By Florabelle T. Caloy | Student Leader
The Marine Sanctuary Center is now in its final month of construction. Student Leaders and the workers have been working very hard in order to catch up with the schedule and have been working late everyday ‘til 8pm. The major task that the team was able to accomplished in the month of February and the first week of March were louvers, the ceiling frames, second floor frames interior furniture, comfort room walls (mushroom column), flooring and tying all the connections.
The structure has many connections, but the team enthusiastically tied all of them with both nylon and conveyor straps. These two materials are known and have been proven to last longer in water than the conventional bamboo binder material, known as rattan. The cut bamboo poles used were inserted with circular shaped wood dowels that were filled with epoxy in order to strengthen the joints, then tied with nylon. For the exterior frames, the binder used was the conveyor straps –conveyor is a part of the interior of a tire. The corner joints were not just tied but were intricately weaved which adds to genuine and aesthetic value of the building.
The team initially conceptualized that the material for the louvers would be a laminated amakan (woven bamboo). But when they fabricated a sample, it didn’t turned out well. Since that didn’t worked, the team decided to go with wood as the material for the louvers. That decision was able to save us time, energy and money.
The comfort room walls are circular acting as a structural element supporting the second level and made of bamboo poles. The ceiling frames and the second floor frames were two of the more complex elements in the design since patterned after the leaves of the traveler’s palm. Workers and students measured and laid out every single element just to achieve the desired pattern. The flooring of the structure is designed as a movable floor, this is to enable the end user to easily replace the barrels whenever needed.
It’s good to know that we are almost at the finish line!
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