16.Earth wall Construction

One of the tasks that were assigned to the students is a challenge to build a rammed earth wall 1m in height and about the width of 2 bricks. The catch is that they have to add reinforcement made from natural resources like fibers from trees or human hair to increase the strength of the wall.

Based from internet research, the students made the formwork and use soils that is collected from the surrounding area. We manufactured the compaction device from metal rods that is embedded into concrete cubes and find out that they work perfectly.

Formwork sample with some soil

We also discovered that the soil needs to be a bit wet to allow maximum compaction to be achieved. After allowing sufficient drying period the wall is tested for its strength based on the number of blows that it could withstand before crumbling.

Placing soil

Completed Formwork

Compacting the wet soil

Completed earth wall

After testing

                                                                                                                                                       
             

Funny college jokes:
A young man studying in a college abroad sent this SMS to his father:
Dear dad, no mon, no fun, your son.
The father replied: Dear son, too bad, so sad, your dad.

15. Making the roof trusses

To finish off the store we have created some “A “frames as the structural element of the roof. This then would be placed on to the beams by means of bolts and plugs (or metal ties with concrete nail).  Next we hope to align all the frames by using a ridge beam as shown in the illustration below. Water proofing the roof would be done by using some plastic sheets beneath the battens. Finally the tiles would be made either from recycled plastic bottles or aluminum cans. (This finishing touch is yet to be decided by the students because the resources needs to be collected or gathered by them.) 

"A" frame

The "A" Team : P

                                                

                                                                              

                                           

Hope this will be the final product

                                                    

14. Rendering (Stage 2) with fine mortar

So finally we have reached the cosmetic part of the wall construction. It is essentially a touch up phase to conceal any irregularities of the wall. After levelling the entire brick wall with rough mortar, I instructed the students to sieve the rough sand to produce fine sand that have a smooth texture. Although we manage to produce a couple of buckets of smooth sand but when made into wet mortar the quantity is very little.

We had to be very stingy during application of the fine mortar because there was little room for wastage. We applied as thin as possible using a combination of 3 items.

1.  Metal trowel for the first application 
2. Wooden trowel to level the surface 
3. Wet sponge to blend the connection points

For the sharp edges we use plywood and trowel for we were lacking proper equipment to produce the angles.

Fine mortar

Wall mortaring

Making it smooth

 

Lepaking

Working on the wall

finished wall

(song : Jimmy eats world)

13. Rendering (stage 1) with rough mortar

Well the next step was rendering of the brick walls, based on previous experience I know that with the quality of sand (fine agg) provided it is almost impossible to provide a smooth finish. The sand was just too rough and will crumble the moment it is applied to the brick wall.

Again I instructed the students to apply it in 2 stages, the first batch of not so fine mortar mix was applied as a filler layer to level out the creeks and crevasses of the brick wall.

(Imagine like a women applying makeup to the face. You don’t directly apply the blushes and the eyes shadow right? You must apply the powder foundation first.LOL)

We used a long flat timber as a leveling device. We move the flat timber on the surface and observed the surface of the brick wall from the sides. Any surface with a big gap under the timber level is filled up with the rough mortar.   

This is how we do it!