Provincial Engineering & Geoscience Week

W I N N I P E G F R E E P R E S S P R O V I N C I A L E N G I N E E R I N G & G E O S C I E N C E W E E K | 3 The Alternative Village research hub at the University of Manitoba explores work with non-conventional materials for building such as straw, earth and hemp (above). Submitted photo students returned to the village to build a sheltered cooking area for the school. "This is an opportunity for students to go and do something a little bit different. We interview the students in the fall and then they come on to the project usually in late September," he says. "During the fall term, they work on different design aspects. They've already been involved in the process. They know what's going on. So while we don't exactly hit the ground running, hopefully we hit the ground walking when we get there." The students pay a contribution towards their airfare and fundraise the rest of the costs. Although they don't receive credit hours for their efforts, their work on the project shows up on their university transcripts as a co- curricular record. Closer to home, Dick directs the Alternative Village, a 1.5-acre research hub that launched at the University of Manitoba campus in 2003. "A lot of my work is in non-conventional materials for building such as straw, earth and hemp material. We did a 4,200-square-foot straw bale building that's right on the campus. I think of it as a researchable building — we do research in it and we do research on it," he says. "Around that, there are smaller structures that we've been doing a lot of studies on different materials for thermal performance. We do physical testing and thermal testing. We worked on hemp insulation and earth buildings." In the Alternative Village, Dick also conducts research in a solar energy greenhouse along with fellow researchers Qiang Zhang and Stefan Cenkowski. "It's a gasification unit that takes biomass —so that could be wood chips, hemp or straw — as a fuel source. It burns that, puts that into a gasifier and, from there, we generate electricity and heat. The idea is if we could get this working, then could this be used to provide heat and electricity to run a solar energy greenhouse in a northern community," he says. "We could increase local food production and certainly extend the growing season. We're looking at using local materials, and I'm looking at trying to incorporate that ash into earth materials so that we could stabilize them and use those for building within the greenhouse. I'd like to see maybe using that for storage facilities or, ultimately, buildings too." On the consulting side, Dick also maintains a practice that works on projects from Ontario through to Vancouver Island with a particular focus on the wood truss industry. Through biosystems engineering, he is able to combine his experience in the trades with his interest in academics. "Biosystems evolved out of what used to be called agricultural engineering. It looks at biological sciences, environment and ecology. It basically links in the biological side into engineering. My background is all in structures and buildings from the ag side, so in my classes, we give our students the hands-on component," he says. "We're looking at different materials. When you look elsewhere in the world, they're using more earth-based plasters for healthy indoor air quality, but we don't seem to be doing that yet. I think more natural materials could be incorporated into our way of thinking." [

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