Eco-Archi in Malawi

Week 20 starting tomorrow !  We now have regular site meetings every Monday with the client and the main contractor, and the works have been steadily progressing since August.  We're starting racing a bit so that we really have the roofs in place before the rains come - but for now no sign of it, uuuf ! The Dorm was the occasion for the bricklayers to try a new way of laying stones... with less mortar than what they're used to. And they're managing pretty well !    very few men on this picture... the first Monday after pay day is always a bit difficult... I didn't realize the ground and ring reinforced concrete beams were going to take so much time to cure when the structural engineer n°1 proposed that... it's a bit unnerving to have to count 21 days before being able to do anything... especially since all these curves* make the shuttering all the more complicated ! (*inherited design from design architect) oh and soon we'll have comp...

The buildings and remaining boundary wall have been placed and marked, but now the rain is preventing the guys from digging... That should be the very last bad weather week, but when it's bad, it's really dull and impossible to work ! So the site is closed today. The tent has been put down to prevent further tearing, as the wind is really strong... and everybody sent home. That gives us time to work on the designs ! last week's markings buuuh rain R. the engineer could work on the foundations of the family cottages, good news, he's downsizing them, and designing them in stone now instead of the previously thought concrete ground beam. After our adjustment work session yesterday, he should have the plans ready very soon, and with that the list and quantity of necessary materials. So now that this part is sorted, or almost, I'm working on the water sewage system design.  And calling for volunteers among the Polytech students which are goi...

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 Independanc...

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...