More building progress

Once again, Watson and crew have made great progress in my absence. There has been a lot of interest and excitement about earthbag building in the community. People come to look at the cool structure and see how solid it is compared to the traditional cinder block that they use and want to know more. The building inspector that came out even asked if we'd do a workshop to teach more people about it. Another nonprofit organization wants to build some buildings in the spring and will use some of our now experienced employees. Right now we're employing 23 workers full time on the project and should be able to keep that up through December. Hopefully we'll be able to raise more money between now and then to finish the school, which would extend the construction into the spring.

They finally have a decent kitchen. We'll be getting them a new rocket stove next week from The Paradigm Project that will more than cut in half the amount of charcoal used at the school. If you have time, I highly recommend spending some time reading The Paradigm Project's ideas about providing aid in the third world. http://www.theparadigmproject.org/about-us/ I especially like their views on sustainability. I really hope that we are able to make our school sustainable, both for the educational opportunities that are presented in the process and so that the school and children's home is not dependent on foreign aid to continue providing for the children's needs. Check out this sustainable school started by Martin Burt in Paraguay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_9VpICMPuo&feature=related

Here is the second shade canopy. This one is on the school's property and will be used for two temporary classrooms when school starts on Oct. 5th until we finish the remaining classrooms.

If you've ever had to stand or sit on the floor for an extended period of time, you can appreciate how excited everyone was to have new chairs and tables.
The piece of plywood is there to anchor the inverter to and everything electrical that will be run to this point from all of the future buildings at the school. It has chicken wire over it and will be plastered over so you won't be able to see it. The earthbag walls themselves are extremely solid and hold nails very well, so hanging things on the walls isn't a problem. We just wanted to play it safe for the heavy electrical boxes and put the plywood there to screw into. It is anchored into 2x4 pieces that are buried between the courses of bags to give it even more stability.

As you can see in the picture above, the roof is off center. Jaime did this because there are no entries in the back of the building and he wanted to maximize the amount of shade around the perimeter to keep it cool inside. Any lower in the front and tall people would have to duck to pass underneath. The plan has a lot of windows for ventilation. As a rule in earthbag construction, you should have at least 3 feet between windows for stability with a good lintel above that extends at least 12 inches on each side. We used a very reinforced bond beam to serve as our lintel.
Since there are no Simpson ties in Haiti, we had these 13" L shaped brackets made for half the price that they cost at Home Depot.
To keep the roof hurricane proof, we ran a piece of rebar above the tin roofing above every other purline.
Some of the guys are prepping the foundation for the next building. Smaller gravel goes on top of the larger rocks and is then tamped level.
The electrical conduit is covered by the plaster. Once we're done with the interior plaster, we'll do the finish layer on the floor. If you look in the upper corner, you'll notice that the bond beam has a diagonal that comes into the room about 2 feet. He did this on each corner for added seismic stability.