CEB Day 27
This past week we put on the roof for the cordwood building addition: Yesterday I returned to the CEB. On November 26, we produced the first brick. I got right back into it – beginning work on the automated hopper assembly – which will allow...
Jeff’s Experience and Other Visits
Jeff Budderer of One Village Foundation and Andrius Kulikauskas of Minciu Sodas Laboratory visited us at Factor E Farm a few days ago. Here is Jeff’s writing on his experience: http://blog.onevillage.tv/wp/?p=491 Jeff’s comments prior to the...
Ups and Downs and the Plan
For all of you who are interested in building global villages in the future – here are some lessons from our experience. This applies to the case where you start with raw, undeveloped land. To begin with, the upshot is that we have just succeeded...
Brick is Born
It was thirty days before Christmas, two thousand and seven. The first compressed earth brick was born from an open source compressed earth block press. It was smooth, it was sleek. Six inches by twelve and four. Wouldn’t give it away for twice...
CEB Day 20 – Winter Migration
On the Compressed Earth Block press, I am looking to press the first brick today. The mounted pressing cylinder looks like this: It got into the 20s on the Fahrenheit scale, so I moved development operations into the greenhouse. We have a good stove in...
Solar Turbine Update
Yesterday I talked to Dan Granett of Granett Engineering. He made a boundary layer turbine successfully, and has performance data (please let me know if you know others). This turbine is an external combustion engine, and is a cheaper, simpler, and more...
CEB Day 11 and Update
Quick update. On CEB, I am hoping to spit out the first brick by this week. The flexible fabrication front is hot. Deep in the fiery Iceland underground, Smari and his Fab Lab team are working on an open source, computer controlled XYZ table for acetylene...
CEB Day 9
Progress is good. We finally worked out the hydraulics. The problem was a bad valve, so we got a new one. Now the cylinder can move up and down. I also mounted feet to the CEB frame, so it can stand upright. I just talked to David Pears again. He pointed...
CEB Day 7
Today I spoke with David Pears, the designer of the AECT CEB machine. We talked briefly on the subject of the open source CEB design. One suggestion that becomes clear is to weld on reinforcing stops to hold the 20 ton pressure of the hydraulic cylinder....
CEB Day 4
It’s Monday, and back to work on CEB. First, I must say that the entire device follows Design for Disassembly (DfD), as well as lifetime design. This is beneficial for prototyping, as changes may be made readily without having to start over. This...
