Jars for the ladies

Thursday 4th October

 

Appropriately dressed “Lumberjack Tom” and I spent the day constructing formwork for two different sizes of brick.
Adobe bricks can be made to any size, however, the dimensions chosen were based on references from Laurie Baker book “MUD” and a Wikipedia article on adobe.

 

One mould was about 9” x 4.5” x 3”, and the other was about 14” x 10” x 3”.

 

Shrinkage on curing is expected, but the aim of the experiment is to determine if human urine can replace water in the making of mud bricks (/ if urea will act as a binder), therefore size is irrelevant at this stage.

 

I have also managed to convince housemates to pee in a bottle… (jars for the ladies).
Anon

Prize for the most liquid gold

The urine group have spent the last couple of days delving further into the subject of ‘wee’ than ever before. What we may have previously passed as plain and simple urine, can now be effected in both quantity and quality by a great number of factors, including intake, physical activity, diet, biological makeup, gender, age… the list goes on. This complicates the experiment as the nature of our urine may be very different to the urine of the average person living in a refugee camp in Darfur.

 

We have identified the main variables (concentration, acidity, age and quantity) as factors which may affect the strength of the bricks. We are likely to use these factors as a starting point for our experiments when we have confirmation from an expert.

 

And most importantly it has come to the crunch-time – its time to start collecting! Toby has offered a prize for the first group member to reach two litres.

Expert in the field…

Soil group yesterday met with Professor Parsons, an extremely helpful expert in soils of arid regions, who has even worked at the University of Khartoum in Sudan. Prof. Parsons quickly answered all our material questions on the make up of the soils available and pointed us in the direction of montmorillonite clay, typical of arid regions around the world…now we have to find some in soggy Britain…

Process, soil, urine

Wee have split into three groups and are researching process, soil and urine. Process group is studying methods of constructing mud bricks and how to imitate arid conditions for testing. Soil group is investigating the composition and properties of soils in an arid region and how to recreate them in the UK. Urine group are researching the chemical properties, logistics and sociological aspects of collection and storage of urine in an arid region.

 

This will inform a method of testing of whether urine is actually a viable alternative to water in mud brick construction.

Mud bricks & urine

The group met for an initial discussion of the possibility of making mud bricks, substituting precious water supplies with, well, wee…

 

After a few hours research we met Michael from Architects For Aid, discussed our queries and concerns and are now heading in (hopefully) the right direction.

 

We haven’t gotten our hands dirty yet…