Larry,
It's time to do some math. Nothing particularly complicated, but I
encourage you to think this through before you create a monster
headache for yourself.
1. What are you wanting to build?
2. What size?
3. What thickness of walls?
4. What type of roof?
Sketch it up.
From that information you should be able to easily calculate the
total volume of papercrete needed. Include whatever will be required
to build the walls and other portions of the structure that will be
made from papercrete.
Then think about what recipe you anticipate using. Make a few small
batches and test them. THIS IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT.
Once you know what recipe you're going to use, you should be able to
calculate how much paper you will be needing.
To illustrate: A simple rectangular box of a 1000 sqft house might
be 40ft x 25ft. Let's guess that this particular house has 1ft thick
walls and 8ft high ceilings. That's about 720 cubic ft of wall.
(I'm going to ignore the roof for this example and assume it's not a
papercrete roof.)
All of that papercrete for the walls would fit inside a 10ft cube if
you filled it. When you consider that you'll be adding other
ingredients to the paper to make papercrete, a 10ft cube of paper,
tightly packed, should be more than enough paper.
Hmmmmmmm... a 10 ft cube... that's not so huge.
My suggestion:
BUILD A PAPERCRETE STORAGE SHED.
Almost every local building code allows people to build small storage
sheds at least 100 sqft without getting a permit or worrying about
inspections (make sure you verify what your local govt allows...
everywhere is a little different.)
hmmmmm.....100sqft shed? that might be 10ft square? 10ft tall?
That's a 10ft cube. Don't like those dimensions? Fine... change
them to fit your taste. My point is to build your shed large enough
to hold all the paper you're going to need to build the house. If
your local codes won't allow a shed that big, at least build it as
big as they'll allow.
Building a papercrete shed will allow you to learn about papercrete,
and give you a place to store your paper all in one shot.
That small shed structure is something you should be able to build
before winter hits too.
One further advantage to the shed concept is that when the shed gets
full, you'll know to stop getting more paper until you decide to
build something else.
As far as a shredder goes... I suggest building a simple papercrete
mixer and using that. It'll be handy for building your shed anyway.
If your shredder can double as a papercrete mixer you've got the
problem solved.
Oh... a little more math...
At a collection rate of 3 cubic yards of paper per week, you'll be
able to fill a 10ft cube in 37 weeks. I suggest not trying to fill
the shed entirely. I suggest trying to make papercrete as you go and
filling the shed with papercrete, but it may not be entirely
practical.
Make sure you do your own math to fit your particular situation and
not just follow my very arbitrary example. Hey... you never know...
I might stink at math and have calcuated it all wrong in the first
place. You better double check for yourself! ;)
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