SkyWurkz CEB Initiative

Some Help from a Friend

2011-12-25T03:42:00.000-08:00

Many thanks to Nathalie from BC for ALL the help during her visit. Besides providing first rate support making blocks she also brought with her a water purification unit. With this important piece we can now check off the 'water' in the 'food, water, shelter' list. She also brought a great variety of heirloom seeds so we can improve on the 'food' goal.

Scouting Mission to Ometepe

2011-12-25T03:31:00.000-08:00

Thinking we may want to start building on Ometepe we decided to go on a little scouting mission. The island was everything we had hoped in terms of potentially doing a small development with the blocks and renewable energy. We liked what we saw and will be moving toward the island with the project.

Another Roof Section Added

2011-12-25T03:18:00.000-08:00

Here you see another section of zinc roof added on to the front. This was the first of two expansions to allow us more dry space to work under when it's raining.

Making Blocks in the Rain

2011-09-07T11:55:00.000-07:00

This was our first attempt at making blocks while it was actually raining. It's very important that we are able to keep production going while it's raining so that we don't lose time during the rainy season (about 7 months). We could obviously still use a larger space but will have to add-on as resources allow. The rain was unusually strong. It flooded town and turned the farm into a lake for a few hours. We were forced to pause the block making while we built a quick berm around the work area. This was enough to prevent the water from coming in and allow us to keep working.

Roof Added in Front

2011-08-23T14:49:00.000-07:00

We've added a 12'x12' zinc roof section on the front of the bodega so as to have a larger dry working area. Hopefully we'll be in regular production soon. I have also installed a small solar system, a 3mb/s internet connection, a toilet and a desk. The bodega is much more agreeable now. I'm happy to say this is the first blog update from the bodega with many more to come. I'm working on a few different paths to getting some soil trucked in. The rainy season makes it more challenging.

Milestone Complete: Construct Demonstration Unit

2011-06-18T07:07:00.000-07:00

And there it is...Our first CEB structure. We now have a bodega and will be expanding as resources allow. I have to thank my friend from Colorado who came down for three months to help me build this. Making the blocks was a group effort but the actual construction was done by two guys and very basic hand tools. Without the help of J from CO it would not have been possible to do this year. Waiting until next year would have been a big bummer so it's really great to get our rainy season test underway. Future direction will involve testing various new techniques such as lime plasters and arches and ramping up steady block production.

Presenting the Screen-O-Matic 2000!

2011-06-18T06:23:00.000-07:00

Total materials cost was around $50. We needed a screen that was purpose built for CEB needs. For us this meant portable, low cost, manual powered and a significant improvement over the way we have been doing it with smaller two-person screens. With the previous method 5 guys produced enough soil in one day to make about 100 blocks. With this new tool one guy can produce that much.

Still More Detail...

2011-06-18T06:12:00.000-07:00

Top photo shows how we decided to put in the lintel for a door. We left loose half blocks in place when we poured the columns and later removed them and put the 4x4 in. We did have to chisel some out on one side still and then back fill it with mortar mix.
In the second photo you can see where we stopped the stucco and the 'espera' for the iron gate. It's sunk into the poured column behind it. We deliberately left the inside of the wall unfinished for demonstration purposes.
Next you can see the basic roof technique and the finished stucco (still drying). If you're wondering what the two pieces of zinc below the main level of the roof are for, it's just where we decided to store the extra pieces we had :-)

More Details on the Techniques

2011-06-18T06:02:00.000-07:00

Here you can see more of the bonding techniques. The top photo shows a close up of the wall with the mortar joints. The color is from a basic broom wash that was done as it was being laid up. Next photo shows where we have started the stucco (repaya). In the bottom photo you can see how the formed column at the end of the wall is used to join the CEB wall to the pre-existing brick/cement wall. The blue color on the existing wall is old paint. The darker blue color on the concrete column is a bonding agent (plastibond) we were testing.

Our First Building

2011-06-18T05:46:00.000-07:00

I love tests that might also have a practical use. As long as your planning takes into account that it's just a test (and dependencies are mitigated) any benefit derived is just gravy. Therefore, we thought a bodega would be a great first building project since we needed somewhere to put our stuff and it incorporates numerous conventional construction techniques that we wanted to experiment with.
The most critical test of all is the water/weather proofing. The rainy season in Nicaragua is torrential and will be the biggest challenge we will likely have as far as the CEB process goes. In that regard we needed to test techniques for the footer, roof and stucco. Ideally we wanted to go with a lime stucco but learned too late in the project that the lime needed to hydrate for a longer time than we had. To compensate we went with a standard masonry stucco using 6:1:1, fine sand, lime, cement. You can see we used cut stones (about $1.50/each) for the footer on top of an existing slab. This got us a foot off the ground and is working well so far. The roof could use more overhang but still is giving the coverage needed. We used all plain blocks bonded with a standard masonry mix.

