Hi all,
I'm building a house off-grid. I'm too far along to use papercrete in
the main house but I'm starting to play with the suff inpreparation
for the next phases.
Right now I'm just playing with the paper and water. I want to get my
tubs, mixers etc together before I make a mess with stuff that get
really hard.
I put a weeks supply of junk mail into a 5gal bucket and added 4 gals
of water. After an hour I tore up the paper by hand and then let it
soak over night with a plastic bag over it to keep it from drying out.
It absorbed all the water so I added another gallon and tore things up
some more. The next afternoon I took the bag off and found a lot of
bubbles comming off the mixture. There was no smell. I'm assuming that
this must have been air that was in the paper fibers that had
coolessed(sp) and as I played with it the air bubbles broke free and
came out.
I took a gallon of the mixture and packed it into a ss pan and set it
out into the sun. The next day it was dry enought to dump out and keep
its form. It dried in two days. It was obvious that I have to mixture
up the paper a lot more. There was lots of air space and the paper was
still, mor or less, just torn paper.
I had to leave for a week and when I got back I notices that the
mixture had an oder but not a rotten oder. I had to add more water. I
mixed it more and made another brick. This one was more glop and no
torn paper look. It is taking a very long time to dry.
I wondering if the paper starts to rot if left for a week in water and
thus becomes useless for papercrete? It was easier to mix:-)
I'm now looking for a source of borax. Is it still available in my
favorite chemical supply store, safeway?
Al
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