Hi. I have long wanted to do a papercrete building.I have been saving paper. I work at a storage shed company and have a seemingly endless supply of shredded office paper, a ton of phone books left by one of the nonpaying renters, a steady stream of cardboard boxes from renters as well as the normal household junk mail and stuff that I have been saving for a year now from 2 households. I recently scored a rear axle to make a mixer with also.
I want to build a large garage with a carport. The garage and carport will take up a rectangle space of about 48x50 feet and be about 16 feet tall. There are building codes where I live but they are not enforced and Im not concerned about them cuz I live in the middle of nowhere and no one cares. There are winds here regularly reaching 100mph and earthquakes (Southern California area) The frost line is not very deep (about 1 foot) and when we do get frost it is just a few hours a few times a year. We get very little rain out here as it is all desert.
I have recently been laying a sprinkler system which has also netted me a bunch of my natural dirt which is mostly compacted HARD sand with silt but little to no clay. I also have a very small supply of 1" lava rock. Gravel or 3/4" rock and firewood is pretty cheap out here. For some reason the concrete dealers out here do not use our natural sand for cement and want to sell me sand....... other then $$$ for the dealers I cannot figure out why.
I was thinking about possibly making earthbags with my natural dirt and laying a course about 3 bags high and then making papercrete blocks to build walls with. Im not sure of the mix portions I should use or how much reinforcing should be done. For the roof I am still undecided as well and am thinking about layers of mesh wire with pc covered with something that would be cheap and suitable for rain catching. I also like the idea of building the pc mixer with a water catch.
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