CEB Press

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Introduction

This page is an introduction to the collaborative development of a high performance Compressed Earth Block (CEB) press, The Liberator. We aim to provide a low-cost, ecological, ergonomical, and economically-significant press. The design process and final plans will be "Open Source"-- part of the public domain, with free access to anyone. The press is designed through voluntary efforts. Funding for parts, labor, testing, and development are procured via donations from interested parties (ie. builders, buyers, producers of CEB presses; community developers; general supporters of our work). At the same time, we are developing an open source enterprise, according to the principles of neocommercialization If you are interested in helping the development process in any way, please feel free to contact us.

As detailed in the outline above, below is an overview of the CEB, our work on The Liberator including timeline and budget goals, and resources. For more details, please also see our weblog which we update with CEB information frequently. This link will send you directly to CEB-relevant posts.

OSE Product Development Cycle - CEB Overview

The key to a low cost product is to utilize open source development and co-funding. The essence of the fundraising mechanism is that a large pool of stakeholders are invited to make small, voluntary contributions by using an online funding basket with PayPal (currently under development by collaborator Sam Rose). When a designated sum is collected, the project moves forward. When the sum is not collected, then none of the PayPal commitments are charged.

Potential stakeholders for "The Liberator" include those interested in:

  1. Buying a CEB press at a predicted cost of $3-5k (dependant on fabrication abilities), for a machine that produces 3-5 bricks per minute (ie. contractors, owner-builders, brick-producing enterpriser, natural builders, community developers)
  2. Building a CEB press (DIY or low-budget individuals, organizations, and companies)
  3. Starting an enterprise for producing CEB presses (distributed production reduces shipping costs and increases local control)
  4. Our overall goals at Open Source Ecology (appropriate technology development; sustainable and just living and livelihoods; localized production)

Our general strategy and organizational process for developing products, including the CEB is described here.

On this page, we go through the actual process, from concepts (see 2.2 eco-review) to design (2.4) to prototype to fabrication facility (2.4.3) to production for market.

The timeline for 2008 is:

CEB timelin.jpg

This timeline shows the development cycles on top, along with the corresponding funding cycles and deliverables in green and red. For each development cycle, we adapt a 10-step procedure, whose steps are shown at the bottom of the diagram.

In short, the development process cycles through two prototypes of the CEB machine itself, and two prototypes of an XYZ, computer controlled torch table (see professional version and open source version). The torch table will be used to automate the fabrication of the CEB machine, reducing fabrication time by an estimated 20 hours, and thus, also reducing the cost of the final product.

The development timeline also includes building actual structures to test the quality of the blocks and durability and ease of use of the press. Moreover, we will build a production facility for the CEB machines, and develop an open source business model to disseminate production of these machines to other areas of the world.

Step 1. Core Team

Technical Development: Factor e Team

Social Enterprise Development: Sam Rose

We are looking for peer reviewers, strategic developers, and a fundraising team.

Step 2. 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, especially in the USA.

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-mix: adobe, rammed earth, stabilized earth blocks, cob, earthbag; and other natural building methods: strawbale, cordwood, papercrete, earthships and variations of all types. Here are some considerations.

  1. Suitability of building technique for economic localization

CEBs are composed of sub-soil: a composite of sand, clay, gravel, and silt. (Humus rich top-soil is saved for agriculture.) In a best-case senario, the soil is located onsite and the resulting hole from extraction may become a basement, root-cellar, or pond. If onsite soil is insufficient (ie. not enough, or unbalanced-- too much sand...), than near-by off-site soil might be an appropriate option.

Compare this to the stick-frame house with drywall and vinyl siding. According to Gate-to-Gate Life-Cycle Inventory of Softwood Lumber Production by Michael R. Milota, Cynthia D. West, and Ian D. Hartley, lumber travels 65 miles on average, just to get to the mill!

Other natural building methods reduce "housing-miles" (like food-miles), when the materials are locally abundant. However, as we will see below, they do not measure up to CEB in other areas of this critique.

