My initial reflections on CEB Micro-House Belize

These are some reflections on our experience at the Open Source Ecology CEB Micro House build in Belize. Bear in mind these are MY personal reflections and are not necessarily those of others.

We were asked by Marcin to make comments on how the project could have been improved. This is my list which stands additions and updates as I reflect over time on the way the project proceeded:

Ø  Screen volunteers for age and competence before selection. Be honest about what is required of volunteers and help them to acquire any skills which are needed and which they don’t already have. Bricklaying, stucco, carpentry, etc.

Ø  Perhaps have a one or two day ‘training camp’ prior to starting the actual build.

Ø  Develop clear plans which are easy to read on site and outline steps which have to be followed in order to complete the house in a given time.

Ø  Develop a basic tool inventory consistent with the project so that work is not held up by a lack of the proper tool for the job.

Ø  Assign teams in advance based on their physical strength and construction knowledge.

Ø  Allow enough time for the volunteers to complete the tasks and also have rest periods in between. This is especially important if climate is an issue.

Ø  Some one has to be ‘in charge’ to ensure that assignments are carried out by the people assigned to them and are completed as expected.

Ø  Make more allowances for the local conditions such as the availability of suitable materials if the build is in an undeveloped country. 

Ø  Involve more of the local people on a fuller basis than just coming to the site for a few minutes a day. The locals must have input to the project and will often have better knowledge than the volunteers. Local school children can also help out and learn from the experience. With liaison with local schools this could be a part of the curriculum and a field trip.

Ø  Employing local workers and paying them may add cost to the project but could add speed, efficiency and buy-in from the local community.

Ø  Reconsider the design for hurricane or earthquake proofing. The ‘chicken wire’ fastenings and the time-consuming work to ensure that the chicken wire laid over uneven brickwork is suitable for stucco is a congestion point.

Ø  Is rather ‘soldier bond’ the best method of laying the bricks? In the Belize build it resulted in a lot of uneven brickwork which caused very uneven stucco application.

Ø  Give careful consideration to the amount of work above head height which will be required and ensure that adequate support or scaffold is provided. Safety must be kept to the forefront.

Then here are thoughts I, personally, have about the project itself. These are NOT intended to be a criticism of this project or Open Source Ecology, itself. I wholeheartedly admire and support the ideals and objectives of OSE and the concept of low cost building combined with ecological methods and materials but I do have misgivings about how this project fits into that idea.

v  How viable is this project at its present stage of development? Medium to longer term, the project can be viable but the methods and materials may have to be reconsidered and more clearly defined if it is to succeed.

v  Marcin made the point that collaboration in software development is much more fluid and common than collaboration among hardware developers. There are quite a number of organizations who are working with soil-based brick and block buildings techniques. The Auroville Earth Institute in India is working successfully in this field and there are other organizations who have made similar progress and it would be very important for there to be proper collaboration between these groups to ensure that the trajectory of development follows an optimal path.

v  7 soil-based brick houses have been built but the experience from those did not seem to have been imported to the Belize build and this was disappointing. The appearance and I stress the appearance was that little had been learned from previous builds and this may have resulted in loss of time and progress and meant that we did not complete as much of the project as we might have otherwise done.

v  It seems to me unrealistic to take a random group of volunteers to undertake a project which is not uncomplicated. We were lucky in having seem of our number who really knew about construction but, on the other hand, I think there was some disillusionment among those of the more experienced at the way in which some parts of the project were handled or were ‘skated over’. A period of pre-construction planning and training of the volunteers would have benefitted this project enormously.

v Why the hurry?? The idea of construction this sort of house in 5 days in a not too hospitable climate was ambitious to put it mildly. People can only work for so long in hot temperatures and have to have breaks. The idea of doing the same thing in Missouri in August but in three days, appears to me to be little short of unrealistic unless large amounts of preparatory work is done prior to the start of construction. I think it is far more important to do it right rather than to do it quickly. The concept of one person building a house in a week with a friend (just two people!!), seems beyond my comprehension.

v  Where in the portfolio of Open Source Ecology does the CEB Micro-House Project stand? Is this a ‘trophy project’? There are other projects such as the multi-use farm equipment which do not seem to be proceeding, perhaps due to the concentration on the CEB Micro-House Project. Open Source Ecology is a fantastic concept and worthy of all possible support but the expansion of the idea to extensive STEAM camps and other activities such as the 3-D printer project may have the effect of diluting the impact by sub-optimizing as a result of trying to do too much with too few resources. Although there are multiple pages of open source information on the ‘wiki’ sites is this all really usable data?