Papercreters: [papercreters] Re: Wood Chipper for papercrete

Monday, September 7, 2009

[papercreters] Re: Wood Chipper for papercrete

My thoughts and observations on cardboard vs. newsprint for pulp and the difference in length of the fibers are of course my own unscientific observations and certainly not etched in stone. I believe that running the cardboard thru a chipper would work fine and at one time I thought about buying a chipper to do just that. The big drawback as I see it is the price one would have to pay for a chipper big enough and heavy duty enough to do any serious work with would probably run into several thousand dollars. The "cheaper", if one wants to call $700 cheap, ones, I don't think would even come close to doing the job if one wants to do any volume. The soaking of the cardboard and mixing in the tow mixer isn't very "high tech" but works very well indeed and enables one to do some serious production. And, I might add, at a much lower cost and also very low maintenance as any high speed machine such as a big chipper is going to require maintenance and more likely than not expensive repair parts not to mention the gasoline or diesel required to run them. Many PCers live off grid so big electric powered machines are usually not an option. And one last thought, big expensive machines that require gas and diesel to operate are not very green which is one of the things that I find attractive about the low tech approach to papercrete.

Donnie Miller...........The Outback Man

--- In papercreters@yahoogroups.com, JUDITH WILLIAMS <williams_judith@...> wrote:
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> From what Donald Miller tells me the advantage to using cardboard is that the fibers are longer. So perhaps chipping would cut them too short? I too am interested in your results as I am now using cardboard. I have no chipper but soak it for a long time in water which works well for me. So far I have been very happy with the cardboard. Now I am also considering using clay soil in place of cement. If I do that the new project will be very low cost.
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> Sincerely, Judith
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> Check out my new Squidoo Lens at http://www.squidoo.com/papercretebyjudith
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> EMAILING FOR THE GREATER GOOD
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> To: papercreters@yahoogroups.com
> From: Spaceman@...
> Date: Sun, 6 Sep 2009 16:55:56 -0600
> Subject: Re: [papercreters] Wood Chipper for papercrete
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> I would like to know the results of throwing your paper and cardboard
> into a chipper. That is something that I have been discussing with
> friends lately, but nobody has a chipper to try it. Pictures would be
> great, too. How big is your chipper?
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> I think that after a trip through a chipper then your paper/cardboard
> should be mixable with a plaster blade on a drill, as well as any of
> the larger type mixers.
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> spaceman
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> thelandyachtaustin wrote:
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> With access to a wood chipper, is there a reason I should NOT use shredded paper/cardboard/etc (I can dump, for instance, cardboard boxes into the chipper by the palletload) as opposed to just dumping the unshredded paper directly into the mixer?
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> I've seen articles where people bemoan the use of cardboard because it's so difficult to "mix". I would assume the use of a chipper would resolve this...unless there's a reason I'm not seeing for not using it.
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