Factor E Farm Blog

Meet Scott – who is now here on his Dedicated Project Visit, focusing on preparation for CEB construction. We are evolving a Modular Building System based on CEBs, the next fork after our initial directions.
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Hey everyone,

I been here just over two weeks now and I am becoming more and more comfortable with the daily happenings and challenges on this old soybean field. I have not properly introduced myself to the OSE on-line community yet and I would like to do so through this short video, which I made before arriving as part of my application. I first heard about Factor E Farm through Juliet Schor’s Plenitude, her introduction to Marcin’s work provoked enough curiosity for me to come volunteer for a month. My work here has focused primarily on laying out the foundation and building the roof trusses for the CEB workshop coming soon. I have also helped in the garden and with the canning and storing of various food items. Working with Will and Marcin has been a fascinating learning experience, especially considering I barely had a grasp on the phrase “open-source” before arriving. Now, I write to you from a newly installed Linux operating system in dual boot Linux/Windows!

In this post I want to primarily update everyone on the CEB workshop progress, including our ideas and hopes for the final design. But I also want to speak about life at Factor E Farm from a volunteers perspective, providing insight for others who to want to come for a Dedicated Project Visit.

In two weeks (right when I leave unfortunately) we will begin construction of a building which will allow us to accomplish three goals. First, it will allow ample space for the increased production of our first two product releases: the Liberator and the LifeTrac (release planned for May 1, 2011). Second, it will provide us with inexpensive, modular, and replicable living/work units. And finally, and most importantly, it will give us the opportunity to demonstrate Compressed Earth Bricks in action.

The Google Sketchup file that can be downloaded here gives a cross section view of our workshop to be. It will consist of fifteen 16′x16′ units (256 square feet), ranging in height from 10ft to 14ft, with each unit housing a different piece of machinery such as the open source CNC Torch Table, the open source Induction Furnace, or the open source Lathe – with ample space around for ergonomic design. The middle path will be open to drive a vehicle through in order to move heavy parts being manufactured (and because it is being built over our driveway!). At the corner of every unit will be a 2′x2′ column of CEBs, these will support the roof. The walls of the structure are flexible to our needs. We can produce an open air structure, a greenhouse, or winterized straw bale with easy fill-in of hammermilled strawbale. I have finished building the roof trusses for this structure, and documented their construction on the wiki. Further documentation of the CEB Modular Building System is also started on the wiki.

The exciting feature of these work/living units is their modularity and the ease of replication. Using earth and wood (next year) from the farm, we can quickly build a structure for our needs. Our design easily accepts additions, allowing us to expand the size of our structure. Soon we expect to have a kitchen, bakery, and bunk house all from this same basic design. As we build the structures we will be updated everyone on the costs. So far the roof trusses for one unit total $250. Other expenses we expect include the sheet metal roofing, cement foundation, floor, steel angle brackets, and any non CEB wall additions such as greenhouse glass windows. In the future we expect the wood to come from the property and to be able to produce all the metal components from scrap steel, greatly reducing our costs. We are not aware of any other modular masonry building system (outside of bricks themselves), but we are aware of the work of CMPBS on GreenForms, a modular building system based on wood posts, and other similar work and concepts such as GroHome.

The basic modular building unit consists of 4 CEB columns, 2′x2′ thick, in a 16 foot grid. (more…)

Meet Scott - who is now here on his Dedicated Project Visit, focusing on preparation for CEB construction. We are evolving a Modular Building System based on CEBs, the next fork after our initial directions. --- Hey everyone, I been here just over two weeks now and I am becoming more and more comfortable with the daily ...

[7] Comments

Construction should start at Factor e Farm on about September 1. Out of nowhere, one of our readers from Germany produced this 3D walk-through of the CEB house that Will and I drew up in Qcad in 2D:

The 3D walkthrough is this:

Solar Village 2010 in 3D from Marcin Jakubowski on Vimeo.

Sound track credit – Mind Field by DJ Blue. Game engine editor used was Sauerbraten.

This led to a very interesting discussion regarding reality and virtual reality, and how massive multiplayer online gaming – believe it or not – could help save the world? (more…)

Construction should start at Factor e Farm on about September 1. Out of nowhere, one of our readers from Germany produced this 3D walk-through of the CEB house that Will and I drew up in Qcad in 2D: The 3D walkthrough is this: Solar Village 2010 in 3D from Marcin Jakubowski on Vimeo. Sound track credit - ...

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Things are looking up on the fully automatic, open source, CEB press – The Liberator  Beta v2.0.

We finally have the machine ready to run in field tests. The basic operational description is here, from the front:

and from the back:

Some noteworthy features are: (more…)

Things are looking up on the fully automatic, open source, CEB press - The Liberator  Beta v2.0. We finally have the machine ready to run in field tests. The basic operational description is here, from the front: and from the back: Some noteworthy features are: Full automatic controls usiing Arduino and RepRap components. Machine runs from any external, hydraulic ...

