A shortened week 6 : Independance Day, death and burials

On the 6th week we trained our workers on the CSEB production : how to mix, how to use the press safely, and accept or reject the blocks that are made, how to handle the blocks... and how to monitor the production. Our main person on site - not the construction foreman, but our "site clerk" and "HR director" C. is also responsible for keeping track of what's going on with the production, and sending me the daily figures so I can monitor that from my computer.

We were hoping to get the JCB to dig for more soil (we asked for tenders from contractors for manual excavations and we got crazy expensive propositions), and start digging the foundations when they'd be marked, but unfortunately deaths happened in the families of the JCB operator, the foreman and the structural and building engineer, thus taking them away from work for a couple of days.

Friday 6th was also a national holiday, being the commemoration of Malawi's Independance -54 years ago!, so ... shortened week.

But we got all the necessary "personal security equipment" for our site workers, who each have a suit, boots, gloves and helmet to wear while working, as well as masks for those working amidst dust and / or cement. They're happy to have new working equipment now, and let's all hope it's gonna last for some time, everything tending to wear down really quickly around here... Now it looks like a real chantier ! :)

The CSEB production has been going on, we're still trying to figure out the perfect mix - the soil was sticking a lot to the press, we've tested mixes with more gravel, and more sand, went back to the Polytechnic University to try to get more information on the quantity of silt the soil contains, got India on video calls to get better results with the press... It takes time to find out how to work properly with materials that are directly taken from site !

gravel delivered from the nearby quarry

and sieved soil protected with hessian bags formerly used for cotton, as we can see :)

Our volunteer L. is in charge of getting the dry toilets and washing hands facilities ready on site. I'm working with him on the toilets structure, as it's a bit more complicated than it seems, because we don't want anybody to handle the "production" until it's completely composted and unharmful, so we have to have 2 sealed tanks under each toilet. The plans should be ready by the end of the week now...

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Week 26 - waiting for the roofs

So so soooo ! Everything is more and more beautiful here, as the buildings grow ! We can now have a good sense of space in them... and I can't wait for the roof structures to be put on ! The roofing structures have been being prepared for a while now...after we managed to optimize the system with the structural engineer. We had a good dialog, but then we faced a problem of delivery for some of the steel members which weren't available through the suppliers here. These are now coming, and hopefully the roofs can be installed from the end of next week - fingers crossed because we now have some rainy days and nights already... but nothing that can endanger the structures of the project so far. We tried to use as little wood as possible for the whole project, and especially for these roofs... Deforestation being a HUGE issue in Malawi, and me wanting to make a statement with marrying steel and tiles and thatch in these beautiful contemporary buildings ! Yes we

Week... 46 - Almost the roofs (this time for real) (I'm such an optimist)

I didn't realize I've waited for so long to post an update. It seems that the roofs have been under the works FOR EVER. We had wished to get them done by the end of November, before the rains would start. Well, something like 20 weeks later, now that the rainy season is ending, we still don't have the roof structures covered. Better doing it Necola's way : sit back and wait The contractor hasn't finished placing the designed (by structural engineers) structure, and then the tiles supplier, who is an engineer himself, wasn't happy with the structure at some places and asked the structural engineers to reinforce it. So now, we are in the final stages of putting that */&àçéè' structure up... My fingers are hurting, they've been crossed for too long now ;) But something is happening ! At the end of the day, it's going to be beautiful and inspiring :)

Starting Week 4

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

Eco-Archi in Malawi

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