Can you really do this, you might ask. The process is pretty simple and is happening in nature and also in waste treatment plants all over the world. If you put feces and other organic waste in an air-free environment it will be digested by microorganisms and produce methane. The methane can be harvested and used to run stoves, lighting, engines and much more. At Done Right we will focus on producing methane for the gas stoves. It will also treat the human waste to turn it into prime fertilizer and kill potential pathogens along the way, witch is a huge advantage in a place without waste treatment.

We are building it out of cheap materials available on the market here in Cambodia to make it a possible option for local farmers in the future. The method is already quite popular in Vietnam and if we are lucky we might speed up the process of spreading it here. And we look forward to be using less fossil fuels in the stoves and better close the human-food-energy-circle!

As we head for high season, a couple of new things are in the works, first of the expansion of the kitchen, a couple of new grass areas and the design of the new chill out space on top of the sugar cubes.

Right now we also have the pleasure of having a visit from our friends at Scapula, working together to expand our common line of clothes which will be produced at a local tailor at first, and then, if things go as planned, we will be setting up our on (not so sweaty) shop on our own land, expanding the network of businesses that we work with. The clothes will be available at our guesthouse, but more importantly from Karin’s own hands in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Another little project is lead by one of our western staffs, Sara, who has set up a little educational english class, to get the non english speaking staff to practice, and have fun doing it. We hope to expand this project after evaluation, hopefully starting it on a larger scale in January or so.

We also feel that the time for expansion has come, and we are currently negotiating with the owners of the land behind us for a new project, this one too with a new partner in the network, and once it comes through, we will proudly announce it together.

In the upcoming months there are a lot of very cool things that we will be focusing on, from the projects above to extracting burnable gas from sewage, to setting up a clinic.

We look forward to meeting all our creative friends again this season!

We’re also building two new “sugar cube” bungalows, which should be finished by the kings birthday, or some days after, which will be covered by a rooftop hangout later on as the season starts.

Our friends at Moonlight rock have their personal houses up, and work is progressing well on their bar, which should open by mid december.

Our friends at what used to be Freaks and then The Pirate Bay, has now become DAM IT ALL, with a really cute little beaver as a logo, and a huge geo dome as main building.

We also have some huge news, but you’ll have to wait for that one.. A big change in our level of eco-mindedness is about to take place.

Since our last post, Sam has been in Sweden, and Derek&Nova have been back in Canada, leaving our staff and our great manager Chris in charge of our little kingdom. Low season is always a bit empty, but we’ve had some customers visiting us, especially on the sunny days.

What we knew would happened eventually, has now happened, our plot got sunk in water after a heavy 24 hour pour of rain! Because of the way the place was built, with the bungalows on a slope, and the rooms on stilts, we haven’t had much trouble with our rooms, though our main bar and restaurant was under water for a couple of days, so no real damage. The Geodomes have stood the test of hard rain, and look as good as when we left in June.

In two weeks Sam will return to the beach, and we will start to work on a couple of new buildings, plus maintenance of the place in general, walls to be painted, electrical work to be repaired and so on, all the bits that need to be done at the beginning of a season.

Also, Our manager Chris and our friend Vanja have begun work on their own place! It will be called Moonlight Rock Resort, and is located roughly 500 meters up the street from us, we which them great success!

This means we now have 3 connected places in our little clan, DoneRight, Moonlight Rock Resort and the PirateBay! Hopefully a couple more will join the ranks.

-Sam

.. But in a good way this time. The center bit of Otres beach that was closed down for development last year has been worked on during the season, and has been closed of during most of it. It has now been opened up, and even though the beach bit is far from finished, and even though the building on the land behind it (that is bound to become a very large resort) has not started, the government has started to build the road connecting the far side of the beach, past our part of the beach and around the corner continuing onwards on the official road, the not so good one that the tuktuk’s use to get to Otres.

This effects us in a couple of ways, first of it means that the proper road to town will be done by the start of next season, which will increase the amount of visitors to our beach by a huge lot, as cars and busses can then go down our way without breaking down all the time. It also means that development on the back plots will start to take off, and i would be surprised if there are any open plots behind the road that wont be built on by the end of next season.

The negative part is that the village that lies along the road, which is where most of are staff lives, will probably be removed, and that will probably not be pretty. We will do our part and have offered the villagers our assistance to move their belongings to the parts of the land that we currently don’t use for building. Though we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves, hopefully they will be left in peace.

The local airport has now officially opened up, with a small 12 people airplane starting to scuttle between Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and Sihanoukville, with a seat costing roughly 80 dollars a person with a half full plane or so, hopefully the other airlines will catch on, and the airport will open for proper business with airlines like Air Asia. There is also a road being built between Ream (the location of the airport) and Otres beach, which is also good a brilliant sign for the future of Otres.