An Odd Atmospheric Display

2011-06-18T05:41:00.000-07:00

The day of this photo (Mid May) we got to see an unusual halo effect around the sun.

A Change of Plans

2011-06-18T05:21:00.000-07:00

We started with the intention of doing a completely new structure. The plan was for a round room of about 12 feet with a concrete/rebar footer and a poured concrete/rebar slab roof. While we still love the idea we realized that we weren't going to have the resources to pull it off before the rains started (time and money being the constraints) so we changed tack and decided to go with the original plan which was to build off an existing structure, a brick outhouse. We had a pretty good design worked out for the round room and were excited about doing it but it was just too ambitious for the first room in a number of ways. In hindsight it was much better to simply extend off the front of the outhouse as it put us back in a realistic time/money budget and also allowed us to test basic construction techniques without too much risk exposure.

Yet More Blocks

2011-06-18T05:16:00.001-07:00

We realized it was going to take a few more blocks to get the bodega done so we got busy. It is so nice to see the stack grow.

After a long time with no updates...

2011-06-18T04:51:00.000-07:00

I have been remiss in updating in regards to the progress of things, I know. We have been in a race against the rainy season. Since the last posting we have been working on the first building (a bodega) made with the blocks in the previous photos. The rainy season starts in Nicaragua around the middle of May (give or take a few weeks) and we had to get the roof on the bodega before then. Two days before the rains started we finished the roof. Now that the time pressure is off I can finally bring the history up to date.

The Stockpile Grows

2011-01-17T15:59:00.000-08:00

This is about 200 blocks. You can sort of visualize the size a wall of 100 blocks might be. There are obviously some less than perfect ones in the pile but for the bodega they don't have to be pretty, just structurally sound. Any blocks that don't make the cut will get thrown out at build time.

Testing the Different Block Molds

2011-01-17T15:32:00.000-08:00

We spent a full day testing the various molds I purchased with the machine. This was the first time for anything other than the lego mold. We also spent some time getting to know the machines fine tuning. We've been having problems with some of the soil sticking to the bottom mold along the edges. When you lift the block a chunk of it is still stuck to the mold and of course leaves a proportional sized chunk out of your block. Not cool...This only happens about 20% of the time and we didn't have the same problem with the first soil we used. We spent a fair amount of time on our first full production day tweaking the compression, the moisture of the mix and even varying the use of oil on the mold. We could never seem to eliminate the occasional stuck block. So, today we checked the plate risers for the bottom mold and also made sure all the screws for the molds were tight. We also took the opportunity to try out all of the molds. Here are a few of the things we learned;

There are 6 large bolts on the bottom press plate. At first I had no idea what they were for as they were not actually touching the lego bottom mold, screwed down to below flush. I realized what they do when we started testing the half block molds. There's a partition in the middle of the half block molds which needs to touch exactly with the top plate in the closed position. You can use the risers to adjust the height of the bottom mold plate in the box relative to the top. Once it's set just right then it 'cuts' the block for you. Too high and the top plate hits it (and could damage it), too low and the block doesn't get cut properly.
The lego half block mold had the same sticking problem as the full lego mold
The plain blocks came out perfect every time
Considering the time it takes to really get the machine set just right after changing the molds you don't want to do it too often. It doesn't take too long but will impact production so maybe once per day at most.
We think after further examination of the sticking problem that the new soil is a little too fine to work well with the lego mold. Rather than try to doctor the soil to be of use with the lego mold we're going to go full steam ahead with the plain blocks so we can get the bodega done.
The Roman arch mold works great. We'll definitely be making bunches of those.

Our First Drop Test

2011-01-14T17:04:00.000-08:00

This is our first drop test. The block is a 10% cement mix using the soil from our second excavation site. As we're still pretty new at this we were pretty happy with the results. The block had only 1 1/2 weeks cure time so it was not even ready yet, but we wanted to know what it was really all about so we sacrificed one.

Our First Full Production Run

2011-01-14T16:31:00.000-08:00

Today we did a full eight hours of nothing but making blocks with the screened soil from the previous week and a half. We're sticking with the 10% cement mix and trying to get enough blocks to build build the bodega as our production target. I can build it with as few as 500 but may go bigger depending on how many we come out with. The total made for the day was 135. We spent lots of time tweaking the compression on the press and the water mix trying to get it just right so we feel that once those things are worked out we should be able to get up to 300 a day. It's a good goal for now.

Big Pile of Screened Soil (yay!!!)

2011-01-14T16:26:00.000-08:00

So, 5 guys screening for 8 days makes a pile of screened soil this big (the lighter colored soil on the right hand side). Just a guess but it looks like enough for about 800 blocks.

