Our Second Excavation Site

And we like this new soil so much more...I'm proud that we have been able to make good blocks with the soil I had available at my site but we knew there had to be better soil in the area. One of the CEB books I've read suggested that to find the best soil you should talk to the traditional brick makers, as they would know. Lucky for me my neighbor is a brick maker. I'm going to go into a bit of detail here because this little story is integral to my aspirations for the project. I'm very wary of unintended consequences so as I move this project forward with the intention of creating some new entrepreneurial opportunities I didn't want to hurt existing markets (traditional bricks). To avoid this dilemma I decided to introduce the idea first to the brick makers as an addition to their business, not competition. Hopefully this will result in a significant net sum gain. So, all that being said I was really hoping to catch my neighbors interest in the project and let him come to his own terms as to how he might see himself fitting into it. This is a family actually. The father still makes bricks and his sons help and as these things go the sons are becoming progressively more in control of the daily processes as the business gets passed to the next generation. Both of his sons are helping with the CEB project with the eldest having worked his way purely by merit and enthusiasm into the supervisor position. Both of the sons have told me on numerous occasions that making CEBs is much easier than making bricks. So, in short, the Dad flat out said to us "you can never make blocks like this" before he saw the press. He changed his mind the first time I put one of the blocks in his hands. Little by little his interest increased and about a week and a half ago he offered to let me use some of the soil from his property as he thought it would be better to work with. Thankfully, he was right. The new site is only about 50 yards away but the difference in the effort required to screen the soil is like night and day. The quality of the blocks is much better as well. So, we got busy screening soil and kept going until we had a substantial pile ready to make blocks. You can see the first blocks we made with this new soil, 10% cement mix and a little more water than we used with the last soil. I intend to work out an arrangement with the Dad to use more soil and pay a certain price per block made. It needs to be priced like this so that a static price can be calculated for clients. I'll be documenting more of the business model soon as the details are starting to emerge.