Amigos del Bamboo

Yesterday we visited Friends of the Osa's bamboo project, cunningly called Amigos del Bamboo.  The site is located in La Palma, where we had been to the school the day before to talk about involving students in water quality monitoring projects.

The idea behind promoting the use of bamboo as a viable construction material is to save hardwood species that take much longer to grow.  So even though wood might be called renewable in the sense that it regrows, if a tree takes 100 years to reach a size that could be used in construction, without disciplined management and long-term planning, chances are that those trees begin to disappear from the forests.  That has happened with many species of beautiful wood, like purple heart, cristobal, and manu, here in the Osa Peninsula.

On the other hand, bamboo is harvestable in 5 years from the time it is planted.  When cured correctly, it is strong, pest-resistent and great for construction.  The only trick is that since the pieces used are round, the workers need to be trained in a few specific techniques.  Once they have that down, they're off to the races building with a local and truly renewable resource, thus saving old growth forest.

This photo shows the system used to flush the natural sap out of the wood, thus making it resistent to pests.  A salt solution is slowly pushed through each piece of wood under 20 psi of pressure.

Below you can see that the solution has made its way to the end of the wood in the piece on the left, while the other pieces are still dry. This usually takes about 30 minutes for a standard 6 m [20 ft] length.

This last photo demonstrates the use of a hardwood pin in bamboo construction.