CEB Press

• HABITAT: CEB Press - Sawmill - Living Machines - Modular Housing Units
  
• AGROECOLOGY: LifeTrac Multi Purpose Tractor - MicroTrac - Power Cube - Agricultural Spader - Agricultural Microcombine - Hammer Mill - Well Drilling Rig - Organoponic Raised Bed Gardening - Orchard and Nursery - Modular Greenhouse Units - Bakery - Dairy - Energy Food Bars - Freeze Dried Fruit Powders
  
• ENERGY: Pyrolysis Oil - Babington Burner - Solar Combined Heat Power System - Steam Engine Construction Set - Solar Turbine - Electric Motors/Generators - Inverters & Grid Intertie - Batteries
  
• FLEXIBLE INDUSTRY: Lathe - Torch Table - Multimachine & Flex Fab - Plastic Extrusion & Molding - Metal Casting and Extrusion
  
• TRANSPORT: Open Source Car
  
• MATERIALS: Bioplastics

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Introduction

CEB - Compresssed Earth Block press - regarded as the highest quality natural building method; also used in upscale housing; does not require curing - so may be built continuously; lends itself to 100% onsite building material sourcing; excellent thermal, acoustic, and strength; aka structural masonry. Also usable in fences, cisterns, road paving, Usable for ovens in a bakery, pond dams, thermal storage cisterns, silos. Used for barns, dairy plant, bakery building, additinal housing, greenhouses, etc. I would go so far as that could be the secret weapon of the entire operation. Other connections in diagram: requires soil to be pulverized, which may be done with the agricultural spader. May be used for building raised beds, modular building and greenhouse units. High value flex fab enterprise opportunity for any entrepreneur interested in fabrication of machine- huge profits are possible, because other CEBs are expensive ($25k for one of 3-5 brick/minute performance). Livelihood opportunity for independent builders. Requires as little as 1 person to operate. OSE design is based on power from tractor hydraulics - where the tractor is a general tool that can supply power to a large number of devices. Output with 2 people - a 6 foot high round wall, 20 feet in diameter, 1 foot thick, can be built in one 8 hour day. Fabrication is simple - after metal is cut - a drill press is required for drilling holes for design-for-disassembly structure. Welding is required in a few places where bolting is not practical, such as the hopper box. Summary: a high performance, rapid, semi-skilled building technique, which lends itself as a building method for creating advanced civilizations. Lifetime design.

OSE Product Development Cycle - CEB

This OSE Product Development Cycle is explained on the main page. On this page, we go through the actual development process, from concepts to design to prototype to fabrication facility to production for market.

Core Team

Presently, we are recruiting the Core Team for this effort. We presently have the Factor e Team on technical development and Sam Rose on the social enterprise development. We are looking for peer reviewers and strategic developers.

Ecological Review

We ask a basic question at the outset: is the CEB press worth developing? Wikipedia provides a neutral overview of the CEB construction method. We do not have a neutral evaluation of this building technique because we conclude that no other building method comes close when an integrated evaluation is considered.

Consider these main building options for North America. You have a choice of wood: stick-frame, timber frame, post and beam; structural masonry: brick, concrete block, rock, CEB (note that CEB falls into the class of structural masonry); earth: adobe, rammed earth, stabilized earth blocks; and natural building methods: strawbale, cordwood, earthbag, papercrete, cob, and many others. Here are some considerations.

