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The Bootstrap Package
Making the shelter system efficient
Jay Maron and Todd Bezenek

Coat
Vehicle
Natural resources
Food
Furniture
Heater


Budget

The goal is to equip people with stuff to enable them to function, for cheap. It can be done for less than $2000.

The homeless need a full-length coat, plus accessories like a hat, gloves, and rain pants. They also need electric heaters in the coat and batteries for the heaters.

You need a smartphone and phone service, plus a keyboard. Coat batteries power the electronics.

You need a vehicle. A possibility for a cheap vehicle is a trike with a gasoline or electric motor. The vehicle should have a lockable trunk. If you're in a city, it helps to have a locker. Even better, give the vehicle a cabin that can be heated and that can be slept in.

You need land, and rural land is cheap. If you have access to building material you can build your own house.

You need access to natural resources and machines to harness them. A saw mill can tap a rock quarry and a forest. A Stirling generator converts biomass to electricity. Grass can be harnessed with grazing livestock.

The prime expenses are:

                      $
Coat                100      Full-length and waterproof. Includes hood and rain pants. Has puffy insulation. Includes lightweight tarp.
Phone               100      Includes keyboard
Power for coat      100      Battery and electric heat pads. Butane heaters and air circulatory system
Vehicle             500      Trike with cabin, trunk, locks, and GPS trackers
Wood stove          100      Device for using wood for a stove, heater, and electricity generator
Rural land          100
House               100      Tent and lightweight furniture
Food               1500/year
Phone service       200/year
Medical               ?/year

Many things can be obtained from donations or salvage.


The Mars Coat

A coat should be full-length, waterproof, and hooded.

Insulation quality is proportional to thickness/density. The coat should have a low-density fill.

The coat should have a stiff frame and a hip strap to make it easy to carry things. Include abundant pockets.

Equip the coat with electrict heat pads and a control panel for the pads. Also include inflatable air bags, a circulatory system, and a pump, because air is the best insulator.

A platinum catalytic heater can burn butane flamelessly, and has much more heating power than batteries. The circulatory system can deliver hot air throughout the coat.

Cities should have AC power for the homeless.
Bird down has lower density than any synthetic fill.


Trike design

A trike with a cabin solves many problems. The cabin is shelter and can be heated, you can sleep in it, and you can store stuff in it. If you don't have a cabin, the next best thing is a lockable trunk.

A trike enables you to get to gigs, and it enables you to have a house on remote rural land.

The components of a trike are:

                      $
Trike, 2 seat       300    The front seat reclines to make a bed
Trunk that locks     50
Gasoline motor      150    100 cc, 3000 Watts, 40 mph
Wheel repair kit     30
Locks and cables     50
Cameras              30    Broadcasting live to the cloud and to the police
Tracking devices     30    Stealthfully embedded in the trike, trunk, and trailer
Generator            50    Extracts electricity from the motor

Cabin               100    The trike can be a sleeping shelter
Trailer             100

A trike can tow a trailer.

The motor can be gasoline or electric. A gasoline motor can heat the cabin. A generator can extract electricity from the motor.

A trike can be assembled from a junkyard.


Cooking

Food is cheaper if you can cook. You can cook outdoors with coal. Have aluminum foil and a small lightweight collapsible pot.

Hookah coal is smokeless.


Shopping cart

A shopping cart is a truck.

A shopping cart can be a locker if you add a top to it. A city should provide space for shopping cart parking.


Land

Prime farmland is 1 $/meter2 and wilderness land can be much less. City land is usually more than 1000 $/meter2.

If you have access to building material, you can build your own house.


Natural resources

Marble Canyon, Colorado River

You need access to natural resources and machines to harness them. Good resources include stone, wood, and grass. A saw mill can harness a rock quarry and a forest. A Stirling generator converts biomass to electricity. Grass can be harnessed with grazing livestock.

You need to be able to rent machines, trucks, and time at the saw mill.


Energy

Generator
Battery
Gasoline generator
Stirling generator

A Stirling generator converts heat to electricity and can run on biomass.

You can cook outdoors with coal, and you can cook indoors with hookah coal. Hookah coal produces minimal smoke.

Forest and grass produce .5 Watts of biomass energy per meter2 per year.

Sources of electrical power:

                      Power/$  Power/Mass  Energy/$
                      Watt/$    Watt/kg    MJoule/$

Battery, lithium-ion      7      400       .01
Battery, lead-acid       58      180       .045
Generator, gasoline      10      100       -        Converts gasoline to heat to electricity
Generator, Stirling      10       30       -        Converts biomass  to heat to electricity
Solar cell                 .2     20       -
Wind turbine              1       10       -
Water turbine             1       30       -
Generator, hand crank      .4     40       -

Feast for least

You can feed a person for $4 a day with chicken, rice, and dairy products. These are among the cheapest proteins, carbs, and fats.

Carbs are cheap but they need sauce. The expensive part of sauce is the fat source, and cheap fat sources include dairy products and nut oil.

An example of a day's food is:

          Mass   Protein  Calories  Cost   Cost per mass
          gram    gram               $         $/kg

Chicken    330    100       900     1.6         5
Rice       300     16      1000      .9         3
Butter      50      0       360      .5        10
Milk      1000     33       422     1.0         4

Total             149      2682     4.0

What counts is "calories per dollar" and "protein per dollar", which are plotted below. Cheap proteins are to0 the right and cheap calories are to the top.

Foods with high calories/$ include peanuts, pasta, rice, bread, and milk.

