29 July 2011

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.


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