1. Suitability of building technique for economic localization - CEB walls can be made with 100% insite soil, and even with the soil that is removed for a basement or foundation. Only lumber houses can come close to localization potential when lumber is harvested locally and sustainably. Other earth or natural building techniques can use local material, but they don't contribure too much to mainstreamable localization economics because they are too expensive due to the building time requirements. Machine production can also be completely local.
2. Ecological qualities - 100% local, natural, onsite material, even for the 'mortar' - see Wikipedia
3. Strength - CEB is second only to rock and steel. Strength of CEBs is up to 2000 psi according to Wikipedia. Walls are tornado- and bullet-proof.
4. Cost - if one has access to a $3-5k machine from OSE and onsite soils, then CEB wins hands down. A tractor with loader and rototiller are required to prepare the soil for massive building projects.
5. Building ergonomics - 3-5 bricks per minute (bricks are 6x12x4 inches) means a 6 foot high wall for a 300 square foot round building can be erected in one workday. This is possible because the mortar used is a slurry of the same material as the bricks, with added water. This is as fast or faster than walls with stick framing in the context of a 2-person team with tractor and rototiller. On this account, other natural building methods do not even come close. We have first hand experience with cordwood and earthbag, in that they take about 10 times more time than engineered methods.
6. Durability - Unsurpassed except for stone. 100-500 year lifetime is expected.
7. Thermal properties - unsurpassed. Significant thermal flywheel.
8. Aesthetics - see CEB house examples

Stick frame construction is the main building method in North America. It is a weak but fast building method, which makes money for developers but returns little value to the homeowner, if one considers lifecycle cost of buildings. Procuring lumber drains money out of local economies. This is not to mention clear-cutting and vast lumber monocultures that supply the lumber. We are interested in raising the standard of building, away from stick frame. We believe that with all these considerations, the CEB is the only building technique that even remotely has a chance of substituting for stick frame constuction, and that with our machine, priced $3-5k and designed for fabrication replication, will fill in a great need. CEB construction has the potential for mainstreamability in home construction.

We have heard one recurring critique of CEB construction. It has been said that CEB building is either for the idle rich, who can afford the high cost of construction, or the idle poor, who can afford to take the time to build the house. Both cases imply outrageous time requirements, and this appears inconsistent with claim 5 above. Based on our experience we find that to be untrue. We believe that the truth is that poor people do not have access to high performance machines, and rich people are charged a lot because the quality of the finished product is high, regardless of how many hours went into construction. The answer to this seeming inconsistency is the availability of a high-performance, low-cost Liberator.

Our experience has shown $30/square foot costs for the cordwood house, and similar rates for the earthbag house, if $10/hour labor is considered. We estimate time requirements to be at least 5 times shorter for CEB construction, we are expecting $5/sq ft total building costs including $10/hour labor. That is dirt cheap for top quality housing. Direct data, gathered from our building program beginning in April, will prove or disprove our claims.

Product Definition

Deliverable

Here are the specifications for the OSE CEB machine: The Liberator. Lifetime specifications will be verified in field testing.

1. Bricks per minute output: 3-5
2. Brick size: 12x6x6 inches (30.5x15.3x10.2 cm)
3. People operating machine: 1-2
4. Machine power source: tractor hydraulics or any hydraulic power source with 6 gallon per minute capacity
5. Machine mounting: tractor 3 point hitch or stand-alone foot
6. Hydraulic pressure: 2000psi
7. Hydraulic cylinder: 5 inch diameter, 19.6 inch area; 2.5 inch rod;
8. Pressing cylinder pressure: 39,250 lb pushing force (~18 tons)
9. Controls: 2 spool, manual, hydraulic valve; automatic version forthcoming.
10. Compressive strength of bricks: to be measured
11. Structural cold rolled steel construction throughout
12. Design-for disassembly: full bolt-together consruction for frame, compression chamber, table, tractor mount, and feet; welded hopper assembly and press plate; cylinders 100% removable with pins
13. Wearable components: 1/8" nylon 6/6 liner on compression chamber and table surface, each piece held by 2 bolts
14. Machine lifetime: 1 million bricks before repairs; liner may be replaced every 100,000 bricks
15. Material costs: $1000-1350
16. Fabrication time requirement for optimized production: 3-5 days, about 20 hours of direct fabrication
17. Manual fabrication tooling requirements: drill press, welder, acetylene torch
18. Optimal fabrication tooling: XYZ table with torch, MIG welder, hoist
19. Cost for machine: $3-5k

Budget

1. Design Phase
2. Review
3. Bids
4. Fundraiser Recruitment
5. Fundraising
6. Product Delivery
7. Produce Testing
8. Prototype Optimization
9. Fabrication Development
10. Fabricator Recruiting
11. Fabrication Optimization
12. Production