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Today’s goal was to determine maximum pressing rates attainable with The Liberator, the open source CEB press. We obtained data to verify some of the predicted rates shown in italics in this table.

To boost morale, we started by pressing thin, 2 inch bricks (2″x6″x12″) – as their rate of production is higher than that of 4″ (4″x6″x12″) bricks. The thin bricks are the size of bricks one would press for making CEB floors. We ran the machine dry (without soil) in order to obtain baseline data. Results from runs with soil should be 5-10% lower if our calculations are correct.

This test run yielded 13 bricks per minute with LifeTrac as the power source, for the 2″ tall bricks. See this insanity in this one minute video:

(more…)

Today's goal was to determine maximum pressing rates attainable with The Liberator, the open source CEB press. We obtained data to verify some of the predicted rates shown in italics in this table. To boost morale, we started by pressing thin, 2 inch bricks (2"x6"x12") - as their rate of production is higher than ...

[10] Comments

William took a course on brick laying last week back in the UK, in preparation for the CEB construction adventures of Solar Village 2010 this year at Factor e Farm. Here is some documentation from his course:

(more…)

William took a course on brick laying last week back in the UK, in preparation for the CEB construction adventures of Solar Village 2010 this year at Factor e Farm. Here is some documentation from his course: In William's words - In preparation for building structures on the open source ecology farm, I thought it best ...

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William and I have been hashing out the details of construction for the coming year. Our plan is at this wiki page and further details on techniques to be used are here. We are currently planning on a CEB-straw bale hybrid – a double CEB brick wall with straw bale inside. We expect the R-value to be at least 40 – making it a super-insulated house. Add the solar space in front, and we would not need a pile of firewood for winter, as shown in the following video. The video shows the location for this construction – close to the water well so we can have year-round water without doing too much trenching for water pipe.

Noteworthy features are CEB floor, masonry stove, living roof, rainwater catchment, greenhouse in front, open source air-powered water pump, our own lumber, CEB water cistern, and keyhole growing space right in front. This means that in May, we will build LifeTrac II, PowerCube II, and the dimensional sawmill. In June and July, we’ll test the toolchain – cut lumber, test stabilized and lime bricks, do the well pump and prepare water lines, do site preparation, build trusses from our lumber, prepare brick rollers, test slurry mixes, and other details. If we’re on top of it, we’ll begin the wall-raising on August 1st, and hold a CEB hybrid construction workshop.

In the meantime, we invite open architecture collaboration – coming up with technical drawings and models, as well as working out the details on all the other house subsystems.

William and I have been hashing out the details of construction for the coming year. Our plan is at this wiki page and further details on techniques to be used are here. We are currently planning on a CEB-straw bale hybrid - a double CEB brick wall with straw bale inside. We expect the ...

[8] Comments

William Cleaver will be joining us at Factor e Farm on May 1 for a Dedicated Project Visit. He’s coming from across the big pond – from the United Kingdom – and we are planning for a 3 month stay.

William is not a novice to creative dexterity – he’s involved in repair and demolition of industrial chimney stacks and natural draught cooling towers – at heights. See for yourself:

He has experience with various tools, welding brickwork, ropework, woodwork, and general shop.  He’s traveled the world, studied Romance languages, taught English in Chile, and is certified to teach high ropes courses. He is now showing great interest in the deeper message of post-scarcity, resilient community creation.

We discussed the following tentative plan, with both of us working in the shop and as needed:

May – Work on finishing or building Sawmill/LifeTrac II/MicroTrac II/ anciliary implements for construction – all in preparation for building.

June – begin building autonomous, zero energy housing with solar space. Experiment with CEB floors, CEB masonry stove and chimney, stabilized bricks, stabilized reject lime bricks, stabilized brick walkway and driveway, stabilized retaining walls, and others. We plan on winter food garden and sprouting in the solar space. If progress on the steam engine goes well, we’ll aim to install combined heat and power on the masonry stove.

July – continue building until comfortable accommodations for the winter are ready for several people.

We’re looking at building zero energy homes that look tentatively like this:

(Credits: Aigars Bruvelis in Blender)

Here is a CEB floor example from Abe at Vela Creations:

See more of his photos here.

Other than this, William is learning Kdenlive on Linux for movie editing, as well as and QCad for CAD work. These are staple tools now at Factor e Farm. William will begin preparing some of the technical drawings for the sawmill, so we can collaborate on making that happen over distance until his arrival.

We do want to consider bringing in additional help from the CEB general contractor, Floyd (see last blog post). We will consider hosting a CEB workshop if progress is good. If the CEB fabrication is going well – there could be resources generated to really get things moving forward, and continue to build more structures. I think now is the beginning of really settling into the land – and getting the place to look half-way presentable. We’re open to all kinds of ideas, such as the proposed CEB vault construction and others – but we’d need other people to get involved to push those projects forward. Otherwise, we’re sticking to basics and all types of experiments in the process.

