A combination of paper, sand and cement who knew recycled old newspaper could build a house? Papercrete is an incredible building material that is lightweight, amazingly insulate, and low cost. Any paper can be used, including old newspapers, phone books, and cardboard. Papercrete can be formed into bricks by simply pouring the pulpy mixture into molds, then setting them into the sun to dry, similar to bricks. Once dry, the bricks can be used like traditional bricks, using more papercrete as the mortor to hold the bricks together. For more information, read our full introductory article on.
We will cover advantages/disadvantages, and the various applications of papercrete, including it’s insulative properties, in conjunction with other green and natural building constructions. Image credits. Papercrete is recycle-reusing old paper in a slurry of sand and cement mixed and poured into molds to make any size and shape brick you please.
It’s cement ‘light’, all the insulated properties you want without the weight. The recipe goes as follows: 60% paper (newspaper/cardboard/magazines), 30% sand and 10% cement. Once that puppy cures it’s a done deal holding its shape even when wet. A really useful option is being able to treat it like ‘ Rammed Earth‘ to pour the mix into forms and allow the entire wall to cure before removing the forms. If you choose to make bricks – treat them like bricks and mortar them together using more soupy papercrete and finish it off with a papercrete plaster (and a silicone sealer) to prevent water from seeping in. On dome roofs some people have even used tar to create a waterproof layer.
Since ‘waterproofing’ is the biggest challenge papercrete faces, a proper waterproof foundation that prevents water from wicking up into the walls needs to be observed. However, since papercrete is much lighter than other natural building materials there is no need for massive foundations, thus cutting your construction costs considerably. A one foot thick wall has an R-value of 33, plus it acts like adobe with substantial thermal mass taking heat into itself during the day, releasing that warmth at night when temperatures fall.
A huge boon for papercrete is the low amount of sand and concrete in the mix allowing windows and doors to be literally cut out of the wall. Talk about forgiving. I especially love the idea of pouring papercrete on top of a 2 inch slab for a softer yet well insulated floor. Again, moisture, rain and run off are the biggest challenge so adequate attention must be given to drainage, overhangs, high and dry foundations and a silicone sealer (homestar sealer)with Elastomeric paint on top to expand and contract with the temperatures while keeping the water out).
While this is a tasty morsel to be sure let’s review the pros and cons. Advantages of Papercrete:. Recycles paper waste. Reduces amount of concrete in build.
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Lighter building material is safer and easier on body to work with. A cool project for the DIYer. Minimal equipment is needed to make your own bricks. Easy technique to learn. Forgiving medium to work in. Lends itself to curvy, artistic expression. Papercrete brick manufacturers have emerged.
Lite weight only requires a 2inch concrete pad for a foundation. Tech. Reports now exist. Suitable for hot/arid climate Disadvantages of Papercrete:.
You want to build a what? Getting permits. Non-resistance to water.
Experimental – you are the guinea pig. Not too many construction crews around doing this yet. Codes not yet written for this method. Not suitable for the rain forest or wet climates Books: by Gordon Solberg (1999) by Kelly Hart DVDs and PDF Technical Reports: Papercrete workshops and instructional DVD for sale: Building ‘How To’ with Papercrete and Paper Adobe: YouTube Video Series: Judith Williams offers 6 step by step ‘How To’ videos, lots of great tips: Image credits:.
A large amount of non-renewable resources is consumed by the construction industry throughout the world. Everyday tons of waste papers are discarded as landfill or dump sites than those recycled. It is learnt that it takes about fifteen trees to make a ton of paper which means that 720 million trees are used once and then buried as landfills each year. In order to address these issues it has become imperative to push the boundaries of research in the field of innovative sustainable construction materials.
This study is one such kind of efforts. Papercrete is a new composite material comprising of waste papers and cement. In this investigation, an attempt is made to produce an alternative material using waste papers. This could help eradicate a few of the environmental hazards caused by the construction industry. But there is no proper code for the mix proportioning of papercrete bricks.
Therefore, a mix proportion of Cement: Paper: Sand 1:1.15:1.3 was chosen on trial and error basis. All the necessary engineering properties are studied and compared with the conventional bricks and discussions on its potential uses are made.
A large amount of non-renewable resources is consumed by the construction industry throughout the world. Everyday tons of waste papers are discarded as landfill or dump sites t han those recycled.
