I've eaten humble pie before and this email is to support slurryguy's
claim of fire resistance of papercrete (if you do it right). ....and
to say I'm sorry for jumping to conclusions.
All of my previous testing showed that papercrete would not burn, BUT
my concern was after-glow, the charcoal briquet effect. Even with a
lot of minerals added to PC, there would be after-glow, with the
papercrete sample ultimately consummed as it smoldered, over time.
Sometimes it took awhile, but there was always a slow glow.
In my first test samples with borax and boric acid added, there was
still "glow". But, as I describe below, the glow can be controlled
completely with borax/boric acid (if you do it right). Actually, the
borax doesn't help stop glow, since it is a flame suppressant, and
not for suppressing glow. The PC samples don't "flame" when they
burn anyway, and in my opinion borax not necessary in PC for fire
proofing. But borax is good for fungus and critter control.
In the link below, I exposed the PC sample to the 2000F. blue tip of
a propane torch for a minute. You could say that's pretty drastic.
And you're right. But it worked.
This proof of concept is important for the code portion of this work,
since PC can't be used in a many construction situations if there is
no simple (cheap) way to totally fireproof it. What seems crucial in
my evaluation is pre-dissolving the boric acid separately in a small
amount of water, squeezing water from the paper slurry, and adding
the dissolved boric acid back into the paper, thus recreating the
slurry with a strong dose of boric acid. The slurry with the boric
acid mix added back in was still very thick, I didn't want to lose
the boric acid mix in water dripping out of the final mix.
See for yourself.
http://www.domovitae.com/fcrete/pcfire2.htm
Thanks slurryguy for not banning me from the group. - Duane
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