Papercreters: [papercreters] Papercrete Nirvana [3 Attachments]

Sunday, July 26, 2009

[papercreters] Papercrete Nirvana [3 Attachments]

[Attachment(s) from JUDITH WILLIAMS included below]

I had quite a day yesterday. I wanted to try my new idea of embedding blocks in a slip form wall. Of course I got off to a bad start by getting started too late. It was almost noon with the temp in the high 90s. I am a wimp in the heat, but I had a friend volunteer to put a new fuel pump in my jeep and didn't want to appear to be abandoning him. So I got out to my place at high noon and couldn't find the pump to inflate the soccer ball in my mixer. Rigged up this thing I found in the borrowed truck I had so was able to get to ball inflated. Am now using cardboard in place of newspapers. Not sure how I like it. The cardboard had been soaking for a week and was smelly with ugly water all around. Couldn't find my rubber gloves so had to just dig in and get my hands dirty. Mixed it up and it came out OK, except for the plastic that gets all wound around the blade. But then I had to rig up a scaffold because the wall is way higher than I can reach. So I got the ladder for one end and a combination of papercrete blocks and 2 saw horses stacked up for the other end, and 2 roughsawn 2 x 4s for the plank. A chair to get up to the plank. 5 gallon buckets filled with slurry transported into the building over a little bridge/ramp thing, then hefting them onto the plank, climbing up and down, trying to lift the buckets so as not to disturb the form which was tentatively held on one end with a screw in the rotten part of the upright post. Screw came out, got put back in, broke off and held the form about 1" out from where it should have been. Eventually got all the forms moved up and in place, laid the blocks in between and poured slurry all around. Not bad. Waited a half hour or so, moved the forms up again (no small feat for a person working alone), set more blocks and started to pour again. Then I noticed that the previous pour was coming apart, detaching itself from the embedded block and falling off. So I quickly got the cordless drill again to move the form back down. Dead battery so I had to keep changing bits (some screws are phillips and some are torque, my favorite. I have a drill for each). Finally got the forms back down but the wall was ruined so I had to scoop out what was in there and put in new. Took all the buckets of slurry down from the planks, back into the wheelbarrow, back into the mixer with more water, drove around the block again but the mixer wasn't full enough for the blade to be effective so the slurry stayed dry on the bottom and wet on the top.Had to hand scoop the slurry into the block forms. Also had to detach the mixer from the truck so I could move it myself over the forms since I had no one to guide me. Got the forms filled. I stripped down and had a cold hose shower, opened a beer and was sitting in my chair half catatonic and naked when someone drove in the driveway, a person I'm not very fond of with his new lady friend. Ran into my shed real quick and got presentable. Showed them the papercrete project and treid to sound enthusiastic. They finally left. Wanted to spend the night out there (lots of tension here at home between housemates) but my inflatable mattress had a leak and the wind came up and it started to rain. So I came home, had a good bath, confronted the housemate on problems, went to bed and had a great sleep. But I'm beat today and have just enough energy to type this little tirade.

Sincerely, Judith

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Sincerely, Judith

Check out my new Squidoo Lens at http://www.squidoo.com/papercretebyjudith