Our Second Excavation Site

2011-01-14T15:50:00.000-08:00

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.

The First Practical Application

2011-01-02T07:26:00.001-08:00

I wanted to grill out for New Year's Eve but didn't have a grill! Well, I had the grill grate but not the rest of it. I realized I could use some of my new blocks to make it happen and Bam!, chicken...It only took five minutes to assemble and I can move or reconfigure it as needed (no mortar). Myself and guests were all impressed at how well the blocks shielded the heat from the coals. The outside of the blocks at the hottest places were still completely cool to the touch. Actually cooler than the ambient air temp, amazing.

2 Weeks of Curing

2011-01-02T07:20:00.000-08:00

The second round of testing has now been curing for about two weeks and everything seems to be going well. As you can see the blocks are still looking good and are starting to dry enough that the final natural color is starting to emerge.

Second Round of Testing, Holding Steady

2010-12-17T16:02:00.000-08:00

After three days of curing under plastic they seem to be holding up well. The first run that have been stored in the bodega are the best of all indicating how important it is to have them in a protected space for the first couple of weeks.

The Work Site

2010-12-15T12:49:00.000-08:00

Here you can see the extraction pit on the far left, screening far right, mixing just to the left of the screening area and the press between the extraction pit and mixing area. The blocks were stored in the shade under plastic off to the left side.

Class is In!

2010-12-15T12:42:00.000-08:00

Some shots from our Tuesday training session. The blocks laid out in a row make for a nice picture but they were quickly moved to a covered area.

Leftovers

2010-12-15T12:38:00.000-08:00

This is soil that wouldn't easily go through the screen. Due to the high clay content where we're working it tends to clump no matter what you do. Still working on getting better with this part.

Screening and Mixing

2010-12-15T12:29:00.000-08:00

Screening on the right, mixing area on the left.

Training Day 1, Afternoon Session

2010-12-15T11:27:00.000-08:00

Looks like they're getting the hang of it!

Training Day 1, Morning Session

2010-12-15T11:25:00.000-08:00

More video of Antonio showing how to use the press. This was in the morning when they first started checking it out. I'll upload a video of them using the machine in the afternoon to illustrate the training times involved.

Soil Mixing, Dry Components

2010-12-15T11:21:00.000-08:00

Training session on how to mix the soil. This is showing the mixing of the cement with the screened soil. I have to apologize for the poor audio quality. We're on a tight budget and will be working to improve the production quality but I want to capture as much of the process as possible. Please note that we are still very new at this and these videos are intended to document our experiences not to provide an authoritative view.

A New Group Make Their First Block

2010-12-15T11:15:00.000-08:00

This is from a training session where we're showing a group of new guys how the machine works. It's always great to see the expressions when the guys see a block come out of the press for the first time.

San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua (12/14/2010)

Screening Station

2010-12-14T04:49:00.000-08:00

This is how we're screening the soil for now. This has emerged as the main bottleneck in the total process so we will hopefully be able to improve on how it's done as time goes on. We're using a pretty fine screen (about 1/4"). Our first day of testing involved the use of different screen sizes to see which made the best block and the smaller size seemed to be the best. It's more work but the quality of block is much better. We tried screening twice, first with a large screen then with the smaller one and decided that the extra effort wasn't worth it. So, we now are screening once with the small size.

Ideas That Didn't Work: Crushing the Soil Prior to Screening

2010-12-14T04:42:00.000-08:00

We were hoping that if we dried the soil and used a plancheta (hand held crusher) that the result would be a finer soil that would go through the screen easier and allow us to use a greater percentage of the total extracted. The reality was that it took a long time to dry the soil completely and once you had that it was rock hard and still didn't break down too well even with the plancheta. If the soil was even slightly moist if would compact and create even more of a problem. We concluded that the time to spread the soil and wait for it to dry and then crush it was less efficient than taking it directly from the extraction pile to the screen.

2010-12-14T04:34:00.000-08:00

This shows the soil prior to screening. Notice the large clumps...a real problem for the screening process. We're experimenting with different methods of breaking it down so that we get more out of the screening. One thing we tried that did not work was mixing the soil in a bucket with water and then letting it dry a few days. The resulting mix was so hard that it clearly wasn't what we were hoping for. From this station the soil goes to the screening, right now being carried in 5 gallon buckets. I bought a wheelbarrow yesterday but as yet the buckets have been preferable.

Our Second Extraction Pit

2010-12-14T04:22:00.000-08:00

We started a new pit with the intention of digging the foundation for a future wall at the same time. We have the idea that if we're going to be making big holes to get the soil for blocks we may as well make the hole for the foundation and kill two birds with one stone. One difference between this pit and the first is we made the point of making it big enough that two guys can work at the same time without causing each other problems.

