From Scotland to Samrong- FASE Diary Week 1
Hi our names are Sakshi Sircar and Tom McIntyre, and we have come from chilly Scotland all the way to sunny Samrong to work with CIDO and Green Shoots for the next four weeks.
CIDO and Green Shoots are embarking on an exciting project to build an Agri-Tech center to help them better facilitate the training that they have been rolling out around the schools in Odtar Meanchey Province. They are currently in the stages of researching and testing brick materials and setting up local contracts, ahead of the building works later this year.
With our engineering backgrounds, we plan to be able to progress some of these tasks in the time that we are here.
The sun was beating in the sky when we arrived here and one of the first things we did was to visit some local schools to see how the children were learning about farming and agriculture. It was really fun to the see the enthusiasm between all the kids which only makes it more important for the training centre to be built and come of use.
The building design is focused on the use of rammed earth bricks. Rammed earth bricks are more environmentally friendly, use local soils, simple to construct and can be strong and durable once adequately protected. The design also uses locally sourced materials to help local businesses and trade.
One of our first tasks here is to determine which composition of ingredients to make the earth bricks is optimum for the main building construction. This requires us to consider the environment that the bricks will be subject to, such as the high rainfall and sunshine and make sure that the bricks will be strong enough to survive this as well as bear loads such as the roof, windows and guttering, amongst other things. The composition of the bricks can vary in terms of how much cement or lime is mixed with local earth. It is likely that bricks comprising of only local earth will disintegrate under the loads or erode with the weather so we will probably have to include cement or lime as stabilizers. There were a range of samples created already (with different levels of cement and lime) so our job is to test these to determine which one best suits our needs, i.e. meets the required strength criteria for the lowest price. The tests we plan to do are compression tests (force applied on top of the brick) and ‘Bucket’ tests (repeat the compression tests after a period of soaking to establish the structural effects of saturation).
It is important that the building survives the test of time so it can be used for as long as it’s needed and allow CIDO and Green Shoots to spread their knowledge!
Our first few days have been a great experience and we are looking forward to settling in and continuing to work with the local CIDO staff and businesses.
Until next week!
Sakshi & Tom