The beach shacks in front of us still keep their accommodation right, but that is bound to change very soon, maybe at the same time as the road is finished, but who knows, i mean, T.I.C right? (This Is Cambodia).

In other news the high season is going towards its end, though no one seems to have told the backpackers that, we can still boast the fact that our bungalows are still almost full, and most rooms have been taken, as we will be open through out off season we hope that the stream of guests will continue.

Building wise,  we are continuing on a much smaller scale than before, currently we are remodeling the waterpower, strengthening it and making it into housing for western staff, and backpackers with small wallets, it should stand ready in a week, and will boast 6 beds, and its own bathroom. The next project that is scheduled is another square building, next to the present one, dubbed the sugar cube.

My next post will be regarding the last preparations that needs to be done before i leave, and entrust our beloved living room and guesthouse to Chris, a friend and former owner of one of the businesses that got evicted last year.

- Sam

We are getting more and more attention for our work here, and almost every day someone comes in to look at our structures and the way they where built, but also how we have used cans and bottles in our over all design, hopefully this idea of recycling buildings will get a foothold here in cambodia, and i wouldn’t be surprised if there are three more sets of buildings much like ours next season.

As we tell any one who wants to listen, this is an open source project, any one who wants more in depth details are welcome to visit us for everything from ideas to blueprints, We recognize sharing, teaching and collaboration as the key to success for ourselves as well as everyone (Information wants to be free, one of our values).

The last month has also seen a raise in the other part of done right, the creative business part. My friend from Momo Jord has visited me, and we have set up the production of two different pants, and two different shirts, that will be done and shipped to sweden in a couple of weeks. Cakes inc. Has also joined us for a month or so, making his first investment, a dirt bike that is now being rented out to our patrons. We will all meet up with Oud, our contact in Bangkok to continue our plans and productions.  in a couple of days, two customers (or friends now, really) from Gothenburg, have decided to come back and set up their own business here, the knowledge we have gathered here for the last couple of years should be quite useful to them, and help them shortening their setup time by more than half.

Hopefully, next years posts here will be more business related than building related, at least until we set up the next “Done Right” unit, maybe in another country? who knows, it sure would be sweet to see another one go up in Whistler, Canada.

And so, this is it for now, our little umbrella corporation grows and the pedals of our work start to show as the sun shines on us..

-Sam

We decided to go to Otres beach and DONE RIGHT after talking with Sam, (one of the owners).  We just asked everything we wanted to know and Sam just said -Cool it everything you need you can find in town.

At first we were a bit unsure about going because we’ve heard about all the scams at the boarder trying to rip your money of your pockets. But then again we talked to Sam and he got us a straight taxi driver who’d take us all the way from the boarder or airport to Otres. And really, if you’re tuff enough to bring your kid on a 3-month trip through south east Asia you should be cool about handling some customs and tuc tuc drivers. The questions we did have, we asked Done right before we went here. And as a parent to a small baby there are a few questions and things you probably wonder about.

And you can find most of the stuff you need for your baby in town/Sihanoukville. Things as milk, food in cans, porridge, diaper and cleaning pads and so on.  And best of all is that the kitchen staff will make a great Cambodian baby porridge if you ask them. I just asked them to not put any salt in it. And you will find out that the staff are crazy about children and are more than happy to babysit during your dinner ore if you’d like some time of reading a book or play beach volley. We basically didn’t have any problems, cause all we had to do was just to talk to any one working in the bar, kitchen or owners and things are solved.

Our baby also loved the four animals living in Done right. Never had a dull moment while watching Ninja the cat chase the two dogs Nalla and Baloo. The hen Mr. Bok b-gok was a more calm and kind of funny character to watch while she sits in the bar on a stool by the beer pump.  And for ourselves we´ve missed our friends back home, but in just a day or so we started to hang with the rest of the guests. We kind of made the restaurant/bar as our living room where we made new friends playing cards.

We’ve traveled Through Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and now finally Cambodia. And this is the place we now felt that we should’ve started our trip at, and ended it before we go home.

If you thinking of going to a calm nice area close to the beach I can recommend Done Right at Otres beach.

Hope you have all of best at Otres and Done right.

I know Derek, Nova and Sam will make theirs.

With Laughter,

Karl

The Geo dome below is finished, and has turned out to be quite a success, its done so good that we have decided to build another 6 units next to it, and they are coming up nicely.

Mr dang (our main builder guy, and Rini’s father) is in charge of all the building going on on the site, and he has gotten us another building crew, that are being payed by the unit instead of the day like our guys, which sees to it that the buildings are popping up quite rapidly, and we hope to have a total of seven bungalows finished by mid march (we now have two) and another three or so by the end of march.

