Clay brick machine field test - Making bricks from straw & clay - chapter 1

First test run of a brickmachine at KombinatG. The machine was produced in the former GDR, originally for hollow concrete blocks. As you see, we removed the inside shapes to make massive blocks.
The current shape is for making 4 block at the same time, but it can get changed easily to make 6 or 9 simultaneous, e.g.

We tried to make some bricks just with straw and clay. In general it works great, except preparing the mixture to fill in needs a lot time and needs a lot of hands if you want to produce a lot bricks in a row.
In a book about all aspects of building with clay, I found a picture with exactly the same machine in action, making 9 bricks each out of foamed clay balls and mud.
This is much easier, because a normal cement mixer can be used to mix clayballs and clay.

We just put 150 year old brocken claybricks from our neighbour together with water in a tub to make the mud.

The best result (not shown) was by using as much straw as possible and just a small amount very wet clay. Filling in the mixture is a little bit tricky, you have to prevent to fill it in in several layers, because they are not vertical connected with straw.
During drying it will glue together properly, and if you build a wall, the force usually comes from the top, so it doesn't matter too much.

The plan is to use the machine one day to produce our own bricks and renting it out to people who want to do the same. For a efficient production theres definitely a mixer needed, which flips the straw again and again in the claymud.
You need a hard surface to drive on with the machine.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• adobe
• adobebricks
• clay
• straw
• strawbricks
• claybricks
• clayblocks
• strawblocks
• adobeblocks
• brickmachine
• bricks
• diy
• press
• natural
• material
• building
• ecofriendly
• bricking

[55points]

Liked the video. Somehow, I believe the days where we all will have to learn how to survive and live simply by our own means are coming. I really fear the economic collapse to come, I dont believe we can simply go on with all the waste and excess we have now.  Glad there are men like you who will show us the way when it comes. What country are you in? Michigan upper peninsuila here..greetings!

[lamboxsky]

?????????