Form for brick
Forming of adobe brick is carried out in wooden, metal or plastic forms, which are a box without a bottom with one or several cells of the necessary shape. It is easiest to make wooden molds from a plank board with a thickness of 24-36 mm.
Form for making a brick
Having determined the necessary size of a brick, execute a drawing of the form, along which the cutting of the board is made. Fasten the boards to self-tapping screws in three to four places at each joint. The number of bricks in the mold can be any and depends on the size of the brick, and the shape should not be too heavy. At the edges it must be equipped with handles for easy movement.
The walls of the mold should be easily cleaned from the adobe adobe brick mortar. To do this, they are carried out smooth, and the corners are carefully adjusted. When using a mold without a bottom, the surface of the molding pad must be flat, dry, and its surface must be covered with a layer of straw to prevent the adherence of the brick during drying. If the weather is unstable, and it is possible to rain, the area should be covered with a tent.
Technology for making bricks from clay and straw
- Dig a pit for kneading adobe. The depth of the pit is 30-50 cm, its walls should be practically vertical, and the bottom - even. Without yam and foreign objects, stones, garbage. The pit is covered with a waterproof material, for example, with a tarpaulin or awning cloth, with the edges of the material extending beyond the edges of the pit by 30-50 cm.
Digging a pit for batching the adobe
- . Pour water into the pit - about 1/3 of its depth, then gradually fall asleepSand and clay in the chosen proportion. Knees are traditionally produced by kicking, kneading and mixing components, for a better mixing of the layers, you can slightly raise the edges of the tarpaulin. During the mixing process, a liquid clay-sand mortar must be obtained, homogeneous and free of lumps. It is better to knead an adobe together, holding hands - so there is less chance of slipping and falling.
Fall asleep sand and clay
- In the finished solution, gradually add the straw, mixing it with clay. If the straw is added earlier, it will float on the surface of the water, it will not mix well. Straw is added to the consistency of the adobe, resembling a dense but plastic dough. In the pit there should be no puddles of water, the solution can not be allowed to dry out either.
Add the straw
- to the ready solution. The forged saman with forks or shovel is loaded into a wheelbarrow or stretcher and delivered to the molding site. The form is wetted, placed in place of drying the bricks and filled with a ready-made samana to the top, removing the excess with an even object, for example, a board.
Put our mixture in the brick forms
- Lightly tap the walls of the mold and carefully remove it, holding the handles on both sides. If the form is large, you need to do it together. You can manually squeeze the brick from above, if it sticks to the walls and does not come out.
Take the brick from the mold
- Before the next batch, the mold is cleaned from the adobe, moistened with water and placed next to the finished bricks so that there is room for air blowing.
Sushi brick outdoors
- Subsequent batches do likewise. For a day, a team of 4-5 people can make about 100-200 bricks, while the amount of kneading adobe must be such that in time to form bricks, not allowing it to dry out. The diluted solution loses some of its strength.
Finished batch of bricks from clay and straw
- The rows of bricks dry naturally for 2-7 days, the drying time depends on temperature and humidity. After that, they are put under a canopy in stacks, which are stored before the construction starts.
The bricks under the canopy are finally dried
The construction of adobe bricks
The adobe brick made of clay and straw is environmentally friendly material, it is always easy to breathe in houses, it does not overpower heat and high humidity. This material is cheap and available to anyone who is not afraid of staining hands and feet.
Brick made of clay and straw, or adobe brick, is an environmentally friendly building material, often used to build houses in hot and dry climates. The basis for adobe brick is a mixture of clay, sand and straw with water, thoroughly shaken to a homogeneous state. From the adobe, bricks are formed and dried naturally in the sun, then under a ventilated canopy.
Bricks made of clay with their own hands
The structures of such bricks do not have a high thermal conductivity and water resistance, but, nevertheless, they are widely used in southern regions with low precipitation due to the comfortable indoor temperature in the summer heat. An adobe brick can be made by hand, without the use of any mechanisms. How to make a brick from clay and straw, is told in this article.
Material for adobe brick
As mentioned above, adobe brick consists of four components:
- Clay;
- Sand;
- Straw;
- Water.
The proportions of the components are determined experimentally and depend mainly on the quality of the clay, which you can find near the construction site. Construction clay is almost never contained in nature in its pure form and has a certain percentage of impurities, usually sand. Depending on the fat content of the clay, sifted river sand is added to it in the required amount.
Clay can be digested where it is mined by stoves or builders. If the soil on the clay plot, you can use the soil removed from the foundation pit. Prepared for adobe brick clay should not contain foreign matter, debris, stones. If you pre-cook a large amount of clay, you can lay it in the edge, cover with a film and leave to lie down - this will only improve its quality.
Sand is required coarse, optimally - with a grain size of 1 mm. Dusty sands for bricks are not suitable. Sand must be dried and sifted, stones, rubbish, plant roots and other inclusions removed from it.
Straw is suitable for everything: wheat, rye, barley, while it should be dry, without any signs of rot. It is better to use fresh straw.
Water is the last component of a mixture for adobe brick, but no less important. Its strength depends on the strength of the brick, because water with acid salts leads to its rapid destruction. It is optimal to take fresh water from a well and a well, without chemical impurities and contaminants.
How to determine the proportions of components? To do this, take one volume part of clay and sand, mix them thoroughly with the addition of water and mix a solution similar in consistence to a stiff dough. From the solution, roll a ball the size of a tennis ball and put it for an hour in the sun. After that, drop it on a flat surface from a height of one and a half meters. With optimal proportions of clay and sand, the ball should retain its shape. If the ball is flattened without the formation of cracks, then you need to increase the amount of sand, if scattered - reduce.
Construction technology of adobe bricks
The disadvantages of adobe brick are its low ability to retain heat and low water resistance, and its decorative properties are not the best. In a humid climate, buildings made from adobe brick absorb moisture quickly, deform and begin to crumble. To avoid this, the exterior walls of the house can be trimmed with ordinary clay baked bricks, and internal - to protect with vapor barrier. In this case, the house made from improvised bricks will last much longer.
House made of clay and straw
Lay adobe brick on a clay solution with sand in the proportion chosen for making the brick itself, but without the addition of straw. The first row must be separated from the foundation by waterproofing. Angles and joints of walls reinforce the reinforcing mesh. The adobe brick does not tolerate point loads, so the beams and ceilings are stacked with redistribution of load on the entire wall. With these rules, a house made of adobe brick will serve you faithfully for decades.