       Calories/Cost  Calories/Mass  Cost/Mass
           Cal/$         Cal/kg        $/kg

Wheat flour   1213      3640        3.0
Peanut        1260      5670        4.5
Pasta         1194      3701        3.1
Rice          1150      3330        2.9
Peanut butter 1095      6570        6
Oil, olive     982      8840        9
Oil, peanut    982      8840        9
Wheat flour    910      3640        4.
Wheat bread    890      2670        3.0
Milk           750       600         .8
Butter         717      7170       10
Chicken drum   713      2140        3
Oats           650      3890        6.0
Mountain Dew   440       440        1.0
Cheese         403      4030       10
Chicken breast 390      1950        5
Beans, refried 362      1450        4
Mackerel       312      1560        5
Tomato paste   182       820        4.5

Foods with high protein/$ inlude chicken, milk, and peanuts.

        Protein/Cost  Protein/Mass  Cost/Mass  Protein/Cost
           gram/$       gram/kg       $/kg

Chicken       61         303          5
Milk, powder  53         263          5.0
Turkey        49         293          6
Mackerel      46         232          5
Pork          45         224          5
Milk, whole   41          33           .8
Peanut        40         267          6.6
Egg           30         120          4
Bread, wheat  30          91          3
Cheddar       28         283         10
Beef          27         247          9
Peanut        57         258          4.5

Foods with high fat/$ include:

                     Fat    Cost   Fat
                     g/$    $/kg   g/kg

Oil, olive           111     9    1000
Peanut               109     4.5   492
Peanut butter         88     6     530
Butter                81    10     811
Heavy cream           53     7     370
Milk, whole, powder   53     5.0   267
Oil, sunflower        45    22    1000
Cheese                33    10     331
Milk, whole           32      .8    32
Heavy cream powder    25    30     750
Butter powder         23    33     750
Chicken               15     5.0    77
Guacamole             10    15     143

Vitamins

Vitamins are easy. Almost all vitamins fit in one pill, except for potassium, phosphorus, calcium, and magnesium. These vitamins can be obtained in raw chemical form for cheap. The daily vitamin requirement is:

            Requirement     Source
             gram/day

Potassium       3.5         Potassium phosphate
Phosphorus      1.0         Potassium phosphate
Calcium         1.0         Calcium chloride           (Most soluble form of calcium)
Magnesium        .35        Magnesium chloride
Iron             .27
Zinc             .075
Manganese        .075
Copper           .022

Calories and protein

The plot shows the protein and calorie content of food. Foods with high protein and low fat are to the lower right.


Calcium

Calcium is abundant in cheese and milk and rare in other foods. The calcium content of food is:


Potassium and phosphorus

The plot shows the phosphorus and potassium content of food.


Chairs

A chair should have:

*) A high back, preferably high enough to support your head.
*) Arm rests.
*) Space underneath the chair for your feet.
*) Padding.
*) Curvature.

For outdoor benches, there should be a canopy for rain and walls for wind. There should be benches in the sun for cold weather and benches in the shade for hot weather. Some benches should have tables.


Junk engineering

Much can be had for free from churches, junkyards, and the salvation army. Clothing is abundant. Schools should have classes on junk engineering.


Bread and Circuses
Provide entertainment, such as:

Media subscriptions
Game subscriptions
Gamestation
VR goggles
Tickets to minor league baseball games
Drugs


Drugs

Cigarettes shouldn't be taxed. It's a regressive tax and it hurts the poor.

Mild drugs such as marijuana and codeine should be free.

Making drugs available from a secure source minimizes the risk of encountering fentanyl.


Heated coat

Platinum heater

For heat, the options are platinum heaters and battery heaters. A platinum heater is like a butane lighter but with no flame. The butane is reacted flamelessly with a platinum catalyst. In a battery heater, a battery heats a heat pad.

Platinum heaters are powerful, long-lasting, cheap, and you don't need an electrical outlet. A Zippo platinum heater costs $20, produces 13 Watts, and the butane costs 28 cents a day. The specs are:

Power             =   13  Watt
Butane burn rate  =   23  gram/day
Butane cost/day   =  .28  $/day
Butane cost/mass  =   12  $/kg

Battery-powered heater

A heater can be built with a battery and a resistor (a heat pad).

A lithium-ion D cell has the same energy as a typical external battery. It can power a 10 Watt heat pa for 3 hours.

Battery energy = E       =    107  kJoule
Heat power     = P       =     10  Watt
Operating time = T = E/P =  10700  seconds = 3 hours

The specs for a lithium ion battery and a heat pad are:

Battery voltage     =  V  =  I R           =  4   Volts
Head pad resistance =  R                   =  2.5 Ohms
Electric current    =  I                   =  1.6 Amperes
Heat power          =  P  =  V I  =  V2/R  =  6.4 Watts

You can't use a battery pack, because they're programmed to shut off if connected to a dead-load resistor. You have to use raw batteries and wire them yourself to the heat pad.

A typical heat pad produces 10 Watts if driven by a 5 Volt battery pack. A raw lithium-ion battery has a voltage of 4 Volts, and this is an appropriate voltage. Connecting a heat pad to a 4-Volt battery yields 6 Watts. If you wire the batteries in series for 8 Volts, the yield is 26 Watts, which is too much.

Use big batteries, specifically C or D cells. Then you don't have to wire them together in parallel. A D cell can power a heat pad for 3 hours.

Use thick wires. The minimum wire diameter for a 10 Watt heat pad is .5 mm. Use a diameter of at least 1 mm.

Be wary when buying batteries. Buy only from Panasonic or Sony. Never buy from China. Chinese manufacturers fib about specs.

There are heat pads with a battery included. Avoid them. The battery is feeble.

For lithium-ion batteries, D cell have an energy of 107 kJoules, C cells have 67 kJoules, and A cells have 47 kJoules.


Acknowledgements

We give thanks to Broadway Presbyterian Church, Starbucks, and Morning 2 Midnight.


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