Arial Home Project at Princeton University

The goal of the Princeton Arial Home project is to engage groups of students to help improve the design, lower the cost, and add special features to the Arial Home such as a solar still to provide clean water and a solar cooking system to save the cost of fuel. Our Arial Foundation will fund research and development work for junior papers, senior theses, independent work, etc.

The Princeton project is the highest quality Arial Home we have yet built. The entire structure was up in just four hours. No field cutting of parts was necessary as everything for this new Version 5.0 fit together perfectly.

Above: Jeff Graydon (on left) from the Princeton University Athletic Department with Tom Pirelli in front of the nearly complete Arial Home. Summer Intern Marshall Everett ‘11 sits on the roof while finishing the front gutters.

Above: This is how it looked when we started at 8:30 am. The concrete pad had been poured perfectly thanks to Jeff Graydon. The pad was beautifully painted thanks to Charlie Kalmbach ’68. The anchor U channels had been put in place by Aaron Ewerdt and Nuno Seabra on Tuesday evening. Michael Saydak ‘11, an Arial Summer intern, is washing the water from the night’s rain off the pad before we started work.

Above, Nuno pointing proudly to his roof trim middle piece to close the gap where the two side trim pieces meet. Note the clean look of the vinyl PolyBau windows. There are six windows, all of which are opening windows with screens, positioned to catch cross breezes from any direction.

The Princeton students were great, especially the members of the women’s Rugby Team. They caught on quickly and did most of the work building the home on Wednesday, May 28. On Thursday, they installed the solar panels, finished the plumbing, installed the rain water collection system, assembled the furniture, and cleaned the house.

Above is the “Thank You” sign we placed on Broad Mead St. in front of the house. There have already been dozens of VIP visitors to the house.

Above: The finished Arial Home in Princeton orange. The rugby girls insisted on painting the Tiger stripes on the door.

Above: A look at the family room. The front door opens out, which makes the family room feel bigger.

Above: The new, larger kitchen and dining area.

Above: Four of the rugby team girls, their coach (Emil Signes, on right) and one of the rugby men who helped us build the home. (Tom Pirelli was on the rugby team at Princeton during his undergraduate days, and has been a sponsor of the undergraduate team ever since.)

The Arial Home is open for tours. Several alumni in town have keys to the front door. This is a public domain project. Anyone who wants to use our design to build homes for the poor is welcome to do so. We have one Arial Home factory in full operation in Ensenada, Mexico and the next one is planned for Ghana, Africa. This will be a joint project with the Princeton in Africa program and the Engineers without Borders team.

One of the things that we will need to set up is a “Micro-Mortgage” fund so that the working poor can get a low interest rate mortgage to buy their Arial Homes. This could be organized along the same lines as the highly successful “Micro-Finance” funds internationally. A $10 million fund would enable 10,000 poor families to have great homes.

Micro-Credit Pioneer Wins Peace Prize

Economist, Bank Brought New Opportunity to Poor

By Molly Moore

Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, October 14, 2006; Page A01

PARIS, Oct. 13 -- Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank he created won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for leveraging small loans into major social change for impoverished families.

The Grameen Bank's pioneering use of micro-credit has been duplicated across the globe since Yunus started the project in his home village three decades ago. Loans as low as $9 have helped beggars start small businesses and poor women buy cellular phones and basket-weaving materials.

Perhaps we can extend Muhammad Yunus’ brilliant idea to help fund desperately needed housing worldwide. A lot of Princeton alumni have experience in raising large funds and many of them have volunteered to help establish the first micro-mortgage fund for Arial Homes. -tom

We just finished building our 14^th and 15^th Arial Homes for some wonderful families in Ensenada, Mexico. One of the homes was built by a team of ten seniors from Chicago Hope Academy, led by school president Bob Muzikowski. The other home was built by volunteers from Microsoft, Lakefront Roofing and our Arial Foundation. The Chicago Hope home was generously donated by Michael Romano, WPO Chicago. Below is a profile of the family which received the new home thanks to the hard work of the students.

04-04-08 Chicago Hope Academy

Homes of Hope Family Profile

Felix Soto Family

Alan is a child with special needs, he doesn’t speak, cannot walk, is still in diapers, and the family has to feed him. Even though Ricardo is not the father of Alan, He loves him just the same as his own and is doing everything possible to make sure that Alan receives the therapy that he needs. The family was living on property owned by the government that they aren’t allowed to occupy. They did not have water or electricity. The Chicago Hope team changed all of that in two days of hard work. Below is a photo of Claudia after the “key” ceremony entering her new home….

Below is a photo of the two teams that built the homes, along with the families…..

Above: Tom Pirelli having a good laugh over the fact that little Jenifer is ignoring him while she “texts” on her toy cell phone – just like his daughters do back home!

Below are the two plaques that were mounted as “cornerstones” on the side of the homes after they were finished……

We started building at 9:00 am and took a half hour break from lunch. You can see from my watch in the foreground that both house structures were complete, with roofs on, by 2:01 pm on the first day….

Below: Mike Russell showing off the new bathroom window. Note the cable snaking from the roof. That is the power feed from the roof mounted solar panels. Both houses have electricity and running water.

Special Note: If you want to see something really special about the kids from Chicago Hope Academy, be sure to watch Oprah’s new show, “The Big Give,” on April 20^th.

As you can see, this was another successful Arial Home build. The changes we made from the February builds, going from Version 4.1 to 4.2, worked very well. Moving the bedroom door and adding the bathroom window were big improvements. Our thanks to everyone who helped us make the design improvements and build these latest homes. -tom