Lime as an element that improves resistance in the production of adobe bricks in the department of Ahuachapán

Abstract

The use of adobe represents a viable alternative to solve the problem of lacking houses, through the proposal of a build-it-yourself house with low cost. However, a limitation is that the construction of these houses does not have a technical advice and they are built in a very informal way, taking this bad construction to collapse in a seismic eventuality. One of the most affected cities by extreme poverty in El Salvador is Ahuachapan which is one of the cities that prevails with houses with traditional soil. Being this, one of the reasons to work here as well as in San Lorenzo town in order to study the types of soil that are found in this place with the purpose to demonstrate which type of soil is the adequate to build adobe stabilized with lime.

This article evaluated the effect that the lime has in the resistance to compression of the adobes made with different types of soils. The experiment was developed in three stages. For the first one, there was a study in San Lorenzo town, verifying the types of soils that the settlers use to make adobes. In this stage, the soils were classified in SPSM (Silty-sand), SC (sand clayey), CL (Inorganic clay) and CH (inorganic clay). In the second stage, adobes were made with different dosage of lime, the elaboration and the treat of the adobes were carried out according to the handmade procedure of the zone being studied. In the third stage, the adobes were tested to check the compression resistance, the results gathered show that there is an increase of resistance when adding lime to the adobe. Proving this way, that the soil type CL is the best because a percentage of 7% of lime had a compression resistance of 13.31 Kg/cm2.