Materials and Technology

Abari in the course of its two years of operation has developed or adopted following materailas and techniques of construction.

Adobe:

Many of the oldest  standing buildings on earth are made of adobe. Adobe is simply dry stacked mud bricks, whose recipe vary with cultures and places. In Nepal generally adobe is made with mixture of clay, sand and straw. Adobe has a historical resonance in Nepal as it was used from building palaces to mud huts. Adobe is found in wet and moist climate of Nepal, perhaps it reinforces the belief that if a adobe house has “a good hat and a pair of boots” it will sustain.

Compressed Earth Block

Background: Nepal’s Living Standard Survey (2004) claims that only 18% of the Nepali people live in the houses built with modern construction material. Apparently, many of these houses are not built with adequate safety standard, as safety means more material and thus more money; in fact recent earthquakes in Pakistan and China have shown they tend be more vulnerable than properly built traditional houses. read more

Micro Concrete Roofing Tiles  

There have beenmany researches and alternatives for the wall systems. However, we are still out of options for a proper thermally comfortable, environmentally benign and aesthetically appealing roofing system. The good old fashioned thatched roofs, due to cultural biasness, are not acceptable to our clients, whereas galvanized steel, due to high embodied energy and poor thermal comfort are not principally acceptable to us. read more

Cob

Cob is a mixture of cowdung, wheat husk and clay which are left for ferment atleast 24 hours before use. This technique (with different recipe) has been used all over the world to construct beautiful curvacous wall structures. We have used cob with bamboo in order to compensate for the unevenness of bamboo, when they are laid vertically or horizontally for reinforcement.

Rammed Earth

There have been growing interest in the west for the rammed earth due to the ease of production and beautiful texture that can be obtained through this wall system. Rammed Earth is a good old earth that is put in a wooden form  that is rammed by one or two people till it settles. It is a fast but labor intensive projects, and this type of construction is found in the Himalayan region as well as some parts of west nepal.

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