Archives for Jul,2009

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Dedicated Project Visits

Inga and I refined a collaboration procedure for development work at Factor e Farm. We are focusing our development efforts on dedicated project visits – a topic that we’ve discussed a number of times, and finally put down on paper. All together,...

CEB Vault Construction Workshop

Here is our formal initial announcement of the 10-day Compressed Earth Block (CEB) Vault Construction Workshop. It will be held at Factor e Farm, in the Kansas City area, Missouri, USA, at the end of September, 2009. Examples: Modern, earth-sheltered...

The Eagle has landed….

…well, actually I’m a Leo (August 7th and don’t forget!) but I have landed, I did it, I made it, I’m here!! I spent my first night on a bed, not the floor. Expecting (almost) nothing is working great, you should try it, too. Marcin...

Touchdown expected at 6:30 p.m. today!

In 4 1/2 hours my daughter Angela will drive me to JFK to catch the flight to Kansas City. The suspense is almost killing me…. My dad always said: expect nothing and you will not be disappointed. Hey dad, I’m trying! My next message will come...

Zero Turn MicroTrac

MicroTrac achieved zero turn motion. If one walks around rapidly, one can turn the walk-behind tractor around in place. MicroTrac is turning out to be a beautiful freak: Play this freak show. To do this, we added two small, freely-turning wheels to MicroTrac....

Spike Up

A bale spike comes in handy in many situations. It’ typically used to move large, 2000 pound hay bales around. With the rainy weather here, some farmers were not able to keep their hay from rottings, so we got our hands on 18 additional hay bales...

HydraRaptor’s Second Child

Chris Palmer of the HydraRaptor project just printed us a copy of parts for RepRap – the 3D printer that can print a copy of itself. Chris is an avid developer on the RepRap team, and the documentation of his work is superb. He has already printed...

Finally: my bags are packed, let the adventure begin!!

I can’t believe how much stuff I accumulated in only 4 1/2 years and what a pain it was packing it all and then lugging everything up to the third floor of my son’s place (very old house – oldest part is over 400 years old) in Klagenfurt!...

Soil Pulverizer: Prototype 1 Complete

In preparation for CEB construction – and in particular for the Vault Construction Workshop introduced in the last post, here is the soil pulverizer construction and testing of our first prototype. We started on the drawing board: and moved on to...

Taking it to the Next Level: CEB Vault Construction

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...