An Outsider’s Visit
Well it’s taken me a while to get around to this, but here it goes. On December 26th, I had the great opportunity to finally visit the Factor E Farm. I had heard great things from my friend Richard, and knew right away that it was something I wanted...
CEB Collaboration
One of the goals of our CEB development is to neo-commercialize it: provide an open source business model for producing the machines, where all enabling information is in the public domain. No strings attached. To do this, we’ll be performing thorough...
CEB Press Prototype 1 Completed
It is interesting to see the progress on the Compressed Earth Block (CEB) press from prior art: to our own conceptual and design drawings: to raw metal as shown at https://www.opensourceecology.org/?p=36 and to reality: Now we take a mound...
CEB Day 35
A quick update on the CEB. Most of the automated hopper assembly is finished. I connected and tested the second cylinder for the hopper, and it moves nicely back and forth. I spent time yesterday, with the ice storm past, digging some soil for testing...
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...
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...
Logs and Thoughts
I have been cutting lumber for my new little house almost for two weeks now. It is hard and extremely slow. Every few days we have to change a chain or the whole chainsaw all together. Look at this picture: Isn’t it beautiful? This house is being...
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...
