Papercreters: [papercreters] Re: Greetings from Silver City

Monday, July 21, 2008

[papercreters] Re: Greetings from Silver City

Greg,
The blocks were a big part of the problem.
First of all, they didn't have enough portland cement in them, then they were terribly
irregular and inconsistent. Then many of them had chunks of unground paper and
sometimes even Walmart bags in them. When I mentioned my concerns to the people I
bought them from, they tried to convince me it didn't matter. It would be fixed in the
plastering process.
Compared to the blocks that Eric Patterson makes, these were grade b minus at best.
I estimate I wasted at least $30,000 or more in time and materials because of the crappy
blocks. All the while, they were reassuring me that it would all be remedied with extra
mortar, which I found out was not true.
Even the mortar mixture was flawed and could in no way be made to support the varied
thickness of blocks as I was led to believe since the paper content was too high and no
other materials besides portland cement was added.
I now realize just how important it is to have at least a basic understanding of the
chemestry of papercrete and why some additives work and some don't,Why the formulas
are critical to success of the system, and why the blocks do have to be as even as possible.
Another mistake was to plaster (papercrete) as the walls were going up. I would venture to
say this contributed to heavy cracking because the mortar hadn't dried sufficently.
There were many aspects of the project that I was totally ignorant of and at the mercy of
the "expert" overseeing the building, and realized that much of what we were doing was
experimental in some sense.
Bottom line, ya gotta have good blocks to begin with.
Ed