Rudolfo Fuentes - Chili & Latin America overview 2017-2018
I’ll give a little history about how I came to be a biomeiler interested person after meeting Heiner and the projects we have been doing in Chili. There is a little magic between Native Power Germany and Latin America. Every week they call at the same time to work together.
Rudolfo is building ecological houses based on a special earth building system, available to everybody involved in the termocompost community.
The goal is to make all houses as independent as possible and implementing several ecological systems to do so. Biomeiler has been one of those systems since he found Native Power in internet.
Rudolfo translated the DIY documents about building biomeilers to Spanish.
Because of his enthusiasm he directly build a biomeiler in Chili which gave hot water after only four days. This gave him very much confidence to continue the development.
Building insulated houses is new in Chili and is only viable in combination with special heating techniques like the biomeiler.
Since he started in 2015 there has been many enthousiast people in Chili, but after three years of investing it still is hard to convince people to spend money on the biomeiler concept.
He’s build several compact and rectangular biomeiler setups as show cases.
The first real project is for a greenhouse with heated beds to extend the growth season. This increases the viability and usability of the biomeiler.
At the moment he is building two houses with the earth building system. By relating them to the biomeiler and making a television show about it in collaboration with local television.
His son is taking over the business in Chili while Rudolfo is traveling and slowly taking over.
A third project is running paralel to the others and being build by an architect who is implementing the building system as a floor heating system, which is still rare in Chili, but very useful as a showcase of the biomeiler possibilities.
Explaining the ecological building system.
There will be an Italian, German and English explanation of the local building system.
It is based on a wooden frame filled with an egg carton and earth plaster on both sides. It took a long time to be taking seriously, but after four years he got a patent on the system.
The patent organisation put him in contact with another firm. Termoroot is creating panels grown from roots which are very stable and fire resistant. They are looking into the possibilities of combining both techniques. The fire resistance is probably because of the high mineral content of the roots.
Rudolfo is also working now on courses for a youth training program, to help them integrate ecological and sustainable techniques like the biomeiler.
Perhaps a Termocompost Conference could be started in Latin America as well.