It is learnt that it takes about fifteen trees to make a ton of paper which means that 720 million trees are used once and then buried as landfills each year. In order to address these issues it has become imperative to push the boundaries of research in the field of innovative sustainable construction materials.
This study is one such kind of efforts. Papercrete is a new composite material comprising of waste papers and cement. In this investigation, an attempt is made to produce an alternative mate rial using waste papers. This could help eradicate a few of the env ironmental hazards caused by the construction industry.
But there is no proper code for the mix proportioning of papercrete bricks. Therefore, a mix proportion of Cement: Paper: Sand 1:1.15:1.3 was chosen on trial and error basis. All the necessary engineering properties are studied and compared with the conventional bricks and discussions on its potential uses are made. Since the last decade, there is a large demand on building material industry owing to the increasing population which is causing a chronic shortage of building materials 4,5.
This has become a major challenge to civil engineers to produce and use alternate materials. The constant developmental activities in civil engineering and growing industrial activities have created a continuous demand for building materials which satisfy all the stringent requirements regarding the short-term and long-term performance of the structure. As the structures of tomorrow become taller and more complex, the materials of construction will be required to meet more demanding standards of performance than those in force today (Fuller 2006). India's present housing shortage is estimated to be as high as 31 million according to census and out of these shortages 24 million units are in rural areas and 7 million units in urban areas. Such a large housing construction activities require a huge amount of money.
Out of this total cost of housing construction, building materials contribute to about 70% of cost in developing countries like India. The increase in the popularity of using environmental friendly, low-cost and light weight construction materials in building industry has brought about the need to investigate how this can be achieved by benefiting the environment as well as maintaining the material 2. This experimental study investigates the potential use of waste paper for producing a low-cost and light weight composite brick as a building material.
These alternative bricks were made with papercrete. Papercrete will offer a way to turn.
Strong, well-insulated and easily built. There is no specific codal provision for the mix design of papercrete as it is still in its developing stage.
In the present scenario, the whole world is facing a major problem of environmental pollution by the waste industrial materials like as they are dumped as landfills. Fly ash, micro silica, steel slag etc., are a few examples of the waste materials. Hence these materials can be used as alternatives in the construction industry which will help meeting the sustainable development requirements.
What’s that?? That’s the response I always get when I’m describing my favorite building material. Not surprising since it occupies a spot in that backwater known as ‘alternative building materials’.
Papercrete is just what it sounds like actually. It’s concrete made with paper. I tell people to think of it as industrial paper mache. It’s inexpensive to make, amazingly sturdy, lightweight and insulating.
I didn't invent it but I have played with it quite a bit over the past several years. In this Instructable I'm going to go over a little of the history behind it, exactly what it is and how to make and use it. By the time we're done you'll love it too!
Papercrete was originally patented in the 20's. The patent lapsed because it was too easy to make on your own and the patent holder wasn't able to make any money off it.
It really came into it's own as a building material in the 80's. Eric Patterson and Mike McCain are widely credited with independently inventing (rediscovering) it and actively developing techniques and machinery for working with it. I discovered papercrete in the late nineties. I used to own a magazine distribution company that specialized in small press and unusual magazines. One of the titles we carried had an article about people who were recycling newspapers and building with papercrete down in southern New Mexico.
It was a total off the grid hippie dome sort of scene. The domes weren't my thing but I was captivated by the material and the process of making it. I saved a copy of that magazine and told everyone I knew about it.
It was especially appealing to me because of all the waste involved in magazine distribution. All the unsold magazines would be returned to me and I would have to pay to have them hauled away for recycling.
Turning them into building blocks would have been a perfect solution. Unfortunately at the time I didn't have a place to experiment with building projects so eventually the papercrete article went into storage and the idea went on the back burner. My biggest obstacle was the mixer. To make papercrete you have to be able to grind up paper lots of paper.
In order to do so you need a mixer capable of shredding paper. A regular cement mixer won’t shred the paper it will just stir it around. Luckily for me, Mike McCain had already invented an ingenious papercrete mixer that you tow behind a truck. You just throw everything in and drive slowly for about a mile. When you’re done you have papercrete slurry ready to be cast into something. Well, like I said in the intro papercrete is basically concrete made with paper.
