Because of the light slope, and in order to protect the building from water and to contain the earth during rainy season we have started designing and building some gabions; boxes made out of metal net and filled up with stones. We bought metal net and we decided what the best sizes were in order to optimize the material as much as possible. We tested different ways to join the faces of the gabion with metal wire. For several days we have being digging behind the building to leave an appropriate distance between the gabions and the backside wall of the library.
The lack of water in Kibaoni Primary School has brought some difficulties to build during these last few days. Nevertheless Anatoli and Primli have finished building the over foundations with stones and concrete, pouring a final layer of concrete to level it and leave it prepared to start with the earth walls. We have compressed the earth between the over foundations and we have started filling it with stones. Although at the beginning it seemed that we could just randomly throw the stones inside, the work is not that easy and it needs to be done carefully, placing the stones with order and creating a surface with the same level.
We have continued with the rammed earth tests, making bigger samples of those mixtures that seemed to be the best. We have also tested other techniques like cob and adobe. For cob, earth, sand and straw are mixed together in balls, creating thick load-bearing walls. We have done the final drawing for the rammed earth formwork and bought the necessary materials to build it.
Since we will need a lot of earth to build the walls, we have started digging a big hole next to the project site. The first meter of earth is not appropriate because of vegetation materials and crops- mainly potatoes and beans- which turn the soil too silty. Therefore the first layer of soil has been removed and all the soil beneath is being piled up to be used in the future weeks.
Tanzania Goes Mud! 