©1999 Charmaine R. TaylorWWW.PAPERCRETE.COM www.dirtcheapbuilder.

CHARMAINERTAYLOR@GMAIL.COM

Papercrete: The Starting Point for Very Low Cost Construction

What is Papercrete? It’s simply shredded newspaper, Portland cement and sand
in somewhat variable proportions of 60/20/20. Papercrete is blended in a
homemade drum mixer into a wet slurry, and poured into brick forms, or
pumped into formworks to make walls. This building material has great
potential 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,
nonprofessional builders and anyone who wants to experiment freely.

The mix of recycled paper and cement isn’t entirely new. There have been test
structures built in the past; one by a builder in Tucson, AZ, in 1983 who
constructed a 12 foot diameter dome. His papercrete structure was an
experimental dome covered with wire mesh, and 1” of papercrete slurry
applied. That papercrete recipe was 50/50 cement and newspaper, by weight,
with no sand. The dome, which weighs only 300 pounds, was coated inside
and out with an elastomeric paint, and is still standing well after 15 years.
Papercrete is really an industrial form of paper mache. In construction use
papercrete performs like adobe because it can be made into large or small
bricks, or blocks. 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. It soaks up water like a sponge, but dries out again, so it must be
protected from the elements like any natural wall material such as adobe, cob
or strawbale.
Papercrete Inventors
In the last three years, Mike McCain, an inventor/ builder located in Colorado
experimented with shredded recycled paper, sandy dirt and cement to produce
an amazing product he calls fibrous cement. Eric Patterson, a printer by trade
in New Mexico, developed and patented Padobe over six years ago, from
just newspaper and cement A third force in papercrete advancement is Sean
Sands, a retired physician who is experimenting with earth sheltered papercrete
structures. Sean and Mike constructed experimental domes at a community in
New Mexico in 1998, and both are continuing to build and experiment, with
Mike offering workshops and private construction in the Western US.
Eric started out by looking for a way to recycle all the waste paper from his
print shop business. He has experimented with various amounts of cement and
paper, and now uses a 2 pound coffee can full of cement per 55 gallon drum
of paper and water. His initial results were so good he built a privacy wall,
added a room onto his house, and constructed a dome shaped guest house in
the backyard. Eric says that Padobe walls won’t crack, can be pounded with a
hammer and only leave a small dent, and won’t leach heat out of the house.
Also this material will hold a screw or nail well. Eric compares the insulation
performance of his material to Fiberglas, explaining that a 12” thick Padobe
wall should offer close to R36 (this has not be verified). A view of his walls,
painted white with regular latex paint, look no different than any other
standard wallboard.

