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Open Source Manual CEB Press and Open Source Prefab Strawbale House

Hats off to our collaborators from Poland for open-sourcing a manual, dual-block CEB press. It is in the pre-alpha v0.1 release stage.

Open Source MANUAL CEB PRESS beta I from Cohabitat Platform on Vimeo.

You can download the existing CAD files here. The files are in Polish, so they still need to be translated for the broader audience.

Meet your developers from the Co-Habitat Platform: Pawel Sroczynski and Remik Karbowiak. These guys are pretty good. They also developed a model open source, prefab, straw-bale house design, and they will be buildng it this year at a budget of $7k. I always thought that straw bale is too exotic in practice because of the huge labor requirements, but these guys are showing otherwise with OpenSTRAW:

Here is the building sequence. Click on the following images to enlarge:


Both the manual CEB press and the straw bale work are a major contribution to open source economic development – and to humanity. See their website for more information.  Congratulations to the Co-Habitat team. We’d like to add the manual CEB press to the Factor e Farm product line as soon as the machine is tested in the field, and we may end up building some straw bale here after all.

9 Comments

  1. Matt Whiting

    I’ve browsed the blog and wiki sites since December and am impressed by what you guys are doing. It’s exciting to see some collaboration with others going on. I’m also excited to see some straw bale design.

    Pawel and Remik, great job! I’d love to know about the experience in building.

    -Matt Whiting
    Payson, Utah

  2. Edward Miller

    Fantastic! I love both ideas! Look forward to the progress! Hope to see an english version of the informational materials soon.

    Eric Hunting seemed interested in straw bale because it is abundant and non-toxic. Also, not every area has clay for CEB, so these technologies are clearly complimentary rather than pure substitutes. He is probably aware of this stuff…. though it should absolutely be posted on the Open Manufacturing list.

    Those pictures make it seem like the construction wouldn’t be too hard once those walls and floors are actually fully compacted with the straw…. though I wonder how that can be automated. Something like a baler? Hopefully they aren’t planning to use factories and to sell it as a standard commercial product… though even that would be a step up from what we got now.

  3. Pawel Sroczynski

    it’s a pleasure for us to join the OSE family 😉

    Actually we are planing to devlop this as a product – but we will be seling houses – not the technology. T. will be fully documented and open. Small houses (up to 28 quare meters) will stay open as well.

    Future goals are to create dwellings in CEB and STRAW/CLAY technique.

    There’s also another projec called “openCELLAR” which is devoted for making open source root cellar/cold room for storing food.

    Howgh!

  4. Pawel Sroczynski
  5. Pedro Correia

    Where can I do the downloading of the manual, dual-block, CEB press CAD files?

    The link above does not work!

    Thanks.

  6. Heath Matlock
  7. collin

    The link does not work!
    Where can i do the downloading CEB press CAD files?

    Thanks.

      1. palkohuba@yahoo.com

        Hello
        Im looking for the Ceb press CAD file. Is any chance to find somewhere?