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A Colorado papercrete house © Gordon Solberg. |
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Most Papercrete photos
copyright, and courtesy Gordon Solberg, Earth Quarterly/Papercrete News.
Pour the paper slurry into blocks, forms, panels, domes, sculpt like clay, use as a coating, filler and more. Build walls and houses with blocks of any size. Papercrete adheres to itself, can be used as a mortar for paper blocks, and dries quickly in hot/arid climates (longer in cold/wet environs). Doesn't mold, swell, attract insects, and is surprizingly fire resistant. This is a new method, and is still untested in many areas and environments, but the potential is enormous for do-it-yourself builders. Now experimenters are going beyond cement and using clay and sand and other natural, and free additives for very low cost construction. Check out the following information:
What is Papercrete? It's simply shredded newspaper, Portland cement and sand in somewhat variable proportions of 60/20/20. This is potentially an ideal building material because it is cheap, utilizing unwanted newspapers, magazines, cardboard and junk mail plus local sand and dirt. Papercrete can be produced onsite, using few tools, and is easily handled by women, older folks, non-professional builders and anyone who wants to experiment freely.
A stock
watering tank has been converted to a mixing tank
Papercrete is really an industrial form of paper mache.
In this photo inventor Mike McCain dumps
a batch of papercrete into a drying form.
In construction use papercrete performs like adobe because it can be made
into large or small bricks. It can also be poured like cement, made into
a monolithic wall, infilled between poles or studs like light-straw
clay, shaped into large, reinforced panels; mortared, drilled, hammered,
nailed, used as plaster, and more.
Mile
McCain's "Jumbo Blocks."
Recently, cement has been eliminated from the mix to make Paper Adobe and
Fidobe, which are simply sandy dirt and paper, creating dense, and
free, bricks and building logs.
Many materials can be used.
The possibilities seem endless and experimentation with other natural
materials continues, transforming from one basic recipe to several
others.
Mixes of 50/50 newspaper and cement make a strong exterior stucco layer to cover papercrete bricks and other wall materials such earth bags. On interior walls papercrete plaster can be left highly textured, or trowelled into a pattern, then painted. Papercrete dries to a pale gray color, and clay coated papers from magazines and glossy flyers aid in binding everything together.
A wall made of
woven reeds form the "wattle". Paper adobe type mixes can be the "daub"
to plaster over them.
This Rastra
(brand) wall is factory made of cement and EPS(expanded polystyrene).
The Future
What papercrete and the IDEA of papercrete offers is freedom and
personal empowerment. Because of the cheapness and ease of testing and
playing with this material from the kitchen blender level, up to a full
tank mixer, the average person is free to attempt design ideas and
shapes. From paper, shredded bark, hemp hurds, sawdust, and EPS waste,
to straw and dry weeds..a very friendly building material can be
constructed. Use cement, or substitute clay for a more natural recipe.
Add hydrated lime for extra binding, anti-germ, and moisture control. Use
what you have locally.
There is also the freedom to create low-cost shelters as an alternative, acceptable, housing. Many people may willingly choose to live in a papercrete structure while building a 'real' or traditional house, or to save income on shelter in general. Minimalists, environmentalists, and survivalists may prefer this type of building.
There is social and community benefit. Using papercrete to build mother-in-law cottages, or guest houses, allows all economic strata of people to have affordable housing. Every community needs housing for all its citizens, and this building material may prove a viable alternative.
There is a great deal of potential to use recycled, free, non-toxic materials to make a variety of mixes, each having potential strengths and weaknesses. I encourage you to experiment and text small batches with local materials. The emphasis is to build with non-toxic ingredients (no used motor oil for instance) with the goal of having a strong, load-bearing, fire resistant, wet/rot resistant, insulative material.
In the last four years, Mike McCain, an inventor/ builder located in Colorado experimented with shredded recycled paper, sandy dirt and cement to produce an amazing product he calls fibrous cement. Eric Patterson, a printer by trade in New Mexico, developed and patented what he terms Padobe over six years ago, from just newspaper and cement. (Eric, however, is encouraging anyone to experiment with this material.) A third force in papercrete advancement is Sean Sands, a retired physician who is experimenting with wood chips, sawdust, cement and adobe. Sean and Mike constructed experimental domed shelters at a community in New Mexico in 1998, and both are continuing to build and experiment, with Mike offering workshops and private construction in the Western US.
Inventor
Eric Patterson, Silver City NM.
Eric has experimented with various amounts of cement, and typically uses a 2 pound coffee can full of cement in a 55 gallon drum of paper and water. His results were so good he built a room onto his house, and added a dome shaped guest house in the backyard. A view of his walls, painted white with regular latex paint, look no different than any other standard wallboard.
Mike McCain, shown in the photos above, is a true inventor, he's built domes with blocks, and used a slipform to pump slurry to create a monolithic wall. Mike loves papercrete because there is no one 'right way' to make it, and it is a very forgiving material.
Sean Sands' experimental papercrete dome and
plaster.

Inventor Sean Sands shows how light a papercrete brick is. A dense adobe brick would weight 25-30 pounds.
Papercrete blocks can be used like adobe
bricks to build walls. Papercrete also serves as the mortar.Adobe Construction Methods: Manual 19 : by LW Neubauer. 35 page booklet, 5"x7" size, xerographic. A very thorough primer for Adobe! Explains how to make and build with adobe bricks. Soil selection, stabilization and waterproofing with cement, emulsified asphalt, lime are detailed. Describes how to build and mortar walls, place lintels, windows, doors, and build roofs. Shows diagrams of construction details from foundation to roof, with correct measurments given. Covers finishing, painting, limewashing, fireplaces and chimneys,. Even describes other tamped earth methods such as English Cob, rammed earth, poured adobe; with photos and diagrams of formworks used. Black and white photos throughout, produced by UC California Agricultural Sciences Dept ,1964. #19...$10.00