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What Is Papercrete?

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What Is Papercrete?

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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

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Papercrete is a type of fibrous cement, or cement with fibers of some kind in it. These fibers can be just about anything, from paper (wood fibers) and cotton to hemp, jute, flax, woll and so on. These fibers add strength to the cement, just as glass fibers add strength to fiberglas. In the case of papercrete, these fibers can actually make up the bulk of the mix, resulting in a product that is both lightweight and strong. The ingredients in papercrete vary widely, depending on what it will be used for. For example, to make blocks for building a wall of a house, there really isn’t any need to add anything to the basic formula of paper and cement. For load-bearing walls, some sand will add compressive strength to the mix. There is no need to add rocks or gravel, and doing so may damage the mixer blade. If the papercrete mix will be used as mortar, as in building a wall from papercrete blocks, the addition of more cement will make the mortar stickier, and it will bond better with the blo

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Papercrete is made from paper pulp, water, and a small amount of cement. Traditional concrete is made with a bunch of sand or gravel held together with cement. Because the sand cant hold together on its own, it requires a lot of cement to hold it together. Paper, on the other hand, is fibrous and holds together on its own. Therefore, it requires much less cement. How Do They Make Papercrete? The first step in making papercrete is pulping the paper. Any paper can be used, including old newspapers, phone books, and cardboard. The paper is ground up with saw blades in a large barrel, and mixed with plenty of water to make a slurry. Once the paper has been pulped, the builder adds cement. Depending on what the papercrete will be used for, more or less cement is added more for harder surfaces such as floors; less for walls. At that point, the papercrete is a thick, gray paste and can be used exactly like concrete. Many times, the builder will choose to make bricks. The papercrete is simply

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Papercrete is an alternative building material that significantly reduces the cost of home construction while offering many of the most important qualities of traditional concrete. Some have been able to reduce their building costs to about a tenth of what others have spent for essentially the same house. That’s right, instead of spending a hundred thousand dollars to build your own home, you may be able to bring the cost down to ten or twenty thousand or even less, depending on other options. And you won’t have to sacrifice quality. Papercrete has received a lot of good press in recent years because it’s a proven way to build inexpensive walls and houses. Papercrete is a custom blend of recycled paper, dirt or sand, Portland cement.

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In an ongoing quest for natural or sustainable construction materials, a formerly fringe building material called papercrete has become more popular in recent years. Also called fibrous cement or padobe, papercrete is a mixture of Portland cement, minerals, clay, water and a generous supply of waste paper products such as cardboard and junk mail. A large blender combines all of these ingredients into a thick slurry, or essentially an industrial grade paper mache. The addition of a small amount of Portland cement, which acts primarily as a binder, does negate some of the environmental “greenness” of papercrete, but the paper fibers themselves would not provide much stability or strength as a building material. The papercrete slurry can be poured over forms or casts in the same manner as standard concrete, or it can be formed into large bricks like adobe or concrete. Papercrete is not an ideal building material, but it can be created very inexpensively from readily available materials an

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