Construction Materials TA

Investigations of various building techniques

Walls

Tire Walls

The original concept, but very labor intensive and it is hard to get tires

Compressed Earth Brick

Great material, but requires a press. There's a trade off that a manual press is more work, but cheaper and easier to setup.

I do think there's a good middle ground. A manual press with a hopper and sliding loader can go pretty fast. I could setup a simple wagon next to it at the same height with sliding slats so that as each brick comes off the press it can be slid onto the wagon, no lifting. When the wagon is fully loaded, drag it over to the drying area and stack the bricks.

Compressed Earth Walls

Labor intensive and requires forms. Final product looks very cool though.

Clay Fired Brick

Very traditional, but not too hard to make. I'm not sure what the right bonding material is. Traditionally it's straw, but I think that would burn when fired.

I think I could set up pre-processing to reduce the amount of sand in the bricks.

1. Wet mixture to flowing consistency and mix thoroughly
2. Pass through screen to remove stones and twigs
3. Let it sit for a few minutes (experiment to determine correct length) then separate manually. This should significantly increase the clay content.
4. Concentrate the clay successivly regularly pouring off spent water
5. Use solar heating and a mixer to bring down the moisture content to a workable level

The off cast dirt will be great for gardening.

I like the idea of a machine I can load up with clay and pedal and have it deposit bricks, though that may be a bit complicated. A simpler approach would be something that I could feed a board through and it would "print" the bricks on the board. When the board is full, set them aside to dry and feed in a new board.