Manufacturing of Concrete Roof Tiles From Lahar

Our product is the concrete roof tile.J.P.M PARRY Ltd. calls it the Super Roman Tile. Each tile is about 60 cm. long, 35 cm. wide and 10 mm. thick. It weighs only four kilos, but can support a wieght of 80 kgs. One tile overlaps with another at each end and on both sides; there is a wide trough to run off heavy precipitation. The overlaps are such that roof angles of as low as 12 degrees is possible.

There is a big demand for roof tiles, but since most are imported, they sell at prohibitive prices. If we price our roof tiles at 100% of manufacturing cost, our prices shall still be almost one-half the prices of the imported ones.

We have manufacturing equipment by J.P.M. PARRY Ltd., where two of our men went for training. We use a mixture of lahar sand and portland cement to make them. The mixture is placed in a frame, screeded on a vibrating platform and transferred to a mould. The moulded screed is piled on a stack where the moulds keep it at high humidity for twenty-four hours. By then, the tile would be ready for the curing tank where it will stay for fourteen days.

The laborers required can be trained for manufacturing in a plant setting. The qualification required: able bodied, know how to measure, know how to read. The manufacturing is simple, Installation takes more skill.

We have the interest of two large housing developers. One is ready to give us a supply contract; their developments are expected to continue for the next five years. At the start, we shall serve the Metro Manila area, as production shall be in Central Luzon. We shall fabricate and put up more planta as the demand requires.

We shall not have a lack of supply, as the Philippines is abundant in binders like cement, sand from meandering streams and others. The quarry sites in Central Luzon have several meters of lahar sand deposits.As the archipelago has more than two dozen volcanoes, we have lahar everywhere.

There is a large developer with a starter project of 1,500 townhouse units interested to use our roof tiles. They shall have other projects for the next five years. Another developer's architects are interested, but we would rather serve the first, for a start.

When homebuilders see the townhouses, they will naturally ask where these roof tiles come from. We shall develop a web site to dessiminate information about our product. We shall also allocate funds for the development of other designs and products.

We will be able to provide housing using a very abundant materials.

I studied mechanical engineering at the University of the Philippines, trained as an aircraft jet engineer, and to do industrial engineering projects at the airlines and became capital expenditures analyst at the company that owned the airlines.

When I left the airlines, a battery manufacturing company recruited me and sent me for on-the-job training with several companies in the USA. I raised the productivity of the company to three times the previous year. Today, this is the biggest manufacturer in the country.

When the Miss Universe contest was held in Manila, I supersived the production of furniture for the hotels that were built to house them. Then, I founded a furniture plant which fell victim to the financial crisis.

Since then, I have been in various small businesses, until I did the house building contract for Peace Village in 1988. I have not left the affordable housing industry since then.

We propose to use resources which are in abundance in our country:LAHAR and SKILLED LABOR. The formal procedures to build housing exact costs which do not add to the value of the units, but provide rentier income to those who are placed in the bureaucracy.

The single biggest cost factor in house building is the cost of labor, approximately 35%. We intend to design modular units so wage workers can build starter units by themselves, then add more space as their family grows.

When Habitat for Humanity developed the first project in 2000, we built a 54 sq. m. unit for half the amount that Hfh budgeted. We demonstrated that affordable housing is within the reach of the wage worker.

Foreign companies come to the Philippines with pre-fab systems to reduce labor cost; these systems only transfer costs from the site erection to the factory fabricating the modules. Since our country has a large number of unemployed, it is practical to use labor-intensive procedures. In any case, our population is oriented in erecting structures in concrete. Most of our towns have churches, about 400 years old, in concrete.

The investment of 2.5 million shall create 20 workplaces. Each succeeding investment shall create jobs of increasing quantity. Our policy is to share profits with workers, but housing development sets aside areas for common use. These shall give entrepreneurs space to put up small enterprises like furniture making, welding, door making, dressmaking, cosmetology and others.