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.
Download full-text PDF. Some conclusions and recommendations for the use of papercrete for building houses are also presented. Keywords: waste paper, recycling, sustainability, low-cost.
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. Rpg maker vx ace product key generator download. 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. 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.