[papercreters] RE: Cactus Juice sealant

For Dan Berry, who asked about cactus juice sealant:

"If you have prickly pear cactus around they can be chopped up in a fifty-five gallon drum and left to percolate a bit. After a while a green sticky goo is produced that can be lifted out and added to mud to make a fairly waterproof plaster."

-- http://www.greenhomebuilding.com/QandA/adobe/mixes.htm


""I would say that you might cut up purple and green cactus and put them in separate five-gallon buckets and cover them with water. After a week or ten days they should ferment and if you keep stirring daily it should turn into a gelatinous mess. Then you lift out the mess with some fork-like device and leave behind the spines. The gelatinous mess can then be used to make plaster and I think around a pint per wheelbarrow is a ratio for starting. Maybe a quart. Every soil is different in how it reacts to admixtures.

"Then you just have to scientifically monkey around till you find a mixture that can be troweled, does not crack upon drying, and demonstrates an enhanced resistance to water erosion."
-- ibid


So there you have some basic instructions.

Saw a video last year of someone -- maybe it was Mikey Skylar? -- spraying a cactus juice formula directly onto the exterior surface of a papercrete structure. So believe that that is an option as well. Not sure how much you would thin it with water, etc.

Am sure that if you Google cactus juice sealant, cactus juice waterproofing, prickly pear cactus gel waterproofing, and similar search terms that you will come up with a lot of information.

And undoubtedly there are people on this group who are experienced with using prickly pear juice and can add to this.

-- ken winston caine




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