So why pay the staff differently? Well, paying them per day as we have done up till this point means that you get a creative workforce, that don’t mind figuring out new solutions and work arounds, which is very important when you’r creating something like our geo dome, even though the concept of what we are doing, in scattered parts, is available, our on setup is unique. The downside to paying per day is that they will not work as fast nor as hard, but they do get the details right, and thats all that matters.

We have also managed to get our first “cracker box” finished, and its beautiful, looking much like a 18th century villa in mexico, but with glass bottle insets and a few other tricks up its sleeve, This building takes longer to build, and uses up more recourses, but also has a number of pro’s to it, one of them being that you can walk up on your own roof to have breakfast.. another one of these will be going up before the season is over, and next season a two story one will be put between them.

In other news, our project is gaining more and more support as we are getting more and more space in the awareness of the city, and people blogging about our way to do things. Being different in Asia means really being different, people are coming in specifically to see our buildings and ask about how we’ve made them, and how they can do the same, which suits us fine, as we aim to spread the knowledge about this to anyone who can benefit by it.

We have been getting excellent reviews online to, which we are very happy about, here is one example.

http://www.travelfish.org/blogs/phnompenh/2011/01/new-otres-beach-accommodation-is-done-right/

-Sam

]]> http://www.doneright.se/2011/02/getting-coverage/feed/ 0 http://www.doneright.se/2011/01/geo-domes/ http://www.doneright.se/2011/01/geo-domes/#comments Mon, 17 Jan 2011 09:34:41 +0000 samuel http://www.doneright.se/?p=280 Lately, we have been entirely engulfed with our new favorite project, which is making 3V geo domes, that we will use as bungalows on our land. There are a few reasons why we started looking at the geo dome structure, First off the time to build them is about two weeks for a complete bungalow, and the fact that its priced about half as much when its done is also a plus. Our workers looked at us as if we were idiots when we showed them the plans, and how to make them, but three hours later when the actual structure was put together and eight of them were sitting on top, they were happy as pie. The plan is to continue to develop this kind of building using local materials such as wood and bamboo, and help the locals build safe secure houses for themselves.

Lately, we have been entirely engulfed with our new favorite project, which is making 3V geo domes, that we will use as bungalows on our land. There are a few reasons why we started looking at the geo dome structure, First off the time to build them is about two weeks for a complete bungalow, and the fact that its priced about half as much when its done is also a plus. Our workers looked at us as if we were idiots when we showed them the plans, and how to make them, but three hours later when the actual structure was put together and eight of them were sitting on top, they were happy as pie. The plan is to continue to develop this kind of building using local materials such as wood and bamboo, and help the locals build safe secure houses for themselves.

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about Geo(deistic) Domes.

A geodesic dome is a spherical or partial-spherical shell structure or lattice shell based on a network of great circles (geodesics) lying on the surface of a sphere. The geodesics intersect to form triangular elements that have local triangular rigidity and also distribute the stress across the entire structure.

The term “dome” refers to an enclosed structure and should not be confused with non-enclosed geodesic structures such as geodesic climbers found on playgrounds.

Typically the design of a geodesic dome begins with an icosahedron inscribed in a sphere, tiling each triangular face with smaller triangles, then projecting the vertices of each tile to the sphere. The endpoints of the links of the completed sphere would then be the projected endpoints on the sphere’s surface. If this is done exactly, each of the edges of the sub-triangles is a slightly different length, so it would require a very large number of links of different sizes. To minimize the number of different sizes of links, various simplifications are made. The result is a compromise consisting of a pattern of triangles with their vertices lying approximately on the surface of the sphere. The edges of the triangles form approximate geodesic paths over the surface of the dome that distribute its weight.

Geodesic designs can be used to form any curved, enclosed space. Oddly-shaped designs would require calculating for and custom building of each individual strut, vertex or panel—resulting in potentially expensive construction. Because of the expense and complexity of design and fabrication of any geodesic dome, builders have tended to standardize using a few basic designs.

-Sam

The last weeks have been all about fixing little details. We managed to find an really old french foosball table far down in a Sihanoukville dungeon, our workers managed to find a large piece of lawn that we could dig out and move into our restaurant, Derek has gone on a plant hunt which resulted in everything from a elephant ear plant to our own little Avocado tree, that hopefully will yield a small harvest next year.

Regarding the lawn, isn’t it a big waste of freshwater? The simple answer is no, and the interesting answer is that this kind of lawn lives around these parts indigenously, and we have made a system that takes the water from the showers and basins, called gray water, that separates this water from the wastewater, and is then used to water lawn and other flowers.

We have of course, as you read in our last post, opened, and things are going well, serving a lot of breakfast, dinners and martinis at night. Our original plan was to flyer Serendipity  beach for customers, but it proved not to necessary, as we were closing in to Christmas and the new year.

Aside from what is already open, we have started the production of our bungalows, which will be ready hopefully about two weeks apart, after which we will move the temporary grass wall from one part of the property to another.