Good Morning Judith,
I hope you check your email this morning before you go give your
presentation.
Sometimes we get too technical on this list, and I confess I'm a
primary culprit at times. Papercrete is really a simple material to
work with. Sorry for your confusion. I'll try to give you the
simple bullet points without all the techno-babble.
1. I recommend using a term like "fire resistant" and not using a
term like "fireproof."
2. Almost all papercrete does NOT support open flame under
reasonable conditions.
3. Some papercrete can tend to smolder. That is if it gets hot
enough, and there is enough air available, it may tend to glow with a
hot coal and very slowly burn and eventually turn the entire chunk of
papercrete to ash. This is easily prevented using the right
papercrete mix.
4. Generally speaking the more mineral content in papercrete the
less it is likely to burn in any form (flame or smolder).
5. The burning tipping point in papercrete recipes seems to be
around 2 parts (by weight) fine mineral ingredients and one part
paper. Fine mineral ingredients are things like cement, clay, and
flyash. My experince has indicated that sand only has a very small
effect on fire resistance. This is not a univeral rule that works
for every recipe, but it is a good reference point. For example, if
a simple recipe has 1 lb cement and 1 lb paper, it will likely
continue to smolder once it gets started smoldering. If a simple
recipe has 3 lbs cement and 1 lb paper, it will likely not continue
burning in any form.
6. Even the best papercrete mix will tend to char or blacken on its
surface if exposed to fire or a strong heat source. All of the
previous points refer to whether the papercrete will continue to burn
once a fire source is removed.
7. Borax and Boric Acid act as fire retardants (and insect and mold
retardants). Adding borax or boric acid will allow you to use less
cement or clay and still have a fire resistant papercrete. I
personally haven't experimented enough with boric acid to feel
comfortable giving recipe ratios and performance predictions. Adding
1% to 10% borax to a mix (by weight) will help dramatically in
creating a fire resistant papercrete mix. This can allow you to use
less cement, clay, flyash, or other fine mineral content than would
otherwise be required to obtain a fire resistant mix. Typical
laundry type borax works fine.
8? Have fun at your presentation. Take along a few sample blocks.
Have a friend take a picture or two and email them to you (and/or me)
so we can post a picture of your smiling face sharing your wisdom
with the world. :)
--- In papercreters@yahoogroups.com, JUDITH WILLIAMS
<williams_judith@...> wrote:
>
>
> Hi, I hope you're checking email tonight. I'm giving a presentation
tomorrow on papercrete and realize I have to say something about
flammability so I've been going through old emails and came across
one by you about borax. Here's the thing: I am totally non-scientific
and can't seem to translate all the info about precentages and
amounts of borax or boric acid to add to the mix. I don't want to
give misinformation. I am convinced that papercrete is the best
material to build with but if it's not safe then I'll have to find a
way to change that. Can you give me a simple to understand way that I
can add borax to my mix so it won't burn?
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