Greenbuilding Archive for August 2002

Lost Valley has been experimenting with various forms
of alternative building techniques and recycled
building materials for several years in an attempt to
practice what we preach about sustainable lifestyles.
We have played with the use of strawbales, tires, pop
cans, cord wood, and cob as alternative building
materials with various results. This year we have
introduced a new building material and technique. 

It is called papercrete, hybradobe, or fidobe among
the circles of people around the country who have
worked with this material over recent years.
Papercrete has a number of especially attractive
qualities. First of all, it's major component is a
waste product of home and office life: paper,
cardboard, junk mail, magazines, newspaper) of which
there is an abundance and often is thrown away due to
insufficient market demands for recycled paper, and
added to mountains of landfill. Other ingredients
include sand, cement or a mix of clay (from your own
soil) and lime and water. These ingredients are mixed
together and become a concrete-like slurry which 
can be poured into forms of your own making to create
structural building blocks, insulation panels,
sculptured forms, pots for plants, indoor or outdoor
furniture, or any number of other creative uses. The
technique is simple and can easily be learned by
anyone. 

After drying, papercrete becomes a wonderful building
material which is relatively strong (compressive
strength of 260 psi), lightweight (is about 80% air),
insulative (at least R2 per inch of width),
non-flammable, easily workable (wood working tools)
and can be made water resistant (an important factor
in our wet Pacific NW climate) while being
inexpensively 
produced by anyone. We are hoping that papercrete can
become one of our building materials of choice at Lost
Valley and are currently working with Lane County to
do the tests necessary to get papercrete known and
accepted as a permitted structural building material. 

We are offering our second workshop on papercrete at
Lost Valley in September, introducing various
application-specific material combinations, the
papercrete-making procedure, and how to build a
mixer/blender for yourself. The workshop offers a
great hands-on experience for people of all skill
levels. It is a wonderful way to have fun while
learning something which could lead to your having a
beautiful new home that you have made with your own
hands! Or a warmer, better-insulated room, fanciful 
planters, sculptures in your garden or who knows? Come
and play with us! 

 

=====

 

.....................................................
phone: 734.358.1861 (cell)
fax-to-email: 425.671.2231


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com

______________________________________________________________________
This greenbuilding dialogue is sponsored by REPP/CREST, creator of
Solstice http://www.crest.org, and BuildingGreen, Inc., publisher of
Environmental Building News and GreenSpec http://www.BuildingGreen.com
______________________________________________________________________