A school in 20 days - What is it all about?

On September 15th BASE Bardiya and the village community of the freed Kamaiya settlement Janta Nagar in Bardiya embarked on an ambitious and innovative project - building a school in 20 days.

The building team

A cost effective solution

The school in Janta Nagar with two class rooms and a veranda, covering 100 square meters, is being built as a prototype and if found suitable this could be used for Nepal's 50,000 classrooms project under the Education For All programme.

The school will be built with low cost local materials like earth (mud) mixed with just five to six percent of cement, using a labour intensive technique called Compressed Stabilised Earth Block (CSEB) method.  Since earth and labour are two of the most abundant resources in Nepal, the technique, if applied on a large scale, is expected to save the country millions of dollars worth of foreign currency. It will also generate much needed employment for the youth.

In Janta Nagar, the two classroom school is expected to cost little over eight hundred thousand rupees (around 11500 US dollars). That means the costs are comparable to that of a cheap tin-roof school building of the same size, yet it is as strong and earthquake safe as a concrete building and much more comfortable in all seasons. 

BASE is also working on a second model to be built soon in another village which will be even cheaper. Besides, if the community provides free labour then you get almost two schools of this type for the cost of one concrete building. 

Yes we are ready! Volunteers from the community play have a paramount role in the building project.

How is it earthquake safe?

The building is designed to be earthquake safe, as it has six ring beams made of Reinforced Cement Concrete (RCC) as against four required by Indian and Nepali earthquake safety standards. It also has numerous vertical reinforcements and a relatively light roof.

Ring beams for earth quake safety

And how is it Climate Responsive?

The school will be more comfortable in all seasons. One of the challenges in schools in Nepal has been that the tin-roofed buildings are extremely hot in summer, cold in winter and noisy in the rainy season, resulting in low attendance and attention among children in all these seasons (for more information read "A few degrees makes all the difference").

As mentioned earlier this model is designed to be cool in the summer, warm in the winter, as strong as a concrete building and yet as cheap as a tin-roofed building. The roof is well insulated and will have grass and creeper plants shading it from direct sunlight. In places that are flood-prone the building will have loose earth (with grass growing), bermed around up to the window level and where there is no fear of flood the building  will be built two feet underground. This makes the building cool in summer and warm in winter and will also provide the material to make the earth blocks.

The principle is that as we go below ground level the temperature tends to stay stable at around 25 C (in Terai Nepal). This is cool for summer and warm for winter. In addition to this, the building will have most of its glass windows facing south, which gets all the sunrays in winter but none in summer. Finally, the heavy thermal mass in the earth walls will capture the cool of the night in summer and warmth of the day in winter, thereby keeping the temperature inside stable

The diagram for the school building

Is it also environment friendly?

Oh yes! It one uses earth blocks instead of country fired bricks. Cement Stabilised Earth Blocks need only curing in water and no firing, so no pollution. Hence the process 8 times less carbon emitted compared to country fired bricks.  Since most of the material is local there is very little transportation involved. And since the building is climate responsive it would save energy in cooling and heating. Besides, air inside an earth building is considered much healthier, as earth walls breathe. The 6% cement stabiliser can also be replaced by lime which Nepal has in plenty. Lime is carbon neutral and together with earth we get very clean building material which is healthy for the environment and could actually earn a significant amount of money in Carbon Credit.

The Auram 3000 machine used to construct environmentally friendly earth blocks

Is CSEB new in Nepal?

No, attempts were made to introduce it in Nepal decades ago, however it did not pick up. The reasons seem to be partly the prejudice in our minds against earth as an inferior and 'backward' material as compared to cement which is considered an 'advanced' material. Although the exact opposite is the case in countries like America, Australia and in Europe where earth houses are often considered a luxury only the rich can afford.  This is because most earth techniques require human labour which is very expensive in the west. But does Nepal have that problem?

Secondly, the problem might some extent have been that the earth blocks in the past were much simpler in design and softer than the present ones designed and promoted by Auroville Earth Institute in Tamil Nadu India, which also represents the UNESCO chair for Earth Architecture for Asia (http://www.earth-auroville.com ). The current machine AURAM 3000 produces blocks with 15 ton force and can produce different forms, from plain blocks to hollow blocks, U blocks for ring beams, coping blocks for the roof top and even tiles for the floor. In this sense the current earth blocks deserve to be called Improved Stabilised Earth Blocks (ISEB instead of just CSEB).

Compressed earth bricks 6% cement

Is 20 days all it takes to build from scratch?

Yes and no! In addition to the actual construction time, the making of blocks and Ferro cement roof channels for this school should take roughly 12 days of continuous work. This work was done two month earlier than the construction as both blocks and the roof channels need curing. However this is not counted in construction just as we don't count the time taken by the brick kilns or tin sheet factories for conventional buildings. As and when the technology spreads blocks and roof channels should be possible to buy ready-made form entrepreneurs. However for better results we did build the foundation and the foundation ring beam much earlier than the actual 20 day construction, and this would be counted as equivalent of 2 days of work in the 20 day period.

The end of the first day

Is it just a building project or is it more?

There is much more to this building than meets the eye. It is also a process of engaging the community to participate - first in the construction and then as a result a sense of ownership is expected to encourage the community to participate in the management of the school thereby ensuring accountability in the education system itself.

If we look at the bigger picture we find that in a democracy the best way to influence policies (here educational) is to influence the public to influence the leaders to influence the policies and their implementers like bureaucrats and teachers (for more info read "Education and the Chakra of democracy"). For this reason the process of this participatory school construction in Bardiya involved meetings, gatherings and orientation sessions with the community at various stages of construction.  Hence the shortage of funds and the resulting need for community labour can be turned into a great opportunity for fundamental change rather than being a challenge.

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