Eco-Archi in Malawi

So, yeah, this week saw the start of the production of our CSEB - Compressed Stabilized Earth Blocks, also called "SSB" for Stabilized Soil bricks, or BTC in French, for Blocs de Terre Comprimée (manque un S pour stabilisée mais bref).  They are much more eco-friendly than the fired bricks (using a looot of wood to get cooked) or concrete (using a loooot of (imported) cement), as these blocks should count only 5% of cement for the stabilization, and don't need any plaster or paint or any other layer on them at the end to be confortable and beautiful. So some soil has already been extracted and sieved, and kinda analyzed ( a bit too roughly unfortunately), we had a bag of cement ready, some water nearby, a large area for the curing was prepared, the machine was assembled and we were ready to start testing ! We made our first blocks on Monday afternoon, guiding the guys for the dry mixing, the wet mixing, the steps for the compression, the handling on the block

Apart from the developed drawings of the dormitory and family cottages, this week has seen progress on the materials...  On Tuesday we went to pay a visit to the executive director of Mulanje Conservation Trust in Mulanje, to learn more about the bamboos and other trees and plants that we could get from him, as well as SSBs and tiles that were used for the offices there. Being himself the son of an architect who worked here, he's pretty aware of all this. beautiful way among the tea estates of Mulanje some tiles had to be replaced as they were broken by the wrong placement of solar panels And on Friday, another architectural visit, this time to Mr Sonke, a very special architect-engineer who keeps "engineering" in the true manner ! He's living in the most special house I have ever been to, a "football" house that looks more like a water tower than a home ;) But it's actually very cosy inside, and of course the view is magnificent. 

So last week saw another change of plans on site : Tuesday was the last day of the JCB on site, where it only worked for a couple of hours before having to be brought somewhere else, requested by the preparation of the presidential elections... We're getting ready to start making CSEB anyways, I had a closer look to the soil that is being prepared and sent several emails to ask for some advice. We're going to have to go though a test phase anyways, as we're not really sure of the soil we have... it's a good one no doubt, but is it really more sandy / more silty / more clayey ? This is unclear... This is not coffee And the collaboration with the structural engineer is a bit hard as he still didn't really look into what we want to do. Despite all of our discussions, he keeps having in mind that we're using the same type of material that people usually use here, which are hand pressed bricks with 20% cement as a stabilizer... Nope, not the same

The rock breakers did their best, helped by the JCB operator, to finish extracting the rocks from the central pit, I was asking for at the beginning of the week. This area can now be filled up by the JCB, the 2 heaps of soil have been moved, despite one day of rain which slowed down the rock breaking process (Tuesday) and one machine break down (on Thursday afternoon). I am not sure how many cubic meters of stone have been extracted and cut, but it might be somewhere around 4-5 tons. Other activities on site included : slightly moving the placement of the Family Cottages, now that the space was cleared; marking the dormitory placement, start sieving the soil for the CSEB ( I still would like to test the selected soil), building a grass fence along a wall where there's a limit disagreement with the neighbour, putting a tent up for the seed storage and day desk, clearing the area where we want to build dry compost toilets and marking their placement, preparing seedlin

I've already talked about the difficulties to plan anything ahead here last year. On Wednesday late afternoon, the person in charge of the site while the boss is away informs that he will have to be away for the 2 coming days, as he has to attend a relative's funeral. Ok, I am the one remaining, I will then spend Thursday and Friday on site.  I'm also waiting for more info on the gardens to finish setting out the future alley. But the permaculture director just messaged me : she's been sick all night and won't be able to go anywhere today.

The jcb operator worked 7:30am -4:30 pm with a 1-hour lunch break and it seems that the pile just got bigger.  This is nice rich soil which will be used for filling back the soil excavations in the food forest area, the plan being to use the extracted soil to make CSEB - Compressed Stabilized Soil Bricks = raw mud blocks with a bit of, in our case, cement (5%) 

Program this week : the JCB machine and operator will be on site from this morning 7:30, gotta be there to give instructions as the operations boss is away. Moving heaps of soil, rocks, levelling and flattening, digging some places. Then the proper structures marking and foundations digging can start ! Excitement level : \o/