Keeping out the cold
Engineer's humanitarian mission to insulate thousands of bomb and bullet-damaged homes in Ukraine
A window that takes 15 minutes to build – designed by a Cambridge PhD student who has paused his studies – is transforming the lives of families in Ukraine, by helping them repair bullet and bomb-damaged windows and insulate their freezing homes.
Engineer Harry Blakiston Houston created the window - and the ‘Insulate Ukraine’ project - as a simple way to make a huge difference to those in liberated areas of Ukraine who have been left picking up the pieces following Russian retreats. The concept uses ‘triple-glazed’ polyethylene to protect against the cold, costs around £12 per square meter of window, and can be built at home in quarter of an hour from basic materials.
According to the United Nations, millions of people in Ukraine are “living in damaged homes, or in buildings ill-suited to provide sufficient protection”, particularly in the winter when temperatures can plummet to -20 degrees Celsius.
“There was an old woman in Mykolaiv, in southern Ukraine, who had been sleeping in her bathtub for two months because it was the warmest place in her house,” said Harry. “We were able to get her back to some kind of normality after the windows went in. The house was immediately warmer and lighter – she was able to rearrange everything and actually live in her home again. That was the start of it – the signal we needed, to go, ‘Right, ok, we're on to something here’.”
The Insulate Ukraine team, which includes people from the communities being supported, has now installed hundreds of windows in localities across Ukraine. They are operating across liberated areas that have suffered the most at Russia’s hands, including the city of Izyum in eastern Ukraine, where the local government has asked for help installing 6,000 windows.
The project aims to create hubs across the country that can replace any shattered window within 24 hours, and is currently working with a number of charities in various areas - The Big Hoof in Izyum, Ukraine Children in Nikopol, The Robin Hood Project in Lyman and Vezha in Kherson. In Izyum and Nikopol, the work is now largely being carried out by local people, following Insulate Ukraine’s initial involvement and guidance. Harry hopes the project’s work here will serve as a template for the whole of the country.
He said: “The level of destruction the Russians left in their wake is astounding. There’s hardly a house in Izyum without bullet holes in it. In peacetime the city was home to 50,000 people, now there are 10,000. It’s just the most extraordinary image of destruction everywhere, but now it's safe.
“Part of Putin’s war is about trying to make people in Ukraine cold and miserable. It’s about breaking their resolve to actually continue defending themselves. We’ve come up with a solution that makes a real difference. We're essentially empowering Ukrainians because we're giving them a way to solve this problem for themselves. All we have to do is show them how to build the windows and help them to get hold of the materials.”
"The level of destruction the Russians left in their wake is astounding. There’s hardly a house in Izyum without bullet holes. It’s just the most extraordinary image of destruction everywhere, but it's safe."
The genesis of the idea was formed in the unlikeliest of places – the queue for the Queen’s Lying-in-State.
“I have a friend who had been working in Ukraine for a few months. I had done a stint helping on the Polish border, and he went out after me. We were chatting in the queue and he told me about the issue of the windows, and how people were living in freezing homes because their windows had been blown out by bombs and bullets.
“I felt like there was something I might be able to do to help. When I got back to Cambridge, I started working on a window design and showed it to a couple of other engineers. We iterated it a bunch of times, came up with an initial concept, got feedback, went back to the drawing board, redesigned, and came up with the solution we have now.”
The window design uses polyethylene, PVC piping, pipe insulation and duct tape, to create four layers of insulation. Harry – who has paused his Cambridge studies in biotechnology at Hughes Hall to concentrate on the Insulating Ukraine project – said the solution, similar to triple glazing, insulates better than double glazed windows and is shatterproof.
“Its strength is its simplicity. We’d collected details of what people were already doing out there to repair windows. I asked contacts on the ground to send me photos of the sort of solutions they were using. People were doing what they could, but a lot of the solutions were rudimentary, single layer - some people were using hemp sacks. It was whatever they could get their hands on that would act as a windbreak, and often that left the houses cold and dark.”
Other types of replacement window were made from wood and polystyrene, which are costly to produce, transport, and install. Insulate Ukraine estimates that materials for 4,000 of its windows can be fitted into a single truck, versus around 30 equivalent glass windows.
“Our windows needed to be inexpensive, let light in, keep cold out, and be simple for local people to install themselves,” said Harry. “They are built from some of the most abundant building materials on the planet. Plus, we’re using stabilised polyethylene, which doesn’t degrade under sunlight. All of the window parts can be recycled and used for something else in a few years’ time. There’s pretty much no wastage.”
"We’ve come up with a solution that makes a real difference. We're essentially empowering Ukrainians because we're giving them a way to solve this problem for themselves."
Professor Jaideep Prabhu, of the Cambridge Judge Business School, advised Harry and the team during the project’s initial stages, particularly around the process of ‘frugal innovation’.
He said: “It’s about small teams doing things with limited resources, communities coming together to bounce ideas off each other and come up with quite sophisticated solutions that they can then share with people elsewhere.
“I have been quite struck by the ability of small teams, sometimes of our students, to do things that can actually have a big impact on people's lives - working nimbly, making things and using these ubiquitous tools and resources that they have access to. How it can be done locally and then shared globally.”
The not-for-profit Insulate Ukraine project is now looking for more partners to support its work, and has created a pipeline for corporate donors who may initially want to take part in smaller validation projects in villages that have asked for help. More information here: https://www.insulate-ukraine.org/
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