Tejas de Concreto, Cemento Puzolánico, Adobe, EcoMateriales: EcoSur

Congratulations! You have decided to build your Otji-Toilet by yourself. A good solution as well for you and for the environment, because the Otji-Toilet is an environment friendly ecosan toilet.

This brochure will help to finish the building job successfully.

Burnt bricks are the preferred walling material in many countries of the world. For thousands of years they have withstood sun and rain, earthquakes and wars. They are warm in cold weather and cool in the heat, they can be used time and again.

It is usually believed that a metal structure has a longer life tan a timber structure.

Water is one of the most precious elements and our overpopulated world is soon facing real problems of scarcity. For many places this is today a reality: water is scarce and expensive.

One of the most illogical uses of good drinking water is the water toilet commonly used in western society in formal housing. In addtion to the large quantities of water used for the famous “flush”, it is also leaking toilets that consume billions of liters every day.

It is a long hard road until construction projects integrate disaster prevention into their project planning. It is the dream of EcoSouth to influence development projects in this direction, prior to the onslaught of catastrophes.

Published in "Open House International"

In many cities as well as small towns the living space has to be expanded vertically and multi-storey houses are becoming standard. However, one of the most difficult problems is to find a ceiling slab that is affordable and easy to build.

To produce strong tiles, it is important to use clean sand with the correct ratio of fine grains (less than
1mm), medium sized grains (1mm to 21⁄2mm) and large grains. No sand grains should exceed 2⁄3 the tile thickness.

Since clay is an ecological and economical building material and since clay construction has a long tradition in Namibia, the CHP was founded in order to support, demonstrate and disseminate throughout Namibia the building of clay houses instead of cement houses.

The tank is best built out of concrete blocks or bricks, and plastered on the inside. It must have an outlet at the bottom so that all the water can be drained for a periodic washing oft he tank, it is of advantage if there is a slight inclination towards the draining hole.

Poster MCR Tiles

The very high concrete strength and durability achieved in high and ultra-high-performance concrete is associated with a very dense matrix, accomplished through the use of high volumes of very fine mineral additions, such as fly ash, silica-fume, metakaolin and ground quartz sand. The paper reports on a study where a finely ground lime-pozzolan binder (LPB) is used as active mineral addition in concrete. The very fine lime particles, having size between 0.1-10 μm, can fill the gaps between cement grains, while the larger pozzolan particles, having size between 10-100 μm, can fill the gaps between fine aggregate grains; this results in a much denser matrix. The addition of lime during concrete mixing also increases the Ca+2 and OH- ion concentration, which results in a better and faster hydration of both ordinary portland cement (OPC) and pozzolanic reaction products. The use of LPB as an active addition in some ultra-high performance concretes could contribute to lowering the cost of the product for equivalent strength and durability performance, through the use of less cement, thus improving the ecologic profile of the material. Results from an initial series of tests are examined in this paper; further testing is required to establish the benefits of the useof LPC in UHP concrete. Examples of applications of this work in normal and high-performance concrete are presented.

The practice of burning limestone to produce quicklime is, almost literally, as old as the hills. In terms of basic chemistry and materials, the process involves the conversion of calcium carbonate, CaCO₃, to the more useful calcium oxide, CaO. Calcium oxide is a very reactive substance. In fact, it is so 'lively' that it is usually hydrated (has water added) to form calcium hydroxide, Ca(OH)₂.

EcoSouth experts have their feet on the ground and their hands on daily tasks, whether directing projects, managing organizations, research and development or tutoring students. In other words they are in touch and actively involved in their fields, building and producing. Thus, they can provide expertise from a constantly renewable base of real experiences. Multi-lingual, internationally experienced, dedicated to south-south knowledge sharing, they are not afraid of difficult situations and take to challenges with élan.

This joint research project is intended to study pozzolans derived from mineral or agricultural sources in developing countries and understand their effect as cement replacement in concrete. Through combined research in the field and characterisation tools available at EPFL, we hope to be able to support consistent production processes to predict the long term behaviour of such materials.

By Eva Harris

Simply transferring knowledge and instrumentation is not enough to help developing countries build their own research base. Such efforts must be tied to national and local needs to create trust and services for society in the long term

This Project sketch focuses on combining disaster reconstruction with preparation for the mitigation of the next disaster which unfortunately is expected to happen.
It proposes a novel solution to provide solid and durable emergency shelters within days of a catastrophe, shelters that actually are the core of a new house at affordable cost. Instead of spending money, time and efforts on distributing tents and plastic sheets, it proposes to start immediately with the erection of core units made of small ferrocement panels. It is a technology used in house construction in several countries, system that actually gives a pleasing appearance in addition to its technical and financial advantages.
The EcoSur network is prepared for cooperation and know-how transfer with governments and civil society organizations to implement the proposal

Hurricane George - Report from the field

by Jennifer Duyne Barenstein

Besides human casualties, one of the most visible and striking effects of any major disaster is the destruction of houses. Loss of housing destroys livelihoods, protection and privacy. Effective housing reconstruction is essential to restore affected communities’ dignity, society, economy and cultural identity.

Many humanitarian organisations assume that the quickest and most effective way to rebuild houses after a disaster is to employ professional construction companies. At the same time, however, there is growing awareness of the limitations and risks of the contractor-led approach. These difficulties are encouraging other, more participatory strategies.

We propose a novel solution to provide solid and durable emergency shelters within days of a catastrophe, shelters that actually are the core of a new house at affordable cost.

Instead of spending money, time and efforts on distributing tents and plastic sheets, we can start almost immediately with the erection of core units made of small ferrocement panels. It is a technology used in house construction in several countries, a system that actually gives a pleasing appearance in addition to its technical and financial advantages.