William Cleaver will be joining us at Factor e Farm on May 1 for a Dedicated Project Visit. He's coming from across the big pond - from the United Kingdom - and we are planning for a 3 month stay. William is not a novice to creative dexterity - he's involved in repair and demolition ...

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It turns out that there’s a CEB contractor by Lathrop, Missouri – which is  within 30 miles from us. Meet Floyd Hagerman, who has built a couple of very interesting CEB houses. The first one shown here is a hybrid – or a combination of CEB and standard construction. It has a Trombe wall – meaning a South-facing CEB wall, painted black, and glazed over. The wall serves as a thermal collector – and its performance is impressive. Last winter, before anyone moved in, the house remained above 40 degrees Fahrenheit all winter – Zone 5 continental climate – with no supplemental heating! Here’s a look.

Here is an example of DIY concrete blocks that Floyd pressed with his machine, by adding about 2% cement. Floyd used reject lime from the quarry, mixed in the stabilizer – and made an external retaining wall:

This was only 3 shovels of cement for over 1000 pounds of reject lime. So we are seeing the feasibility of stabilized blocks for outside use, especially if we add more stabilizer. Sealing the surface with stone sealer or similar cover would finish the job for complete stabilization from the elements.

With LifeTrac, we could throw a bag of cement in front of the soil pulverizer as we work the soil (80 lb for a 1000 lb load of soil, for 8% stabilization), and we would mix and load the soil in one step – ready to be used in The Liberator. We plan on using stabilized brick for walkways, base courses in buildings, and we are considering the possibility for building a driveway paved with brick.

Here is Floyd’s machine – a Powell and Sons version at $15k for up to 6 brick per minute pressing rates:

Here Floyd discusses the feasibility of building with CEB as a contractor – based on his experience. The big question is, does it work? How much would a CEB house end up costing? Here are some interesting insights:

On the open enterprise front, the field is rich for incubating a number of open source CEB entrepreneurs. Anybody out there considering CEB contracting?

It turns out that there's a CEB contractor by Lathrop, Missouri - which is  within 30 miles from us. Meet Floyd Hagerman, who has built a couple of very interesting CEB houses. The first one shown here is a hybrid - or a combination of CEB and standard construction. It has a Trombe wall ...

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We’ve got some great news on Inga’s House. We have succeeded in inviting Dipl.-Ing. Dittmar Hecken. He is the hands-on instructor from the Earth Building Course that Inga attended at the University of Kassel, in Germany. University of Kassel is the home of Prof. Dr. Gernot Minke‘s group – world leaders in earth construction theory and practice. You can also see Inga’s interview with Dr. Minke in a previous post. We recommend his seminal book on earth construction, Building with Earth: Design and Technology of a Sustainable Architecture, which came out earlier this year. The Europeans are decades ahead of America in earth construction, it seems.

Dittmar will provide us with the needed expertise to build a structure, out of CEBs – that will look like this structure from Tamera. Dittmar led one of the construction groups on this project, and the structure was designed by Gernot Minke:

This is major news for Factor e Farm. A roof of compressed earth block is a high technical accomplishment. The roof is the most expensive part of a house, so this makes economic sense as well – as our friends from Africa will tell you with respect to Nubian vaults. Plus, earth-sheltered housing like this is king of ecological biotecture, if you ask me. Here we’re combining ancient wisdom of earth building with modern CEB machines – open source, under one roof.

We’ll be offering North America’s first workshop on CEB vault construction – end of September, 2009. We’ll get Inga’s House out of it, and we aim to attain a basic level of mastery on CEB construction technique. The world gets full documentation of the process – including open source machinery – for replicability. Inga and the team are doing their homework. Stay tuned.

No, you don’t have to know that the catenary shape of a vault is actually a hyperbolic cosine function. But I bet there will be a large number of these structures popping up all over the Americas. We need to catch up to the rest of the world on this one.

We've got some great news on Inga's House. We have succeeded in inviting Dipl.-Ing. Dittmar Hecken. He is the hands-on instructor from the Earth Building Course that Inga attended at the University of Kassel, in Germany. University of Kassel is the home of Prof. Dr. Gernot Minke's group - world leaders in earth construction ...

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In the last few weeks I’ve constructed the Hexahatch egg incubator and am now testing it. Here are some pictures of how to make it:

It started with Marcin drawing up the basic idea.

Then I worked the sketch into a design.

When we were satisfied with the initial design, we got the 4 inch drainage pipe for the egg holders and I cut it into sections.

I drilled holes and attached the pipe sections with small bolts. One of the sections came out wrong so instead of one solid piece in the middle I just used two smaller sections on the ends which worked okay. (more…)

In the last few weeks I've constructed the Hexahatch egg incubator and am now testing it. Here are some pictures of how to make it: It started with Marcin drawing up the basic idea. Then I worked the sketch into a design. When we were satisfied with the initial design, we got the 4 inch drainage pipe ...

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