Our Green Streets Blog

Vermeer drove a mobile CEB press from Iowa to the Rocky Flats CEB production site.

TSC Global, championing its innovative “Roofs for the World” program, met in Denver with a group of earth building advocates, including Partners Worldwide and Iowa-based Vermeer Tractors for a full production test run of the Vermeer’s mobile compressed earth block machine press.

Brad Wells, TSC executive director, says Vermeer drove its equipment from Iowa, setting up a mobile production facility to manufacture over 1000 compressed earth blocks (CEBs) which TSC will then use to complete the walls on a demonstration unit at its Denver headquarters. Wells believes this represents a new building paradigm for impoverished areas in the world.

The CEBs were manufactured on facilities west of Denver that had been donated by Church Ranch, where the team used “a mountain of blue ribbon dirt!” says Wells. The goal of this endeavor is to build durable, inexpensive structures that will resemble the Ugandan units developed by Moses Musaazi Kampala, as shown in this photo.

This October, a group of international business people gathered to observe Vermeer’s portable CEB press – the 714 Dynabloc Press. Vermeer and Faith Tech Connect developed the machine to use in worldwide poverty areas to build low-cost CEB homes and provide jobs to local residents in the process.  The blocks are produced using a mixture of clay-based soil and a small amount of cement for bonding.

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TSC Global's hypar roof is located next to the light ril tracks, just south of downtown Denver

Evidence of new buildings featuring an innovative and cost-effective roof can now be seen in a growing number of African nations, including Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Sudan, as part of a Roofs for the World initiative.

This roof is called a Thin Shell Composite Hyperbolic Paraboloid, or TSC Hypar, thus the name, TSC Global, which proclaims  the building methodology using this roof has the potential for revolutionizing roofing and construction in the most impoverished and remote parts of the globe. TSC Global executive director, Brad Wells, says that compared to the corrugated steel roof structures seen everywhere in the developing world, TSC roof construction requires a minimum in cut lumber, demands no power machinery for construction, and leaves almost no carbon footprint. In addition, buildings featuring these roofs are significantly quieter in rain and windstorms, and can be earthquake resistant.

Denver-based TSC Global was created to build, promote and fully develop this construction method, with the belief that there is real potential to dramatically enhance the overall quality and affordability of structures used by millions if not billions of people worldwide. It is now focusing on a potential rebuilding program for Haiti.

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