Monday, July 27, 2009

Re: [papercreters] Re: Papercrete Nirvana



You're an incredibly tenacious woman Judith.  Thanks for sharing this story! :)
 


 
On Sun, Jul 26, 2009 at 6:08 PM, Bob <criswells.ok@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
 

If you made a video of this event I want to buy a copy!!!!!


--- In papercreters@yahoogroups.com, JUDITH WILLIAMS <williams_judith@...> wrote:

 
I had quite a day yesterday. I wanted to try my new idea of embedding
 blocks in a slip form wall. Of course I got off to a bad start by
 getting started too late. It was almost noon with the temp in the high
 90s. I am a wimp in the heat, but I had a friend volunteer to put a new
 fuel pump in my jeep and didn't want to appear to be abandoning him. So
 I got out to my place at high noon and couldn't find the pump to
 inflate the soccer ball in my mixer. Rigged up this thing I found in
 the borrowed truck I had so was able to get to ball inflated. Am now
 using cardboard in place of newspapers. Not sure how I like it. The
 cardboard had been soaking for a week and was smelly with ugly water
 all around. Couldn't find my rubber gloves so had to just dig in and
 get my hands dirty. Mixed it up and it came out OK, except for the
 plastic that gets all wound around the blade. But then I had to rig up
 a scaffold because the wall is way higher than I can reach. So I got
 the ladder for one end and a combination of papercrete blocks and 2 saw
 horses stacked up for the other end, and 2 roughsawn 2 x 4s for the
 plank. A chair to get up to the plank. 5 gallon buckets filled with
 slurry transported into the building over a little bridge/ramp thing,
 then hefting them onto the plank, climbing up and down, trying to lift
 the buckets so as not to disturb the form which was tentatively held on
 one end with a screw in the rotten part of the upright post. Screw came
 out, got put back in, broke off and held the form about 1" out from
 where it should have been. Eventually got all the forms moved up and in
 place, laid the blocks in between and poured slurry all around. Not
 bad. Waited a half hour or so, moved the forms up again (no small feat
 for a person working alone), set more blocks and started to pour again.
 Then I noticed that the previous pour was coming apart, detaching
 itself from the embedded block and falling off. So I quickly got the
 cordless drill again to move the form back down. Dead battery so I had
 to keep changing bits (some screws are phillips and some are torque, my
 favorite. I have a drill for each). Finally got the forms back down but
 the wall was ruined so I had to scoop out what was in there and put in
 new. Took all the buckets of slurry down from the planks, back into the
 wheelbarrow, back into the mixer with more water, drove around the
 block again but the mixer wasn't full enough for the blade to be
 effective so the slurry stayed dry on the bottom and wet on the top.Had
 to hand scoop the slurry into the block forms. Also had to detach the
 mixer from the truck so I could move it myself over the forms since I
 had no one to guide me. Got the forms filled. I stripped down and had a
 cold hose shower, opened a beer and was sitting in my chair half
 catatonic and naked when someone drove in the driveway, a person I'm
 not very fond of with his new lady friend. Ran into my shed real quick
 and got presentable. Showed them the papercrete project and treid to sound enthusiastic. They finally left. Wanted to spend the night out there (lots of
 tension here at home between housemates) but my inflatable mattress had
 a leak and the wind came up and it started to rain. So I came home, had
 a good bath, confronted the housemate on problems, went to bed and had
 a great sleep. But I'm beat today and have just enough energy to type
 this little tirade.
 
 
 
Sincerely,




__._,_.___


Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___