Lessons learned after the first day of clay/straw

 Payaka urban development

The first two lessons of the days are a couple of obvious conclusions after checking out the main tools that were used for mixing the clay. For the preparation on that sunday, there was nor the time or chance to get any better mixing device: so the first lesson is...
1) don't mix by hand! 

Many many small cuts are maybe not visible...
but I could surely feel them, as we misplaced
our cream for hands

Then after a minute of rest during the mixing process, here's what we realized...

2) check out tools and find a proper tool shop!

The nicely shaped spiral of the mixing tool we got
that day, was designed to mix paint and not clay...
and the spiral got seriously warped. Hopefully it will
resisit a bit longer...

Many other little tricks come out of every single day of practice and at the end of the day I felt that everybody was rewarded by a funny experience and by the contact with such simple matter that can be transformed in a living structure... this is a very empowering sensation and as mamma bird would say: 
"if can build your own birdnest and you can fly, you're a free bird!"
;)   

The first clay/straw day

 Payaka urban development

Already a week passed since the 22nd of July when we laid down the first two sections of clay/straw as a test of consistency of the clay. It's been a very important test for the earth-building restoration+renovation project of Payaka's buildings.
A very welcome and helpful team came willingly together and several other people passed by, checking it out with lots of interest. Follows a short sequence of pictures during the process and for those who can read japanese language here is a link to a friend's blog with other pictures, talking about it.

The clay/straw mix gets pressed down within
the frame, reaching for every little corner.

All the team (plus me taking the picture!) posing
during the action. Thank you all, very much indeed!
おつかれさま　でした。

At the end of the day, working for about 6 hours plus some extra preparation time, this is the two sections completed, waiting for it to dry when we'll come back to check it out in a few months. Hopefully someone will keep an eye on it as it dries... I am quite positive after taking the following pictures, on the morning of the 23rd of July, just before leaving for Japan! See you in Chiangmai in October... 

Getting the clay/straw mix ready

 Payaka urban development

Here is a short sequence of pictures I took yesterday: it's about the mixing process of the clay/straw mix as we get ready today to proceed with the ecobuilding project... going to get dirty soon!

Yes... it's sticky!

Mixing the three ingredients: clay, straw and water.

Hand mixing is hard but pleasant too, squishing mud

The final product

Interesting to notice: maybe can see. the ball of clay
I've left yesterday in the water, crumbled down by itself. 

First frames in place

 Payaka urban development

Two sections of walls are ready to support the light clay/straw mix that will fill the frames. Shelves and further light openings are going to next in the walls. On the external wall it is especially sturdy, as the all pieces join together. 

Cutting teak wood by hand saw it is quite a task but with the fan blowing all day it was alright. It's amazing to think about this wood... all recycled from lumber yards and previous jobs done here on the buildings: some could really be various hundreds years old coming from big old teak trees. It's an amazing treasure and besides the tricks of the job it's nice to work with it.

The best we can do is to reuse it all, 

collect and properly manage the leftovers dust included
and... grow more trees! By the way on the spoiled pieces of teak wood, those that got completely drenched wet and started being munched by termites, well that sort of teak paste of which termite homes are actually made of, it looks like the perfect ingredient for a rich humus.
Teak saw dust sprinkled on our compost is a perfect quick solution in case of lack or lower harvest of dry matter to add to the pile. The plan for the more chunky pieces is to become biochar (wood charcoal) and be *stored* underground/in the ground, offsetting carbon dioxide too. You'll see... 

Anyway talking again about the frame, here is the solution I came up with to lock in the horizontal pieces: this guys are going to support the clay/straw wall both ways inwards and outwards, becoming included within the wall as it grows.
They can easily be wedged in when they are set into the wall. Hopefully it will work out just fine.


  

What a wonderful wood!

 Payaka urban development

Wood is a marvelous element: especially with teak wood, even antique logs when they are properly cut by hand saw, lower layers of the fiber come up to the surface in all its beauty... truly an amazing wood!

The extension of a door and its frame.

No sanding required... ready to go!

No sanding required... ready to go!

 The back side of the building is now close to be finished: it's not leaking too much and we can finally keep proceeding with the work down below. Unfortunately done over and over again quite a few times, now it's becoming a really nice space!

Termite attack slowing construction

 Payaka urban development

Things have been moving pretty slowly on the ecobuilding site.
Today after already the first session of treatment against termites a few days ago, a new "settlement" of insects has been found in our lumber stack, some of which unfortunately got wet over time. Indeed it's a quite tricky situation because besides loosing the material that gets spoiled, the whole house is under serious threat! The local thais here do not seem too much worried but definitely do not underestimate the danger and support some *solution* of the problem. 

On the naturalistic point of view, sad for this organized settlement that was "abruptly" removed, we can only admire the ability of these little creatures, adapted to the darkness of their lifestyle, miners of teak wood.  

So anyway, after this and several other delays due to very predictable human factors, today I have also started to put together the frame that is going to hold the next stages of earth construction. Actually it's going to be the first test of the clay/straw mix.... soon we'll see!

Best ingredient for compost

 Payaka urban development

It took me a little while to realize the very best ingredient for our compost... not being a daily coffee drinker! It's the coffee grounds from the guest house coffee maker. It's still evenly wet and its consistency is just right!
Mixed it up with kitchen scraps, it is going to balance out the input of all the fresh stuff and get hopefully close to a good proportion of the main ingredients: N / C Nitrogen from the fresh matter and Carbon from the dry matter. So glad I found this super accessible resource!

New outpost for compost

 Payaka urban development

The new outpost for compost

The regular flow of people here, the party of a few days ago and a couple of fruit days (adding a lot of fresh matter all in one time) pushed forward the need of a new location for compost.

It's a quite simple frame made out of old wood that was laying down in a corner.
Bent nails hook up the sides with the base and the top, so it all falls apart by hand without even using a hammer! I need to admit that the inspiration came from working on theater sets, where everything is made and designed for easy setup and brake down.
Indeed doing compost in town... it's quite a spectacular performance!

Bent nail holds one side to the base 

Bent nail holds together the sides and the front

Possibly it's going to stay open like this for maximum ventilation and speedy decomposition but we'll see: hopefully I will manage to add sufficient dried matter all the time, like I've done until now.
This trick and a few sprinkles of EM water every couple of days and it looks like we don't really have any insect problem here. I've just noticed a couple of times so far, some rats coming in and politely munching on a few bits without really making any mess. Hopefully there won't be any bigger animals  coming.

Besides this new compost box, the second compost site is going to rest now for a couple of weeks until it starts growing down and maturing.

Some day soon we'll have new soil to start further urban farming projects. Stay tuned!

New recycled paper experiments

 Payaka urban development

 So here is the new experiments making recycled paper. Adding bamboo leaves was quite fun... eventually they all peeled off but each leaf left its print.The flowers stayed a bit more but they are very easy to fall off. Maybe some sprayed coating would help but the idea is not so appealing.

The lastest mix is also a quite interesting asian blend with bits and pieces of thai news papers and japanese flyers... both languages appearing here and there.
Funny...

Triangular shapes are not too hard to get using the regular frame and *guessing* the missing sides. Eventually I may end up making a few other frames with different shapes for special projects.
Just tuning the technique at the moment and indeed it's a lot of fun!

A compost growing down

 Payaka urban development

Three different stages of the compost: start 18th of June, 3 days and 13 days later.

It took some time to digest all the extra mass but now it feels counting the days until we can use it! quiet simple but amazing visual of the Earth feeding itself, as matter returns into different kinds of potential energy.