A CEB press may be manufactured locally (although the metals are from somewhere else), which contributes to regional employment and localized economics.

  1. Ecological qualities - 100% local, natural, onsite material, even for the 'mortar' - see Wikipedia. Non-stabilized earth and other natural building methods also score well on local, ecological use of materials.
  2. 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.
  3. Cost - if one has access to a $3-5k machine of the type being developed here and onsite soils, then CEB wins hands down. A tractor with loader and rototiller are required to prepare the soil for massive building projects.
  4. 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. The natural building methods are not by any stretch easily replicable, unless one feels good about committing the large amounts of time
  5. Durability - Unsurpassed except for stone. 100-500 year lifetime is expected.
  6. Thermal properties - unsurpassed. Significant thermal flywheel.
  7. 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.

For these reasons, we conclude that anyone who is interested in building a new house, or making a house addition, should consider the CEB press seriously because of its ecological, economic, durability, replicability, and localization merits. While other building techniques may be superior on one of these qualities, CEB construction is the only technique that scores well on all these criteria.

Step 3. 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 construction for frame, compression chamber, table, tractor mount, and feet; welded hopper assembly and press plate; cylinders readily 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 goals: 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

Future phases for CEB evolution that we are considering beyond the present funding cycle are:

  1. Fully automated CEB machine, like The Liberator, where manual controls are replaced with automoatic valves and a control circuit. The only control required is turning the machine on, and from that point one simply loads soil and unloads bricks. Added material costs in this version are approximately $500.
  2. More powerful machines. More speed may be achieved by
    1. A dual machine, which features 2 compression chambers operating in parallel
    2. Faster machine by virtue of redesign to allow faster cycling through the steps

The automated machine is a clear and desirable upgrade, which essentially frees up one person to load soil, unload bricks, and build with the bricks right after they are produced. The other machines, such as dual or faster versions, will be reevaluated after significant experience has been reached by the Factor e Team and collaborators.

We would like to emphasize our approach and cost predictions: we're open source, lean, mean, and optimal. This effort is funded by voluntary contributions, so our development costs are zero. We have low overhead costs of $107 per person per month because we have donated facilities and lifetime tenure. We are working on a thorough process for a quality product. Indeed, we aim to create a new model for the way products are developed. We aim for full transparency in our development process, so you can see how your money is being spent. And, we are giving the business model away for others to replicate. No strings attached. You can read details of our 3-year plan here.

Our pricing policy is to cover labor and fabrication costs, and to capture value from optimized fabrication. This means that both sides win: we are able to fund further developments by putting all proceeds back into the operation, and you get a low-cost product. We are able to consider special payment arrangements for collaborators or others interested in development for the common good. We do not want cost to stand in the way of access to liberatory technology.


Budget

Bill of Materials

Here we present an economic analysis for the CEB machine to explain costs involved.

Here is the Bill of Materials (BOM) for the CEB prototype:

CEB BOM.jpg

References:

  1. http://surpluscenter.com/item.asp?UID=2008010512293756&item=9-1143-08&catname=hydraulic
  2. Gotten from surplus.
  3. http://surpluscenter.com/item.asp?UID=2008010512293756&item=9-7156&catname=hydraulic
  4. http://surpluscenter.com/item.asp?UID=2008010512293756&item=9-6702&catname=hydraulic for $156
  5. Gotten from surplus.
  6. Item # 905-12120 and 905-1236 at http://surpluscenter.com/
  7. Item 8609K13 at http://www.mcmaster.com/

The main cylinder and control valve used were from surplus, so this price may rise by about $250 for the cylinder and $100 for the valve, for a total of about $1350 in readily-accessible parts. The total number of hours spent building this protoptype was about 140 hours. The time expected for fabricating the second prototype is 40 hours. Production runs are expected to take about 20 hours per machine, using an XYZ torch table for fabrication assist.

Fabrication Facility

Here are the capitalization requirements for fabrication capacity. The Cost column reflects the price structure if off-the-shelf tools and materials - and proprietary development procedures - are utilized. This cost is conservative, as intellectual property costs are probably higher than the $10k that was specified. The alternative route, or the Open Source Cost, is that which utilizes open source know-how and is built on a land-based facility. The open source option means that certain equipment may be fabricated readily from available components when a design and bill of materials is available.

