Here's a piece I wrote for the Business Mirror a couple of years ago. I still find it relevant, so I'm reposting it here. My apologies for the lack of visuals.

With the demand for sturdy low-cost housing steadily rising, attributed in part to the dream of Filipino migrant workers to own their own homes in the motherland, property developers are turning to foreign technologies—such as prefabricated materials—that allow the fast-tracking of construction, thereby cost-efficient.

Not Hilario N. Abbatuan, though. This mechanical engineer from the north says he is sticking to indigenous technologies for housing and good, old and solid concrete to do the job.

Abbatuan, fondly called Larry by friends and family, says he can finish a house in as short a time as 24 hours through a system he has developed—the H.N. Abbatuan Form System.

“With my system, I not only finish a unit faster than the conventional method of constructing a house—from laying down concrete for a foundation to the installation of galvanized iron sheets to form a roof—the house also comes out cheaper by about 30 percent,” Larry says.

Forming dreams

The use of the word “form” in the system’s name is not without basis, Larry explains. It turns out the system relies heavily on forms—much like molds—that dictate how a house will be built and how it will look like.

Larry says the proper name for the system is “cast-in-place” since the foundation, walls and roofdeck—yes, almost all the units he has built since the founding of his company, H.N. Abbatuan Builders, have solid concrete slabs as roofs—are literally cast in place using the forms or molds.

“The Abbatuan System entails the designing of a complete house form that allows the simultaneous concrete pouring of walls, partitions, beams and columns. The effect? Uniform distribution of strength for the whole house,” he explains.

The system does not use hollow blocks and plywood girders, two elements vital in the conventional way of constructing a house that Larry labels as “unnecessary expenses.”

“Construction sites are very chaotic and materials often get bruited about. Hollow blocks, being very weak, crumble easily when care is not exercised. At the end of a construction period, a contractor usually finds himself straddled with the loss of hollow blocks and, thus, more expenses,” Larry points out.

“It’s the same with plywood and other lumber. Once it’s used to form a cast to hold and form concrete, the wood is virtually useless—it can’t be used again,” he adds.

Fast and furious

The Abbatuan Form System is also labor efficient, requiring only 12 workers to build a single 36 square meter to 72 square meter house in 24 hours. Larry also boasts that his company can build a medium-rise apartment building, from foundation to roof, in about 90 days.

Larry’s claim has been proven several times in the recent past, at housing sites in Quezon City, Manila, and Muntinlupa with the help of local governments.

He has also participated in building homes for the less fortunate through the National Housing Authority, which has recognized his system with a certificate under the Accreditation of Indigenous Technologies (AITECH) program of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council.

The goodwill he has fostered with the government, however, is not without its downside. Larry recalls a time he built a mass housing project for a local government but did not get paid.

“I even got sued. But the circumstances leading to this problem is a different story and cannot be talked about—for now,” Larry explains.

At present, Larry is engaged in projects in General Santos City, where he hopes to recover from the aches of projects that failed “through no fault of mine.” He is also on the prowl for a good challenge, someone who can dare him to a contest on who can build a house the fastest.

“I want the chance to prove that the Filipino can innovate and use the products of his considerable intellect to help his countrymen. I am surprised—and disheartened at the same time—to learn that many Filipinos still turn to everything foreign for solutions to their woes,” Larry says, referring to the foreign housing technologies now flooding the market.

“What the Abbatuan Form System proves is, what foreigners can do, the Filipino can do better,” he adds.

The coconut tree is again proving its worth as a source not only of medicinal or therapeutic products, such as virgin coconut oil, but also of alternative construction materials, primarily lumber and leaves that can be woven into sturdy roofs and walls.

The Department of Science and Technology, however, has found another breakthrough in the construction industry from the once-lowly coconut—the “coco coir board.” Made entirely of coconut husk, the board is different from your run-of-the-mill paneling boards in the sense that it does not need synthetic chemicals, adhesives or cement as binders.

Aside from this unique aspect, the coco coir board’s production process is environment-friendly, said Dr. Dwight Eusebio, a senior researcher at the Forest Products Research and Development Institute in Los Baños, Laguna.

Although the board is recommended only for indoor paneling, it still entails a strict production process so that its binding property is achieved and maintained, Eusebio said.

“Milling and drying of fibers and hot pressing of the board are the critical processes for the technology. Coconut husks should go through a milling machine, passing a two-millimeter screen, and the fibers must pass through a dryer with a moisture content of between eight percent and 10 percent,” he said.

“Since there are not binders or other chemicals used, the production cost is cheaper, translating to cheaper selling prices. The manufactured sizes are 600 millimeter by 1,200 millimeter, or two feet by four feet, and 900 millimeter by 1,800 millimeter, or three feet by six feet,” Eusebio added.

Eusebio said the technology was also being used in different panel products, like particle boards, plywood, oriented strand boards, and medium-density fiber boards bonded with petroleum-based resins or cement.

“The technology can be transferred through outright sale, royalties, demonstration and piloting, and training. It is ready for diffusion but if commercial production is being planned, specific tests, like termite and fungi resistance of the boards on a long-term basis, should be determined,” he said.

