Papercreters: [papercreters] Re: Earthbag, Superadobe, Hiperdobe, why not Hiperpapercrete?

Thursday, March 15, 2012

[papercreters] Re: Earthbag, Superadobe, Hiperdobe, why not Hiperpapercrete?

Hi Judith,

I did have several collapses while building that experimental dome house. The first was on the trial dome I started to learn with.
This was a circular dome, but the bags were filled with a fine sand that didn't hold its shape well enough to support the weight once it was up about 5 feet high. I rebuilt this filling the bags with the scoria and had no further problems.

Then I did have some collapses with arches spanning large spaces (6 ft. wide) and I had to overcome this by employing a kind of double bag system of cross-hatched bags.

What you are probably alluding to with the large elliptical dome was not an actual collapse, although it certainly could have resulted in that if I had not stopped and corrected the problem. I had nearly finished stacking bags for the large elliptical dome when I noticed that part of it was deforming in a way that made me very nervous. At that point I dismantled the structure down to the loft level and rebuilt it using a solid, permanent pole frame structure to rigidly keep everything in place, and that has worked like a charm ever since.

--- In papercreters@yahoogroups.com, JUDITH WILLIAMS <williams_judith@...> wrote:
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> It's good to see you on here Kelly. One question I have is about the shape of the dome. I remember in your video that you had a problem with one wall falling in because the building was not exactly round. If I could get a reasonable amount of this knit stuff I would try a wall this summer. Thanks for your input.
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> Follow progress on the new project at http://www.papercretebyjudith.com/blog
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> More papercrete info at http://squidoo.com/papercretebyjudith
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> To: papercreters@yahoogroups.com
> From: kellyhart@...
> Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2012 16:22:48 +0000
> Subject: [papercreters] re: Earthbag, Superadobe, Hiperdobe, why not Hiperpapercrete?
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> I think that this is a brilliant idea! I have a lot of experience with both earthbag building and papercrete (see the house I built using both at http://earthbagbuilding.com/projects/hart.htm ). I can easily visualize making very substantial walls using the raschel mesh tubes (or even individual bags) filled with damp papercrete.
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> Everything about this idea fits well with the physical needs of curing papercrete: the damp papercrete is held in place while it cures; the excess water can easily drain away; the wall can breathe on both sides once it is cured; the finished wall ends up being substantially reinforced and monolithic; and all of that mesh reinforcement acts to stabilize the wall against potential seismic forces.
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> I'm sure that in reality it would be a messy proposition to be filling and placing that damp papercrete, but then working with papercrete tends to be a messy proposition period.
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> If anybody tries this out, please let use know at www.earthbagbuilding.com or www.greenhomebuilding.com how it works out for you.
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