Hey Connie,
I've used paper/clay/lime/borax with a Tirolessa sprayer and its pretty sticky stuff if you
get the right ratios down, I imagine if you did it in several coats, you could build it up to
several inches thick, as long as you scratched the coats before they set up so that you get
a good mechanical 'keying' of each layer into each other. To strengthen the bonding and
liklihood of everything working out well, you could tie lots of foot long or longer strands
of safety tie wire onto the stock panels or whatever wire you end up using and let them
hang down into the dome. Then when you've sprayed a layer or two of papercrete or etc.
on the underside the dome, use the wires which are extending through your papercrete
and attach stucco netting or chicken wire to the underside of the papercrete. Then put
more papercrete up there and you've got a metal mesh reinforcement layer which helps
the successive layers stay up there.
How am I going to insulate my yurt shaped thingy? That's still debatable as I like a lot of
other folks on here like dense papercrete and paperadobe because its inflammable. (I've
built an oven out of the stuff and it doesn't even char the surface after hours and hours of
burning scrap wood in it.) However, that stuff isn't very insulative. I don't like the idea of
insulation that smolders, or walls that smolder but don't burn. I live in an area without a
fire district, meaning no fire department. I acknowledge the sentiment of many folks on
here who say they'd prefer to live in a house that smolders and gives ample warning so
you can get out with your life and remove your valuables, or even break apart the
offending sections of wall and fight the smoldering fire, rather than in a home that burns
down around you before you can get out. Personally, I'd rather live in neither. I like the
idea of perlite because its light weight and doesn't burn or mold, but I don't know that it
would be a good admix with papercrete to make the paper less apt to smolder because
unlike cement or clay, perlite isn't going to infiltrate the pores of the paper. Perlite instead
of paper might work well, but six cubic feet of perlite is still about twenty bucks where I
live, I'm not sure if I can get it by the truckload which would definitely be cheaper. I'm
thinking of perhaps slipforming several inches of perlite, adobe soil and a little lime, but
this could be costly unless I can find a bulk source for perlite. Then, because I'm a glutton
for punishment, I intend to erect a thermal mass wall inside of the insulating layer:
probably sandbags filled with tamped adobe. I'm also looking into the various Jack Bays
Rub-R-Slate mixes- he started building with pulped paper, clay soil and asphalt emulsion
back in the 30's. I was intrigued to see that the EPA considers asphalt emulsion non-toxic
and it waterproofs papercrete and paperadobe. He made floors, walls, and roofs with the
stuff in various mixes and proportions, often adding sand for compressive strength.
--- In papercreters@yahoogroups.com, "Robert & Connie" <losee04@...> wrote:
>
> John, this is so interesting and helpful, keep the good info coming.
>
> You hit on our main dream for a home, a dome home, so I'm interested in
> your four layers of concrete-soaked burlap over the rebar. Now to make
> the walls 12 inches thick for maximum insulation, would we be able to
> spray the papercrete-clay-lime mix per Merrill's formula on the inside
> of such a dome without having to erect a second layer of rebar or other
> reinforcement to support that papercrete, since papercrete seems to
> have a tendency to want to only stick to itself. Would it adhere well
> to the concrete mortar or not? I am thinking of Mikely Sclar's dome
> where he seemed to sandwich the papercrete between two layers of metal
> supports.
>
> What are you, John, going to do to insulate your present yute-shaped
> home? How would you insulate it if you were building a dome instead?
>
> Thanks a million!
>
> Connie
>
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/papercreters/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/papercreters/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
mailto:papercreters-digest@yahoogroups.com
mailto:papercreters-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
papercreters-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