The process consists of adding a certain ratio of paper and / or cardboard to water and then adding portland cement. The mixture is then stirred with a blade to re-pulp the paper and mix everything together. When it is properly mixed it becomes a slurry that has the consistency of lumpy oatmeal. This slurry can be poured into forms and cast into shapes such as blocks or beams or dome sections. You use the same stuff as a mortar to glue the blocks together. It can also be used as a plaster to make a smooth finish coat on the inside and outside of a structure.
Papercrete has an R value of 2 per inch so a 12' wall has an R value of 24. It’s sturdy but lightweight- A block only weighs a few pounds but can hold up a car! It’s weatherproof- I’ve had blocks out in the elements for 4 years and they haven’t changed at all. It does absorb water like a sponge so if they are going to be used for walls they need to be protected from moisture.
Similar to wood they will decompose if buried underground so they need to be up on a raised foundation. It’s a really easy material to make- As long as you stick to the rough proportions of water, paper and cement you’ll end up with a usable product. I can make 45 blocks by myself in two hours. It's easy to work with- You can use regular woodworking tools to cut or drill holes in papercrete blocks. It’s green- Totally overused term these days, I know, but I use all of our paper trash for the year and then quite a bit more. It’s fun to go to the recycling center and see their faces when I ask for paper rather than dropping it off. Stephenie meyer midnight sun italiano pdf creator. Now we even grind up all of our plastic trash in a paper shredder and mix it right in!
Making papercrete turns nearly all of our household trash into building materials. It’s cheap- It costs about a quarter to make a 8″ x 12″ x 5″ high block. Are you sold?
Itching to start making blocks? First, we have to make that mixer. The McCain mixer is sheer genius in its backyard engineering brilliance and simplicity. It consists of a trailer made from a truck rear axle with a stock tank mounted on it. The axle is rotated up 90 degrees so that the end where the drive-shaft would normally attach is sticking up through the bottom of the tank.
A lawn mower blade is mounted on the differential stub so that as the trailer is towed it turns the lawnmower blade creating a giant blender. I built my own McCain mixer a few years ago and it’s worked really well for me.
Building With Papercrete Blocks
I’m going to go over my build here knowing full well that it would take an intrepid soul to actually go ahead and build one of these but hey, maybe you'll get inspired. (I lost my!@%$ photos from building my mixer so we’re going freehand from here people!) First I gathered up my materials which included: A four foot diameter metal stock tank A full sheet of 3/4″ plywood Metal beams The rear end from a Land Rover (I think I have the classiest trailer in town) A trailer hitch The rubber inner tube from a large truck tire A couple hinges A lawnmower blade A small can of bondo A tube of silicone and liquid nails Assorted nuts and bolts and some wood screws The first step was to assemble the trailer. I needed a contraption that could securely carry several hundred gallons of water. I used galvanized I-beams that were way heavier duty than I needed to build the trailer with, but hey, they were pretty cheap at the scrap yard and about the length I needed already. I welded them together along with the rear end from a Land Rover to create the framework. Once I welded on a trailer hitch from Pep Boys I had a trailer.
You can get the idea from the first illustration. Next, I cut the plywood sheet in half and glued and screwed the two halves together to make an inch and a half thick platform to hold the stock tank. I cut a hole in it where the end of the differential would stick through.
I cut the plywood to fit snugly around the differential so that it would be relatively easy to seal later. After that, I cut a hole in the stock tank as well so that it sat on top of the platform and fit over the differential too. Once everything was aligned I drilled through the tank, plywood and trailer rails and bolted everything together.
In order to get the papercrete out of the mixer I needed a drain. I took the tank off and cut a hole that was the circumference of the truck inner tube. I cut a third of the inner tube off and slid it through the hole in the plywood and secured it with a couple screws.
It looks like an elephant’s trunk sticking out of the bottom! I cut a matching hole in the stock tank but made the hole an inch smaller so that I could cut tabs and bend them down to secure the tank over the drain. I bolted everything together and sealed the joint between the differential and the tank with bondo. I also made a flap under the trailer to hold the drain shut.
All that remained was to attach the lawnmower blade to the differential and I had a mixer. How long did it take? I took my time acquiring parts over a few months and then once I got started building it took me the better part of a couple of weekends to construct it.
