You are doing it just right, Judith. With concrete you want to keep the water to the minimum amount that lets you mix. With papercrete you need lots of water to pulp and most of the water goes away rapidly when you put it into molds or forms, what's left is plenty to hydrate the cement. For consistent results you should try to keep the paper/cement ratio the same by weighing/measuring, but in reality a pretty wide variation still works. The process with papercrete is entirely different from concrete - it will stay spongy until it dries completely and then it is hard, sounds like wood when you knock on it. If you re-wet it, it gets spongy again and loses compressive strength until it dries out. It is not brittle like concrete. Freezing while wet does not seem to have any adverse effects. If you hit dry pc with a sledgehammer you better watch out or the hammer will bounce back and hit you in the face. Breaking up leftovers to go into a mixer is a lot of work, a lot more than breaking urbanite.
Papercrete is a good use of waste paper with a minimum amount of cement. If you want concrete with cellulose fiber reinforcing then that's fine, but you can get by with a lot less cement and still get a very good material that is a lot better for the environment than concrete.
I'm done beating that horse for a while, need to go outside and remove the rear end from a parts truck to make another pc mixer.
spaceman
JUDITH WILLIAMS wrote:
Another point not related to the database, trying to mix papercrete like the concrete guys do it just won't work. Most people with concrete backgrounds choke on the amount of water used in mixing and say it'll never work. Fact is that most of the water drains away leaving the cement in place. If your papercrete gets hard enough to knock on after just a couple of hours, you are using way too much cement. Papercrete isn't concrete and goes through a completely different curing process.
I have been mixing papercrete for a few years now and have gotten my formula to where I like it. Here's the thing though. I have never been sure of the right amount of water to use. Some people say too much water will make it weak but my experience has been that a wetter mix works better. It seems to be more uniform (the ingredients can really get mixed together) and the resulting blocks are very strong. I use 1/2 sack of portland in the 200 gallon mixer. The mix is about the consistency of oatmeal. If it is too dry it is hard to get out of the mixer. If it is too wet I don't really have a problem with it. The water leaches out and the blocks come out fine. Am I right about this or is it my imagination? And now that I'm slip forming I like the idea of the water from the upper courses leaching into the lower ones and letting them cure more slowly.
The blocks are not hard enough to knock on after a couple of hours but they are after they have cured completely. I am now using up a lot of old blocks, some of them the first I made. They had a lot of cement in them, are very heavy and impossible to cut with a saw. My reason for using papercrete is the light weight of the finished product. I need something I can lift and maneuver into place without help. I see no advantage in using more cement or in limiting the anount of water. My existing building has been standing for 3 years and is doing just fine.
Sincerely, Judith
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To: papercreters@yahoogroups.com
From: Spaceman@starship-enterprises.net
Date: Tue, 20 Oct 2009 22:48:00 -0600
Subject: Re: [papercreters] Re: Ron & Doris Papercrete Formula/ database
Got into the entry screen. What we need is a list of standard material to pick from and indicate quantities so that it can be cross referenced and searched by material.
The only accurate way to measure the ingredients is by weight (yes water comes in gallons, but each gallon weighs a specific amount). Dry paper gets a lot heavier when you add water to it. When draining, the water loss varies depending on what you are draining on, humidity, wind, temperature, etc. To say dump it on the ground and then use it the next morning, there is no way you can be accurate. That's OK as a general guideline and sure, it works, but for any kind of code acceptance you have to have accurate measurements. A certified testing lab won't accept gallons of semi wet pulp as a quantity.
There's nothing wrong with doing it the way Ron & Doris, and Judith, are doing it. That works great for a one-off project. If we want standard formulas to yield consistent results then we will have to use standard measurements and standard tests.
Another point not related to the database, trying to mix papercrete like the concrete guys do it just won't work. Most people with concrete backgrounds choke on the amount of water used in mixing and say it'll never work. Fact is that most of the water drains away leaving the cement in place. If your papercrete gets hard enough to knock on after just a couple of hours, you are using way too much cement. Papercrete isn't concrete and goes through a completely different curing process.
spaceman
ClarkG wrote:
Hi I have a phone list in mysql and a few other test pages at this free web hosting site. No one ever went to them but me. After posting this new database here at this group the traffic spiked and the site was down for a couple of hours while their admin check it out to see what was up. It back on line now. http://cgetty.webatu.com/ ID paper password crete Clark ------------pc --------- --------- ------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups. yahoo.com/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.group/papercrete rs/ yahoo.com/ (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:papercretersgroup/papercrete rs/join -digest@yahoogro mailto:papercretersups.com -fullfeatured@ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: papercreters-yahoogroups. com unsubscribe@ <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoogroups. com yahoo.com/ info/terms/
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