CERBIS at Don Bosco Calauan

The DLSU CERBIS Tean with Fr. Ed, SDB (leftmost)

 As part of the Civil Engineering Research-Based Initiatives & Services (CERBIS), a team of four faculty and eight undergraduate students visited Don Bosco Calauan located at NHA- Southville 7 Site 2, Habitat for Humanity, Brgy. Dayap, Calauan, Laguna on August 14, 2015. This site is a resettlement site of more than 60,000 people displaced by Typhoon Ondoy. The site is managed by the Salesians of Don Bosco with Fr. Salvador Pablo, SDB as the head. The major problem in the site is how to provide jobs and livelihood.

The team is composed of CE faculty members – Dr. Andres Oreta, Dr. Bernardo Lejano, Engr. Richard De Jesus (CE Thesis Coordinator) and Dr. Maricel Paringit (CE Community Service Coordinator). The undergraduate students are Nikko Villanueva, Maejann Cuartero, Patrisha Ayala, Jason Alcantara, Eunice Yao, Veya Santos, Masu Eusebio and Martin Benedicto.

The main purpose of the site visit is to explore research topics o related to the improvement of the concrete hollow blocks (CHB) production using waste materials at the site to provide jobs and livelihood to the people. The specific objectives of the site visit were:

1.     To meet the person-in-charge of the CHB production and discuss the problems related to CHB production. The main coordinator will be Say Cambosa, asst. of  Fr. Pablo.

2.     To identify possible research topics to improve the use of waste materials for production of concrete products

3.     To discuss coordination of activities and contacts if the researches will be pursued

At the moment, the site has the equipment but they do not have the knowledge and testing machines on how to produce the best design of CHB with waste materials satisfying strength requirements. They used trial and error procedure. Presently they were able to produce quality CHB with mix proportion – one cement bag, two bags of waste (plastic and styro) and 10 bags of sand). . Possible improvements to the CHB design include sorting of waste materials to better monitor the effect of the different types of waste on strength and durability of CHB. These CHB will be compared to the CHB that will be proposed by the DLSU research group. Cost analysis and marketing strategies will also be considered in the study. Problems related to CHB production such as fire resistance, water absorption, durability and other possible concrete products using waste materials will be also explored by the research group.

With Fr. Salvador Pablo, SDB

A view of Calauan