How much did it cost? I scrounged as much as I could. I got the rear end from a mechanic that I knew.
I bought the metal for the trailer from the scrap yard so it only cost about $35. The trailer hitch was another $20 and the stock tank was about $175. Maybe another $20 for bondo, bolts, glue and silicone. So a total of about $250.
What you do different next time? I would re-design the drain so it was easier to use and make it larger to let the mix out better. I also need to put a couple of chains on by the hitch in case something bad ever happens and the trailer comes off. OK, that's cool and all but I want to try making a few blocks before I commit to making a contraption like that. Just use a plaster mixer on a heavy duty(1/2') drill in a 5 gallon bucket for a test run. Next up we’ll go over actually making a batch of papercrete and casting it into blocks. Making blocks is super easy.
After mixing up a batch you just cast it into forms. Tools Papercrete mixer Block molds- mine are made from 2x6's and scrap siding Bathroom scale- for measuring out the paper Shovel Materials Water Paper (used of course) Shredded plastic (if you want) 95 lb bag of cement (cement not concrete- no rocks or sand in the mix) Process 1. Set out your molds. You will need enough flat space to drive over them and pull your truck and the mixer in all the way in front of the molds. Fill the mixer 3/4 full with water. I just eyeball it.
Put in the paper/plastic. I use about 75 lbs. Add the bag of cement. You don’t need to open it, just toss it in. Cover the mixer securely.
This is very important. Just think of what happens when you have a blender top malfunction and multiply it by 100 I use a canvas tarp with a cargo strap. Drive slowly- 5-10 mph for one mile.
The mixer will chop up the paper into a pulp and mix it with the water and cement. Empty the slurry into the molds. If you got the mix right you should be able to open the drain, fill some blocks, close it, pull forwards a bit, repeat. If the papercrete is too thick you've got some shoveling to do.
The type of material you are using can make a difference too. Cardboard makes for a thicker, chunkier mix where newspaper is finer and smoother. Sometimes I use a plunger to force it through too. A lot of poop jokes get made here. Let your imagination run wild. I get about 45 blocks per batch.
Remove the molds. I do this right away. I want as much air flow around the blocks as possible to help them dry.
Wait a few days for the blocks to dry. Stack the blocks under cover to dry further. I like to wait a couple weeks before using them. Do it again and again until you have several pallets stacked with bricks and your year’s supply of paper trash is gone.
That’s 10-15 batches for me. Once you have a big stack of blocks It's time to build something. I've been putting up little buildings all around our place. Let's take a look at a yurt I built out of papercrete blocks. You built the mixer, saved the paper and made the blocks.
Now it's the fun time- putting them together to actually make something. My first papercrete project was a permanent yurt. We had purchased a yurt years before and after going through three outer covers in five years it was clear that our climate was just too harsh for a ‘permanent tent’. At the same time, the yurt was so cool that we really didn't want to give it up. What we needed was a weatherproof exterior that would not need to be replaced.ever. The only way to do that (in my twisted mind) was to build a real building and put the yurt inside of it.
Then we would have something that would last with all the yurt goodness inside of it. What better material to build a backyard folly with than papercrete? The first step was digging a trench and casting a foundation for the building.
I used a metal stake and a piece of string as a giant compass to scribe a building sized circle in the dirt. After shortening the string to match the inside of the building I drew a second circle. Now I knew exactly where I needed to dig. The foundation was one foot wide and six inches deep. It was filled with (real) concrete and had rebar reinforcing inside of it. I also cast a small front entry stoop at the same time. The foundation didn't need to be too heavy duty since the papercrete is so lightweight.
The door frame from the yurt was attached to the stoop and a ring of cinderblocks were put down as the first course on top of the foundation. The exterior of this initial ring was coated in roofing tar to waterproof it. It will act as a water barrier and keep moisture from wicking up into the papercrete blocks. Next it was just a matter of stacking and mortaring the blocks together. It was a lot of labor but went pretty fast. I was able to complete the wall ring by myself in just a couple days. I also used the papercrete to start to plaster the inside of the walls.
Building With Papercrete Fibrous Cement
After the walls were up I made a double layered ring of plywood that went all the way around the top. This ring is called a bond beam and it ties all the blocks together at the top so that the weight and pressure of the roof doesn't spread the walls apart. It's screwed into the walls with 6' long screws.
