There are manual press and hydraulic press. The manual press take a lot of labor. There are also machines to mix and to sift the soil.
I did a fast research, and found that on Brazil the cost (not including buy the machines) to produce a 1000 ecologic bricks it's about 250 reals (64 dollars), considering soil/earth (need right mix of clay soil and sand soil) cement, water, energy. The sale of the finished brick product it's about 1000 reals.
Ecologic brick are fine for dry climate areas, but not good for high moisture climate. I'm not sure if they are not very good for humid climate because people let the blicks aparent, without a layer of plaster covering it, or if even the plaster can't protec the bricks from moisture.
Making a politic insight, when people say that it's a good idea help homeless have a home, I think the best solution it's to find such alternatives and train homeless people to work building the homes. With ecologic bricks the production cost it's low for who build the bricks (with machine help), and to build the home itself a few training it's enough, with some supervision of course, since some technics place the brick using a special glue. It needs some rebar with concrete, filling the brick's wholes with rebar and concrete, but not all brick's holes but just in some points, each a couple of meters distant or in a edge of wall, I think. But it's quite like a lego building.
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Originally Posted by Xist
I saw that a while ago. I remember watching a man making them at a high rate of speed, but I swear that it was all human labor. The videos that I find now show hydraulic presses. There must be an awesome return on investment on that, but that has a bit of a start up cost.
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