Standards for clay construction
EcoSouth colleagues are working out proposals for standards for construction with clay. The first preoccupation is the question: "What has to be subject to standards?" Many think that the resistance of a clay brick to compression is the critical route, but it is scientifically known that in a wall it is not the brick that fails; rather almost always it is the meeting between the elements. Javier Quiñonez, director of investigation at the University of San Carlos in Guatemala, is perfecting a simple system that he has been using to measure the resistance to horizontal (shearing) forces in walls.
