Building A Home From Papercrete

Newspapers are a universal alternative next to dirt. In every country, city and state there are piles of newspapers. Just look around your home, your community, your landfill. This is an abundant resource. One way to recycle paper is to build with it. You could even ask your neighbors to save their newspapers for you or contact your local newspaper office.

Originally patented in 1928, but wasn't considered to be commercially viable, and fell by the wayside until recently. Today it is being rediscovered as a "new" alternative building material. Papercrete has been termed by some as a "modern day adobe." It has been independently rediscovered by several experimenters, beginning in 1983. It's so new that people haven't even settled on a name for it yet. Mike McCain, inventor from Columbus, NM, calls it fibercrete or papercrete. Eric Patterson, who independently discovered it in 1990, calls it padobe.

Since papercrete is not formally approved as a load bearing material, it cannot be legally be used in most localities to support a roof. But, as "in-fill", the papercrete wall are built between roof supporting posts and filled in between, hence, "in-fill". The posts are connected to the foundation at the bottom and tied in the beams on top. The roofing system is built on top of the beams. This approach is commonly called "post and beam". Papercrete is great for this application. Of course, with some limitations, it can also be used to build garages, sheds, and other structures, which do not house people. Another marker is garden and perimeter walls, or other landscaping purposes like ponds.

That said, we are not building a post and beam because we are pouring our forms in place using slip forms. Our blocks are 16 in wide x 12 in. high x 30 in. long. Picture below of a slip form.

Load capacity is 260 pounds per cubic inch. The idea is to have thick enough walls, so you are spreading out the load.

1) Paper- newspaper, junkmail, cardboard, or magazines. All of this material does need to be soaked.
2) Portland Cement
3) Sand
4) Lots of water

This mixture can then be poured in molds to make monolithic walls or into slip forms to form blocks. Blocks may be manageable after 24 hours. Total drying time is 1 1/2 weeks to 2 weeks depending on weather and humidity. Formulas may vary according to applications.

Once papercrete is dry, the blocks are very light weight, which makes building easy. If you know how to build a puzzle or lay bricks on top of each other, then you'll have no problem. The only tools you need for the main structure is a mixer, shovel and trowel.

Other benefits to building this type of home is how easy it is to install electrical wires and windows. To install wires, you only need a router to cut into the papercrete. To install windows, you only need a chain saw to cut an opening for the glass to fit into.

This material is so forgiving, that if you make a mistake, you just put the chunks of papercrete back into the mixer, add a little water and viola! Patching up your mistake is a breeze. Just let it dry and start over again. No waste at all. Nothing being put into a pile to be taken to the landfill at a later date.

Aaron is pouring the fibercrete mixture into the first footer. The mixer next to him is working marvelously! However, the weather is not. It has been raining off and on for the past week.

This quote from Confucius is appropriate for this week:
"When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don't adjust the goals, adjust the action steps."

Six inches of gravel was placed in a trench about 18 inches wide, papercrete slurry was poured directly onto the rock within the form and allowed to dry. This is used for drainage to keep water away from the footers.

This is as far as we got this year. The process has taken us a little longer than anticipated because we are learning along the way. And actually, these walls are going to be the garage.

The San Luis Valley is starting to dip into the teens at night, so we have closed up shop for the meantime and moved across the street into a cabin. We will work on it when the weather warms up again.

See you in the Spring!

* Saves landfill space
* Keeps paper processing and printing chemicals out of the water table
* Saves trees and other construction resources, which would have been used in place of papercrete for walls and roof
* Saves additional trees and other construction resources, which would have been used to "build out" or finish the interior and exterior of the structure
* Saves more than 50% of the energy to heat and cool the structure for the lifetime of the structure
* Provides new construction jobs
* Provides low-cost, sustainable housing
* There are no harmful by-products or excessive energy used in the production of papercrete. While it can be argued that Portland Cement is not environmentally friendly, it is not used in all types of papercrete, and whn it is, it represents a fairly small percentage of the cured material by volume.

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