CEB Fab Facility.jpg

References: 9. www.torchmate.com ; 10. Does not include the control computer; 11. Torchmate 3, http://www.torchmate.com/overview/index2.htm ; 12. http://bluumax.com/ ; 13. http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=43550 ; 14. http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_6970_200306001_200306001 ; 15. http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_6970_18544_18544 ; 16. Not including land costs; 17. Cheapest barn kit: http://diypolebarns.com/pb_kits.php , more expensive: http://www.shelter-kit.com/b_prices.html ; 18. Using CEB construction with on-site soils, plus site-milled lumber leaves only doors, windows, foundation, and electrical costs of building; 19. This is difficult to estimate, but here we will include 200 hours of development work at $50 per hour- for producing 2 prototypes and testing prior to production runs.

In particular, the great cost reducer in the open source route is the availability of: (1) a low-cost XYZ table, (2), low cost workshop building, and (3), absence of intellectual property costs. In total, the price of putting together a fabrication facility is only $3700 if one has access to land, some kind of tractor or skid loader for material handling, and utilizes onsite building materials (CEBs and milled lumber) to construct the workshop space. It should be added that more labor will go into building an XYZ table than buying one, but not much more, if a transparent bill of materials and fabrication procedure is available. Workshop building time may also increase over the off-shelf option.

The XY table is a pricey solution if obtained off-the-shelf. New kits cost $8k at the low end for an industrial duty, 4x8 foot table. We should note that, as expected from the open source development method, ridiculously low costs are feasible for the CNC table. For example, a small CNC mill is under $200. The electronics of a CNC XY table are inexpensive. Three stepper motors plus controller and power supply cost $45. (http://bluumax.com/ - Note - these stepper motors are half the required size, so we expect the real price to scale accordingly.) Rails may be the expensive part, and other than that, it’s mostly a structure that can be fabricated via xyz bolt-together design. The CNC table should be accessible at <$500 plus structural steel at approximately $400. That is a Factor 10 reduction over the competition.

The cost structure for building a physical production facility for the CEB will be documented fully with forthcoming experience in 2008. We will be building this facility at Factor E Farm. Part of the development will be deploying an open source XYZ table, which we expect to cost <$900 in parts. There may be additional costs involved in finalizing a simple design for the XYZ table. The goal is a facility that can produce 1 CEB machine every 3 days with 1 fabricator working full time.

We will set up a social enterprise website to raise between $3700-5000 for deploying CEB machine fabrication. This site will designed to motivate the minimal funding of the facility, by directing as many potential stakeholders to the site as possible. Stakeholders include owner-builders interested in natural building, building organizations such as Habitat for Humanity, disaster relief organizations, building contractors, and a wide range of others. We are asking for collaboration in directing potential stakeholders to the funding website.

In summary, this is our first experiment of co-funding a significant production facility. Deployment funds will be used to build the facility, procure some tools, and build an open source version of the XYZ table. Utilizing existing collaboration, we will use up to $3k from the budget to design, build, and deploy the XYZ table. Together with Factor e Farm contribution of facility space, a fabricator who has already been recruited, and utilization of onsite materials for facility construction – we believe that we have an attractive package that can be funded. Costs and risk are distributed, and low overhead makes the entire project dirt cheap for the significance of the promised deliverable. It is a pressing issue (no pun intended) for us to deploy CEB machine production with 3-5 day delivery time – for proving a novel, state-of-art peer production mechanism.

