The Sandbag Re-Imagined

RANCHO CORDOVA, CA, September 03, 2010 (Press-News.org) After hundreds of years of holding back the waters, the sandbag has gotten an upgrade.

When it floods the first line of defense is the lowly sandbag. However people who use them hate them. Sandbags are hard to fill and make weak walls. Sandbags haven't gotten any better in hundreds of years, till now. Sand Brick Technologies, a California startup, has redesigned the sandbag.

The opening in normal sandbag is two inches smaller than a shovel blade. This makes sandbags very hard to fill. "It was one of those 'Oh Duh' moments", says John Powell, CEO of Sand Brick Technologies, LLC, "We made the opening two inches wider than a shovel, I don't know why nobody thought of it before."

Starting with the wider opening the sandbag went through a series of overdue upgrades. The ends of the bags are angled like a cornerstone. This causes all the bags to interlock forming an incredibly strong wall. However you don't need to be an architect to use them. The bags are color coded, one side blue the other yellow. All an emergency volunteer needs to remember is: "blue, yellow, blue, yellow" and the wall locks in place.

The new sandbag is called a Sand Brick because of its cross section. The new sandbag forms a rectangle or brick shape. Tradition sandbags form a cylinder causing them to wobble. A Sand Brick sits, well, like a brick. Images of the Sand Bricks are available at www.sandbricktech.com.

All these improvements result in a bag that only needs twenty pounds of sand vs. forty pounds of sand in an old bag. Combined with fewer bags needed, less half the amount of sand is used block the same flood. Emergency workers can put up sandbags walls up faster, saving more lives and property.

The new bags have been well received in the emergency community. "They make a really strong wall," says Carl Whaley, Chief of the Carrabelle, Florida Fire Department after a training exercise with Sand Bricks.

You have a new computer and a new phone, now you can get a new sandbag.

Sand Brick Technologies is the developer and manufacturer of the Sand Brick Sand bag. For further information, please contact us at 916-858-0184 or visit our website: www.sandbricktech.com.