Dear Editor,
In a SN letter of July 19, Writer Conrad Barrow in response to my earlier letter on the above referenced subject, was of the opinion that I did not attend Queen’s College nor Bishops’ High School or even visited them. Otherwise, the viewpoints I expressed about them in my letter would have been different.
He is quite right that I never attended either of the two top secondary schools in Guyana but my knowledge of their construction and environmental shortcomings is more than he could dream about.
During the 1960’s I was employed by the Public Works Department as District Engineer for Georgetown. My duties included the execution of maintenance and renovation works on the two secondary schools which I supervised and executed. Therefore, I am very conversant with their function, architectural design and construction.
Later in my career I was the Chief Technical Adviser for the United Nations with responsibility to supervise construction and install equipment for the Kaduna Water Resources Institute, a Government of Nigeria institution. Recently, I retired as Project Manager for the New York City School Construction Authority (NYCSCA) where I managed the maintenance and renovations of a number of schools and educational institutions for NYCSCA in the Borough of Manhattan.
Therefore, my education and work experience has given me the knowledge to comment on educational buildings design and their equipment to provide a comfortable environment for their occupants such as cooling and/or heating.
Bricks have been used by architects in the design of structures primarily for their beauty, fire resistance properties, cost and availability. If laterite has these qualities plus the ability to store heat in the day and release it at night, it will be an excellent building material and very much in demand by the construction industry. Unfortunately this is not so since laterite is not widely known for its cooling properties as a building material and at a competitive price.
Guyana has many laterite deposits in its hinterland which could be readily mined and used in its many building projects instead of the use of other imported expensive materials/equipment now being used for cooling.
Writer Barrow may wish to advise the Government of Guyana how this wonderful material – Laterite that he is proposing could be cost effective in cooling the interior of the many schools it is building for students and teachers.
Incidentally, air-conditioners and fans are the premier equipment used in the USA and Canada to cool the interior of buildings and materials such as laterite are unheard of and unavailable on the market.
Yours sincerely,
Charles Sohan