Life intervened and it was two more years before I got back to working on the yurt. It would have been longer but my sister, sick of sleeping on the couch when she visited, started instigating for more yurt progress. I told her “Fine, we’ll work on it next time you’re here.” thinking that would be the end of that. Well, she promptly came out and it was yurt building time again. Part of the reason I had been procrastinating on the project was that I wasn’t really sure how to build the roof. It needed to be self supporting and not have any columns holding it up because the original yurt structure needs to fit inside of it. It also needed to be very sturdy.
We've gotten three feet of snow in a single storm and the roof needs to be able to handle that as well as our 50-60 mph spring winds. We started by making a central ring out of a couple layers of plywood that all the rafters would connect to. The ring was about 5 feet in diameter with a large hole in the center for a skylight. Next, we needed some way to hold this ring in the right place to attach the rafters to it. We erected some scaffolding and spent quite a bit of time getting the placement of the ring correct. It needed to be at just the right height and exactly in the center of the building. Oh, and level too.
Eventually things got worked out and the yurt is finally weatherproof. It still needs to be finished out but it's coming along. So there you have it. All the joy and wonder that is papercrete. While it's probably not going to ever make it as a mainstream product, it's perfect as an inexpensive alternative for someone who has more time than money to spend on smaller projects. It really lends itself to piecemeal progress. Save all your paper trash throughout the year.
In the summer make some batches of blocks in the evening after work and soon you have enough inventory to build something. Start a building. Add another room next year. So on and so forth. Don't limit yourself to buildings either. I use it all the time for raised garden beds. Papercrete can be cast into any form you can imagine too.
You could use it to make planters, outdoor benches, sculpture or anything else. Just get your hands dirty with it and I guarantee, a love affair will be born.
Papercrete Technology allows for the creation of more and more man-made materials that cannot be considered sustainable. This is a problem because eventually resources will be over exploited and they will become harder and harder for the average citizen to afford. A reevaluation of building materials would allow for third-world countries to increase their standard of living and let more developed countries focus on other important issues. Papercrete is a blending of two old materials to create a new cheaper alternative. Introduction With the elaborate structuring and use of building materials in today’s mainstream housing projects, affording a house can leave a person in debt for the majority of their lives. It’s not that beautiful, comfortable houses where not available throughout history, so the only thing that could have added so much cost is how effectively materials were used as well as the kinds of materials used.
There was also a time when the majority of the population new how to build a house, which reduced costs greatly, but the complexity and knowledge that is now required forces people to bring in experts. Many sustainable housing alternatives, including papercrete, allow people to take back power and reduce costs relating to their housing needs. And have come to this new arena to help people recognize papercrete as a viable building material and to improve on it. History Papercrete is a relatively new development that is becoming more popular as its benefits are realized. Mike McCain and Eric Patterson are the independent inventors of this material, which is also known as “padobe” or “fibrous cement” (Hart). Both men, along with countless others, have been experimenting and building with this new material.
The use of forms, to pour papercrete in, was pioneered by Mike McCain. Eric Patterson’s approach involved making papercrete bricks to be mortared together.
Both techniques are in use today. Context The growth of this industry will be directly related to the demand. This would indicate that the best way to spread the technology is to raise awareness of it. At this point, the industry is growing at a slow but steady rate as groups get enough money to expand on the procedure and its effectiveness. As long as the end result of construction has the appearance of modern mainstream housing, integration of this new technology should not be an issue. The lower cost of papercrete will allow it to make headway in the market.
With the proper information, anyone can accomplish this kind of masonry. This will attract people who need an in expensive alternative to the high cost of building in developed areas. A Large portion of the mixture is recycled material, which should appeal to a large population of people. This may not be available to rural settlements because of the large amount of paper required, but in highly developed areas this will just be another way to remove a large volume of waste materials. This is likely to become much less practical if the use of this alternative really takes off because it may just create another strain on the world’s forests. Papercrete will not protect against deforestation and will remove a significant amount of paper that would have been made into new paper.