Heavy Equipment

The balance of the budget for the open source CEB development is in materials handling and testing: a tractor with front end loader and rototiller. The tractor is required for soil preparation: digging soil and rototilling the soil to prepare it for use in the CEB machine. The tractor is also used to power the CEB machine for testing, and for material handling of raw steel that is used in the CEB machine. Moreover, we are presently utilizing a tractor to generate 20 kW of electricity by using a power take-off (PTO) generator. This powers the welder and other equipment, but we aim to replace this with a renewable power system as soon as we can. We currently run smaller electrical tools with a 3 kW inverter and a battery bank. These costs summarized are:

Heavey equipment.jpg

Notes: 1. We are considering an Allis Chalmers D17 Series IV Diesel tractor as a robust, all purpose tractor with good hydraulics

Timeline

The goals are to produce a hydraulically-driven, manually operated CEB press ready for sale by October, 2008. By November, we aim to produce a fully automated hydraulic machine. By December, we aim to develop a training program for builders of the CEB machine.

Given the budget explanations above, here are the funding cycles that we are proposing for this project. Delivery date for optimized production is November 1, 2008, when we will begin filling orders.

The funding cycle overview is:

Funding cycle CEB.jpg

The table above shows the deployment costs with 7% overhead for fiduciary duties of funding collection management. The cycles in detail are:

The first funding cycle starts Feb 1, and continues for 4 weeks. We hope to collect the necessary funding via a concerted 2 week effort with our volunteer fundraising team. The funding cycle carries on for 4 weeks, but the actual developments with the proceeds collected last longer.

Cycle 1: Feb. 1 – Feb. 28 Collection Cycle, $5190 - XYZ table, and 2nd Prototype

  1. Recruiting core team
  2. Recruiting reviewers
  3. Documenting all past design and fabrication work
  4. Distributing present effort out for review
  5. Designing XYZ table by Feb. 1
  6. Reviewing XYZ table by Feb. 7
  7. Procuring fabrication bids for table by Feb. 14
  8. Fabricating XYZ table, by Mar. 8
  9. Procuring MIG welder by Mar. 8
  10. Producing prototype 2 by Mar. 31

Cycle 2: March 1-March 31 Collection Cycle, $5350 - Demo Buildings

  1. Procure tractor with front-end loader by April 7
  2. We will build our first significant demonstration structures with the 2 CEB prototypes. Construction will continue for 1 month to document experience with the ergonomics and economics of this method, and to verify field performance of the 2 CEB prototypes.

Cycle 3: April 1-April 30 Collection Cycle, $2675 - Fabrication Facility

  1. NOte: this covers the foundation, doors, water, and electrical hookup, as well as extra battery power to run the facility.
  2. Procure battery bank
  3. Build facility for fabricating CEB machines

Cycle 4: May 1-May 30 Collection Cycle, $3210 - Optimize Production for Replicability

  1. Production facility optimization
  2. Produce replicable design for XYZ table
  3. Build second XYZ table prototype to prove the economics of fabrication of the XYZ table
  4. Make any rearrangements in fabrication facility to facilitate workfow
  5. Build additional accommodations for additional fabricators. We are planning on 4 new fabricator positions.

Step 4. Design and Fabrication

We have already built a prototype, which we discussed at our blog here. We posted the fabrication procedure pictures here. The design evolution for the prototype is documented at Worknets.

Design has 5 major components:

  1. Documentation of Prototype 1 (shown above)
  2. XYZ table for automating fabrication - present work, Jan-Feb 2008
  3. Documentation of Prototype 2
  4. Facility Design
  5. Final CEB design

At this point, we move into CEB Funding Cycle 1 to deliver the XYZ Torch Table for producing the CEB machine more effectively.

Reviews

We welcome reviews of all the above content and concepts by stakeholders and interested individuals. Please send comments to joseph.dolittle@gmail.com.

Technical Reviews

Social Enterprise Reviews

  1. Review of this work by P2P Foundation
  2. Review by Samuel Rose of Social Synergy

Strategic Review

Economic Review

EcoTechnology Review

Replicability and Transformative Potential Review

Further Resources

Our program is unique in that we are producing both an open source product, and also developing an open source model for the enterprise itself. You may read a review of this novel organizational model at the P2P Foundation website by clicking here.

A good article on the CEB may be found at Wikipedia, Compresssed Earth Block. There are several good online books: click Earth at the left hand bar on this website.

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