Mike McCain is a true inventor, he’s built domes with blocks, and used a
slipform to pump slurry to create a monolithic wall. He’s invented dragforms
to make many blocks at once; designed efficient mixers, easy to use adobetype
block makers, and many other aids to small scale production. Mike says
the material can be made as soupy as you want, and that excess water will
drain out easily, and that the mix can’t be over saturated. Mike will add one or
two 94 pound sacks of Portland cement to his stock tank mixer (4’w x 3’ tall),
plus sandy dirt, newspapers, pizza boxes, old phone books, magazines, and
junk mail. Mike loves papercrete because there is no one ‘right way’ to make
it, and it is a very forgiving material to produce
How Papercrete is Made
It’s easier to experiment with papercrete if you can make test batches with
simple kitchen equipment, before moving on to build a mixer for larger scale
production. I call this Kitchencrete, and the whole family can join in. If you
have a blender or a food processor (or buy a used one at a thrift shop) you can
shred newspaper and make slurry. A hand mixer won’t work, so use a blender.
First soak several sheets of newspaper (don’t use office or magazine paper yet,
it won’t pulp well), use disposable plastic tubs or bowls and pre-measure, by
weight, the wet paper, sand and cement. You can eliminate the sand/dirt if you
want. Then place a cup of water into the mixer, add several wads of
newspaper and grind. After you have a pulped all the paper into a gray mass,
add the cement and grind for a few minutes, adding water as needed. If you
don’t want to put cement in your blender then hand mix it with the pulp in a
separate bowl. Turn the mass onto an old window screen and let drain for 30
minutes. While wearing vinyl gloves scoop up the papercrete and place it into
a small cardboard box to dry, or shape into squares, or patties and let dry on
the screen overnight. Any excess water will evaporate, and in a few days,
depending on sunlight and air circulation the bricks will dry hard and very
lightweight. While you can’t make too much papercrete in a day with the
blender before it will overheat, you will make enough to shape bricks, or hand
sculpt a small house model. Play with the material a lot, go find different
sands, and very clayey dirt ( no topsoil) and experiment. Using small
cardboard boxes lets you experiment inexpensively; peel off the cardboard
after a fell days and let the brick keep drying. Cracking can be eliminated with
sand, but shrinkage will occur. You can also use a recycled newspaper
insulation material called cellulose. The finely ground newspaper is like cotton
candy, and sucks up water like crazy, but it will drain out while drying. A bale
of locally made cellulose costs about $7. and provides a way to experiment
with no blender, just hand mix the cement and sand in. The tensile strength
will be poor, so add dry grass clippings, or chopped straw to add fiber.
As you can see papercrete can evolve into other mixtures. Personally I am
now mixing everything but paper and cement in my experiments. I use
harvested clay, bagged hydrated lime, Redwood sawdust and other local
materials to make what I call Cobwood. Papercrete was developed in a desert
area without trees using waste paper, so you can experiment with indigenous
or recycled materials where you are. (The next issue of Earthworks will offer
an article on Cobwood material.)
Mixing papercrete
The primary block for most people is building a mixer to grind the recycled
waste paper into slurry. A homemade barrel mixer with sharp lawnmower
blades or S shaped blades as developed by Mike and Eric are difficult to
construct, cost about $300, and don’t always work. Cement and mortar
mixers also don’t work because they can’t pulverize the paper well enough.
Functional use can be made of a household garbage disposal but they overheat
quickly. Wood chipper/shredders seem to work but sometimes don’t shred
paper well enough. The best invention to date is Mike’s “Third World Mixer” a
towable stock tank mounted on a welded framework, with car tires. This
mixer uses an axel and auto differential to turn the attached 18” lawnmower
blade and chop the paper. When towed by a slow moving car (5 mph) or even
an animal, the tires turn the blade which chops the paper into a slurry. No
electricity is needed, or gasoline for the mixer itself. Towing the water and
paper filled tank a few blocks makes perfect papercrete slurry says author
Gordon Solberg, who watched Mike’s mixer in action. (Gordon just produced
a book “Building with Papercrete & Paper Adobe.)
Mixes of 50/50 newspaper and cement make a strong exterior stucco layer to
cover papercrete bricks and other wall materials such earth bags or adobe
bricks. On interior walls papercrete plaster can be left highly textured, or
trowelled into a pattern, then painted. Papercrete dries to a pale gray color, and
clay coated papers from magazines and glossy flyers aid in binding everything
together.
The drawbacks
Papercrete does have drawbacks, and since it is still completely experimental
(other than a few existing small structures) the long term performance results
aren’t known. There are concerns about it’s ability to withstand fire (due to
accidental application of hot metal slag which slow burned and reduced a test
brick to ash overnight), although direct flame contact produced only charring
and no burn. And, no real insulation tests have been performed; plus papercrete
blocks soak up water like a sponge (but release it again) so they must be
protected from moisture and weather. All that being said, it still has enormous
potential as an ultra low cost building material.
The Future
What papercrete offers is freedom and personal empowerment. Because of
cheapness, and ease of testing, from the kitchen blender level up to a full tank
mixer, the average person is able to attempt very low cost designs.
There is also the freedom to create economic shelters as alternative, acceptable
housing. Many people may willingly choose to live in a papercrete structure
while building a ‘real’ house, or to save income on shelter in general.
Minimalists, environmentalists, and survivalists may prefer this type of
building. Beyond that, creating low cost sheds, barns, animal shelters and
storage structures is possible too.
There is social and community benefit. Using papercrete to build mother-inlaw
cottages, guest or teen quarters, allows everyone to have affordable
housing. Every community needs housing for all its citizens, and this
building material may prove a viable alternative.
There is a great deal of potential to use recycled, free materials to make a
variety of papercrete or Cobwood mixes, each having potential strengths and
weaknesses. I encourage you to experiment and text small batches to discover
what works. The emphasis is to build with non-toxic ingredients (no used
motor oil for instance) with the goal of creating a strong, load-bearing, fire
resistant, wet/rot resistant, insulative material.
___________________________
© 199 ARTICLE: Charmaine Taylor lives in a 100 year old dairy farm house in
Humboldt County, CA where she writes and experiments with alternative
building materials such earth, lime, papercrete and Cobwood.
UPDATE: I now live in a small cottage which I am repairing with green and
salvaged materials.. see the article: Little Green Cottage on this CD.