Closing ceremony

The School is ready for hand over

Sonam Wangchuk

02. oktober 2008

Today on 2nd October 2008, the birthday of Gandhi, it was the closing and handover ceremony of the school. You may think it is has been sixteen days only. But as I said elsewhere we are counting the days taken for the making the rammed earth foundation and the laying of the foundation ring beam (which was done two months ago) as two days. Secondly, due to the heavy rains and floods the soil inside is so wet and soft that it would be impossible to lay the floor tiles now. So we are counting two days for the remaining work of floor tiles and a final waterproof plaster on the roof. That makes it 20 days, but then if we subtract the time loss recorded due to rains and floods it would be at least half a day. So in short we can say that this building was built in nineteen and half days by 17 masons and roughly 30 community volunteers.

We had a delegation of some ten engineers lead by Chief Engineer Mr. Shambhu Prasad Upretty from the Department of Education in Kathmandu and representatives from the district education office, to attend the closing ceremony and also a dozen journalists from local and national media.

The closing and handover ceremony of the building happened in the late morning and work on the last bits was still continuing. This was because some journalists had requested that this would be more practical for them this way so that they could report in time. So actually, we lost half the day today in celebrations. We shall make up for it tomorrow maybe.

Here is the story of the day in pictures:

Kathmandu Engineers from DOE and journalists inside one of the new classrooms

One curious engineer

More curious engineers

The function begins

A little girl from the school gives the key to the DOE Chief engineer mr. Upretty

Mr. Upretty hands over the Key to the School Management Committee Chairperson mr. Jhali Ram Tharu.

Chief guest mr. Upretty speaks

The masons are honoured with certificates

Masons being interviewed by media

Community volunteer being interviewed by Kantipur

A photo of a photographer being photographed

So yes I am back to tell you that the closing ceremony went really well. Mr. Upretty, the Chief Engineer of the Department of Education of the Education Ministry stressed that the DOE hopes to use this model of building in the hotter regions of Nepal. He said for other regions other different designs will have to be developed. He thanked BASE and MS Nepal for initiating this pilot and the community for making sustained contribution in the construction.

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Tip for the day

Night cooling & ventilation

Finally the last of the cooling ideas employed in this building is night cooling, which means cooling the building with the night air/ breeze. In the last one year that I spent in the hot Terai planes of Nepal, I observed that even when day temperatures touch 42 degrees in May and June the night temperature goes down to between 24 C and 28C. Hence letting easterly night breezes in through the east wall ventilations will mean that the building is cooled during the night, and since the earth blocks have heavy thermal mass, the coolth of the night will be captured to last through the day when the children need it most.

Before designing this school I experimented with the principles in my own rented house in Bardiya. By keeping all windows open during the night and closing them during the day my room never went above 30 C even in the hottest days. I should add here that I had also built an earth-berm around the house (just as you see in this school) and put a green roof also. I was so comfortable that I never used the fans (till monsoon started) and in fact sometimes needed a light blanket in June. I had already returned the AC system given to me by my office and started designing this natural AC instead. But I must also add here that the house was not as comfortable once monsoon and the humidity started and I am working on that now.

Another friendly fact is that because the heavy earth walls have a time lag in heat transfer, of roughly six hours, the peak temperature of the afternoon reaches inside only at night when there are no children inside and when the night breeze can carry it away, on the other hand the peak coolth of the night reaches inside the classroom by midday when it starts getting hot outside. I find it all magical again! Don't you?