After months of hard work, the beautiful hall at No-ofisi primary school is finally nearing completion. The building team have laid a concrete floor, hung doors and lime plastered the walls.
Laying the floor of the hall
This monumental structure will not only provide much needed additional classroom space and a community meeting place, it will also enable us to capture large quantities of rain water from the roof!
This is great to see such a great progress at No Ofisi;well done
what you are doing is remarkable.Don’t be weary on doing good.
yes I agree, I’m also curious from myself being an engineer where did they get the concrete? Make it themselves?
How are you collecting the rainwater?
@ Mike:
The building was built primarily with mud (adobe) bricks and plastered with a traditional lime-sand mix. We did however use concrete for columns, ring beam and floor. The cement used in the concrete and the lime had to be bought and trucked in from Mthatha.
The goal with this building was to use as much local materials as possible (mud, stone, plantation trees, thatch for the 2nd classroom, etc) and only local labour to ensure that the vast majority of the money spent went into the pockets of our money-poor community. This would not have been the case if we’d used an outside contractor and the normal building techniques. We will in the course of next year do a report on the pro’s and con’s of this type of building and whether it is a model for other remote communities.
@ Judy: The rainwater is collected with standard gutters and piped into standard 5000L rainwater tanks.