Block Dimensions

2010-12-14T04:13:00.000-08:00

To illustrate the dimensions of the blocks. I didn't get a picture of the width measurement but it was 6".

The Model I Decided to Buy

2010-12-09T10:12:00.000-08:00

This is the video that finally convinced me it was time to make the commitment to getting a CEB press. I had already decided to start with a manual press so the next question was to try and have one built or purchase one. After a few failed starts at building one I decided to just buy one and get going. This entire project has been done on a shoestring so it took a significant personal sacrifice to get the money together. As a result I was very keen to shop around. Having seen many different models of manual press before ever watching this video I was immediately aware of the features that indicated a great level of experience built into it. From start to finish GracoMaq was a pleasure to do business with and I would not hesitate to send business their way. They were very helpful in getting the order together and with the considerably obtuse task of shipping it to Nicaragua. They interfaced perfectly with my import agent here and kept me informed the whole time. Thanks to their entire team for building such a rock solid product.

Day 2, Make a Better Mix!

2010-12-09T08:22:00.001-08:00

So we started our second day of testing with the intention of taking however long was needed to get a finer mix. We have a smaller screen (about 1/4") we used that produced a nice quality. We also used a fine screen (about 1/8") to filter the lime which resulted in a much better result without any clumps or rocks. Ideally I think you would want to use a flour sifter for this but that's a hard to find item here. We got the kind of mix we were hoping for but only with lots of effort due to the texture and humidity of the soil. It has a high clay content (about 30%) and retains moisture pretty much year round. Digging it up is hard work as it's nearly a block in it's natural state! It comes up in large clumps which have to be broken down, then screened. The screening process produces a lot of left over soil that has clumps too large to work with. We are already thinking about the best way to deal with that and think letting the soil dry for a day then using a manual crusher (plancheta) will be the fix we need. We did two batches, one with 10% lime and one with 10% cement. The block shown above was one of the cement stabilized blocks. I was hoping to take more pictures but my camera died. It's been on it's last leg for a while so I know I need to get a new one, especially now for this project. In the mean time, I will do the best I can to capture the process with what's available. My friend Paul has loaned me a nice lapel mic which I hope to use to put some videos together. We decided to wait until the block was done curing to clean the little bits from the edges as it would result in a cleaner look (we think).

The Official First Block

2010-12-09T08:12:00.000-08:00

For better or worse, this is the very first block we made with the machine. We didn't expect perfection but we did take the time to try and make a good mix. Some obvious improvements we knew we had to make after looking at the results was to get a finer mix of both soil and lime with better distribution and we needed to get better compression. It's still holding together despite the flaws and we quickly set ourselves to making the needed adjustments. By the time we got our first blocks done the sunset was upon us so we all went home feeling very satisfied with little wheels turning in our heads over how we were going to improve on the next batch.

This batch used an 8% lime mix with our large screen (about 1/2").

My Early Christmas Present

2010-12-09T07:38:00.000-08:00

It was always cool as a child to wake up on Christmas morning to find that shiny new bicycle waiting for you but I have to say this was even better. Silvio was happy to help me check it all out. Later on Pedro showed up and we all pitched in to get it assembled.

Up and Running!

2010-12-09T07:06:00.000-08:00

After years of investigation into the Compressed Earth Block process and about a year and a half trying to get a press I am happy to report that we now have begun to make blocks. This initiative is part of a larger sustainable living project I have created called "SkyWurkz" which is meant to develop a new living model based on spontaneously ordered systems rather than the historic top down hierarchies. While this larger project is focused on the sustainable production of all the essentials for a fulfilling life (food, water, shelter, security, health, education) the CEB initiative is meant to fulfill the shelter requirement specifically and possibly a few other things as well. This is intended to provide both a literal and figurative base of operations towards the achievement of the other essentials. The SkyWurkz project is still very new and under development. Additional details will emerge as time goes on.

At this time I want to focus efforts towards mastering the CEB process and develop a small business model around this which can be replicated to create opportunities at the local level. My plan is to use a small piece of land I have near San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua to build first a small block factory then a home. This will hopefully be a good demonstration of the CEB process (and also architecture and construction with CEB) that I will then use to build a new market awareness. Once the idea starts to take root I hope to position the local workers who I will be training to take advantage of the new opportunity as well.

There has already been interest expressed from various parties on the potential use of CEB for their projects so I will be working hard to get the tests done so we can show a solid proof of concept. I will of course try to capture as much of the process as I can and intend to "open source" everything both regarding the actual making of blocks and my experiences with the business model. The entire plan is quite involved and still very much a work in progress so I will elaborate more on that as time goes on. For now, let's get this blog started with a few posts bringing us up to date and then a bit about where I intend to go from here.

Thanks for your interest in the project!