“Also, if the boards are being planned for use as exterior panels or in rooms where humidity is high, exposure tests should be done to determine the durability of coco coir binderless boards. Since most of the equipment for the production of the coco coir board are already available, the transfer of the technology to existing particle board manufacturers is being encouraged,” Eusebio added.

The Philippine Council for Industry and Energy Research and Development, an attached agency of the Department of Science and Technology, is overseeing the project.

Bamboo and coconut wood and husks have been in use as construction materials for the past 800 years, not only in the Philippines but other tropical countries as well—not in large buildings, however, only small homes.

Despite suffering from major setbacks in their growth as materials of choice for the construction of houses, courtesy of more than 400 years of colonization by both Spain and the United States (which both espoused the use of seemingly sturdier stuff like stone, cement, and steel), the lowly bamboo and the oft-neglected coconut lumber are making a comeback—and a strong one at that—in the construction sector.

At the forefront of this comeback are the mostly unlikely of champions—a new-age architect and a government agency.

An Affair to Remember

Why the sudden interest in reviving an old construction technology? For architect Ning Encarnacion-Tan, it was the admiration she developed for the bamboo while researching about the grass’ properties that got her hooked.

This admiration led her to build, with the help of husband Juju and artisans Rudy Encinares and Bert Gallano, in 1992 her dream house on a small parcel of land in the ancestral compound of her in-laws.

The two-story house is composed mainly of three materials—bamboo, cement, and nipa. Of course, bamboo makes up more than half of the structure, providing fixtures for the first floor, such as the kitchen counter and window frames, and the backbone of the second floor, including the staircase and support beams.

Aside from being an engineering marvel, the house is also an environmental wonder, dispensing with the need for power-consuming devices like electric fans and air-conditioning, because of its design. Staying true to the architectural designs of old, the Tans’ former home (they sold it in 2003 to Juju’s brother, Jake, who turned it into a wellness and healing center) draws cool air through small portals located strategically throughout the first floor. This cool air then circulates, pushing warmer air up through the bamboo slats on the second floor and out the gap between the nipa roof and the bamboo frame and walls.

The success of the Tans’ bamboo house eventually caught the eye of ABS-CBN’s Bantay Bata Foundation. Ning was tasked to design the main structure of the foundation’s Children’s Village in Bulacan. And this she did using her original design for the house as a template and incorporating new ideas.

According to filipinoheritage.com, “Bamboo houses are built not by architects, but by the people who will live in them,” in an article describing the art of constructing a bamboo home. Ning Tan has broken this mold by not only designing the new-age bamboo house but also by living in one.

It's a Material World

Bamboo can also be used as the raw material for alternative construction materials. Take, for instance, the Department of Science and Technology’s cement-bonded boards, which can be installed in homes as walls, dividers, or ceilings.

With the country’s construction industry facing grim choices due to strict government regulations on the harvesting of wood, the department commissioned the Philippine Council for Industry and Energy Research and Development and the Los Baños-based Forest Products Research and Development Institute to find suitable alternatives to wood.

Less than a year into the research, the PCIERD announced the development of a cement-bonded board that uses bamboo wastes as the main reinforcement raw material.

“Bamboo showed better qualities to reinforce concrete compared to other agricultural wastes like tobacco,” the PCIERD, an attached agency of the department, said in a report. The bamboo was also found to raise the load-carrying capacity of concrete beams.

The bamboo-based cement-bonded boards are now proving their worth in the construction of low-cost housing units. They have become the preferred alternative to plywood, whose supply has become drastically low in recent years.

The supply of plywood has consistently slumped since 1987, with only 517,000 cubic meters in total production output, according to government data. Unfortunately, the supply is not enough to meet the demands of the housing backlog, which stands at 4.2 million.

This backlog is further complicated by the sudden surge in housing demand from the migrant worker population, which has recently become the prime target market of real property developers.

The bamboo isn’t the only indigenous plant that the DOST is tapping for construction materials. The PCIERD is currently supporting the development of another breakthrough in the construction industry—the coco coir board, which can be used as wall and ceiling panels.

Terms of Endearment

Bamboo has about five major qualities that make it at par if not better than wood. First, it grows faster than any lumber-producing tree. It takes anywhere between 10 and 20 years for most trees to grow compared to the sturdy bamboo, the tallest-growing grass in the world, that grows at a fast and steady rate, making it reach maturity in about three to five years.

The bamboo is also one of the strongest and long-lived wood-bearing plants in the world, with more than 1,500 species thriving in the harshest environments. Harvesting the grass is also not a problem, as it does not kill it entirely, unlike culling trees that leave virtually useless stumps behind. It is also endowed with the tensile strength of steel, making it an ideal alternative not only for wood but also steel and cement.

As an alternative construction material, bamboo is making waves not only in the Philippines but also abroad.

In the Hawaiian island of Maui, for example, architects are now taking a second look at the versatile plant, seeking ways to cultivate its economic possibilities by promoting bamboo as a new crop and the construction material of choice.