleep in one or a closed up car you will have an idea of what I an talking about. Even a teenage make out session in a car should explain it to you.

[TXyakr]

Well, after all people lock convertibles, Right?

From a website that promotes convertible automobiles "car theft statistics say that convertibles are no more than 5% more likely to get stolen"
http://convertiblecars.info/convertible-cars-theft.html

But from my experience with friends and relatives who own or have owned convertible vehicles, owning one changes their behavior. I.e. where they park it, what they leave in the seats in sight (not locked in the trunk). Friends who own one always have an excuse not to use it to carpool when we go on camping trips and we must leave vehicle at the trail head. Heck never want to take it to a movie, must valet park at a restaurant. My aunt purchase many 1950's Ford Thunderbirds which all got stolen because the tops were so easy to pop off and hot wire. Finally she let that teenage dream die. Any knucklehead can figure out that it is easy to quietly cut open a soft top but breaking a window attracts more attention. So even if your new convertible has a sophisticate ignition system it is easy to cut soft top, snatch items and run. Look up statistics from the NTSB, FBI etc.

I never leave anything valuable "locked" in hard shell saddle bags on a motor cycle. These are super easy to pry open, people are always watching, and often the key that comes with them is very generic especially the older ones. Even roof racks for vehicles are super easy to remove, I have completely unloaded all my gear and stacked it in a motel room. One reason I prefer remote campgrounds over hotel/motels when on long distance road trips.

Crime rates are much higher in poor neighborhoods because poor people cannot secure their home as well, among other reasons (ask a police officer or look up stats on FBI site). If you ever volunteered at an international refugee camp you would understand how much bigger a problem it is there. They will steal bags of grain or rice.

[hunter63]

Gotta say that commentary on locking a convertible is a little over the top....even for you, but hey, thanks for the statistics and effort.
That comment was in answer to a lock on a plastic shelter....meant in jest...


BTW I never locked my '54 Chevy for the cut top reason (1960's)....and those didn't need a key, either........
But as it was the only one with in a 200 mile radius...everyone knew it was mine.

Picture the red Chevy Belair in Happy Days......

[TXyakr]

Long article that basically says that NGOs that have highly experienced people that take the time to get to know the people they are trying to serve and really understand their needs may appear to have higher overhead but in the long run may actually be doing more to help with the limited money donated to them. Therefore I personally recommend if you really want to do good in the world, consider actually volunteering locally or for your 2 weeks of vacation go to a 3rd world location and really get to know a well established NGO. Then you will see for yourself how they are doing. None are perfect, they all make mistakes but some do quite well. There is no perfect, ideal overhead percentage. None are the "best" NGO. I know several dozen that are very good, and have heard of many hundreds, possibly thousands of startup NGOs that are major failures, a small % of these may eventually go on to succeed, but most are just a FAIL!!!

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/1...nd-plan-fix-it

Red Cross has a good record and for the most part is not religious (red crescent society if you prefer, or something like UNICEF). I could list several dozen others but will not! I have friends that I have know for decades and many since I was a child working for these and others on every continent except Antarctica. One friend in Kurdistan, I worry about her, she is close to Daesh. Two cousins in Nigeria, born in the north, they are very brave. Their mother who adopted them, my aunt, died many years ago but they are still my family. That hateful terrorist group there threatens them.

So identify the problem, define it carefully, test out several possible solutions, then deploy them on small scale and check the feedback before ramping up deployment and expanding the program. Freaking Common Sense!!! NGO, small for profit company, or Mega Multinational Corporation worth $Billions, or USA's total Federal Government Spending, Same Freaking Logic applies. No Duh!

As far as I know Apple Inc. is about the only company that can make a single product in bulk that meets the needs of 100s of millions and be valued at almost $1 Trillion US Dollars. Most others must be far more sensitive to their customer's needs. Recently they sold their 500 millionth iPhone, whoopie! Not a single one to me!