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Sustainable Building With Papercrete

 

PAPERCRETE CONSTRUCTION

Natural Building with Recycled Materials

 

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 experimented with the use of strawbales, tires, pop cans, cordwood, and cob as alternative building materials with various results. In 2003 we 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 occasionally offer workshops on papercrete at Lost Valley and show 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? Information on any upcoming events is listed on our events page

 






For additional photos and information about Papercrete, check out the following websites:

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