With out old paper to recycle the majority of papermaking facilities would have to use more trees. However, Living In Paper reports that: “In the United States, we discard enough paper each year to build a wall 48 feet high around the perimeter of the country.” It could be pointed out that a lot of paper is recycled, but they go on to say: “Even though 45 percent of discarded paper is recycled annually, 55 percent or 48 million tons of paper is thrown away or goes into landfills.” (Living In Paper). The portion of cement used in papercrete is generally unsustainable because of the energy required to produce it, but the overall mixture stretches the cement so that much less is needed. It would appear that this option is not completely sustainable but it is much more sustainable then current industrial materials.
The largest issue with the use of this material is that it is not approved, in all areas, as a viable building material that meets local building codes. This alternative cement is fireproof, insect and rodent repellent, and highly insulating (Hart). The material absorbs a lot of moisture but does not leak. Besides Living In Paper, there is a group called Greenstar Blox that has its own patented papercrete blocks. Their product is currently being tested so that it is in accordance with general building codes. This is a very important step in spreading this technology and will determine the overall mainstream feasibility of this type of endeavor.
The creation of papercrete is backed by a variety of different recipes. The most basic recipes include the use of water, paper, and Portland cement (Living In Paper). Other ingredients can include clay, sand, or any other binding material (Mortarsprayer.com). The most common way to mix the papercrete is in a mixer pulled by a vehicle (Living In Paper). There are two techniques associated with this type of building. Pouring the mixture into molds and letting them dry to make blocks is a simple way to have a standard size building material to work with. After the blocks are dry they have to be mortared into placed in order to seal the building.
The other technique involves building two wire frames, one inside the other, and wrapping them both with plastic (Mortarsprayer.com). Papercrete can then be directly pumped in between the two wire frames and allowed to dry. This allows the entire building to be the mold so that there are no cracks or segments separating walls. After the structure is dry, layers of papercrete are sprayed on the inside and outside of the structure as a finishing layer. The two techniques are often combined to complete a house. The only portion of the house not always suited for this material is the floor because it takes so long to dry. Analysis Mortarsprayer.com is based out of Oregon and is a division of Pacific Asset Development (Mortarsprayer.com).
Their feature products are stucco sprayers intended to be used in combination with an air compressor and any form of stucco (in this case papercrete). The most basic sprayer costs 245 dollars. The idea behind the spray is speed because originally most mediums where spread with people’s bare hands. Knowledge in masonry and stucco finishes is crucial to this company. It should be noted that projects can be done without the products sold on this site, but it would take an incredible amount of time. The required compressor is not included in the sale, but the sprayer can be used universally so it is not an issue.
Spraying does not require and immense amount of knowledge, but building a metal frame to fill will require outside help. This will be a barrier to those trying to do this on their own. There is little to no press coverage on this particular group but stucco is a very popular walling option in some areas. In small scale, building frames to fill with concrete is easier but the larger the building the harder it gets. This company specifically offers the sprayers so as long as buyers can manufacture or pay for a good frame there will be no issues. Living In Paper is run by Barry Fuller who is an alternative materials specialist. The company sells videos and plans pertaining to papercrete.
Their main goal is to teach people how to build with papercrete. The company is located in Arizona and hosts one-day workshops for 175 dollar a person. Those involved may not pay for building materials to go build a home but they do get everything else they need.
With a material that can be made by anyone the information is the real product. Donations can be made to the company in order to expedite research on papercrete.
A 50-dollar donation gets you a sample brick of papercrete. Fuller recently received a Certificate of Appreciation for building the first fully functional papercrete home in mexico.
Barry fuller is also the owner of MEDIAWORKS, which does documentaries, commercials and media presentations. Conclusions The best thing about Living In Paper is that all of their products are about spreading knowledge as opposed to a specific product that the project requires. It gives the consumer a chance to diversify and experiment in different ways.
Mortarsprayer.com is hard to compare with Living in Paper because they both sell different products that can be used together. The largest conflict related to this industry is building code regulations. Building codes are meant to make sure buildings are built safely, but they also prevent changes in how we build. As policy makers accept more materials we should see an increase in diversity and efficiency in architecture around the world.
Works Cited Hart, Kelly. Greenhomebuilding.com, 2011.
'Introduction To Papercrete.' Living In Paper.
Living In Paper, 2007. 12 May 2011. 'Mix Papercrete/ Papercrete Recipe.' Motarsprayer.com, 2011. 12 May 2011.
Images Cited.
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