UPDF Compressed soil blocks

On Wednesday 20.7. Mr. Then Sokhom took us to see the manufacturing process of the compressed soil bricks. Urban Poor Development Fund (UPDF) is building a Training Centre for Community Builders, where they have started the manufacturing of compressed soil bricks in November 2009.

The soil bricks would be a very sustainable construction material as the current site to manufacture them is situated approximately only 7 km from our site. For the bricks, you mix 70-80% of sand and 20-30% of local soil with only 6% of cement.





First the soil and the sand are filtered and organic bits and bigger rocks are removed.


Ingredients are poured into the mixer and a little water is added depending on the moisture content of the sand and soil.

A mold is filled with the mixture and compressed into bricks. With three machines, imported from Thailand, we heard that they are able to manufacture up to 250 bricks a day.


In the afternoon we also visited a small health center built out of the compressed bricks a few more kilometers away.