Eve's Garden Organic Bed & Breakfast and Ecology Resource Center

This is Papercrete

Papercrete is a building material comprised of a mixture of Portland cement and recycled paper fiber — a light-weight, insulating concrete. The maximum insulating value is obtained when the dry matrix includes the greatest density of air pockets. High strength is obtained when the paper fiber is thoroughly coated by the portland cement.

Cellulose (paper) fibers tend to have great porosity and surface area. This allows for a super saturation when paper is immersed in water. The long paper fibers experience a stack effect, giving the matrix body enough to support the Portland cement which then crystalizes on the three dimensional fiber matrix. The water evaporates and voilà — papercrete.

After working in concert for three years evesgarden.org, masongreenstar.com and livinginpaper.com would like to offer to the industry our standardized base formulas for the manufacture of papercrete bricks, plaster and mortar. These formulas are designed to insure structural integrity, and exceptional fire resistance in a papercrete building system.

There is considerable reason for concern that a sufficient minimum volume of cement paste be supplied to properly bond and encapsulate the paper fiber in a papercrete mix, thus prohibiting the possibility of incendiary conditions.

Considerable cost and CO2 reductions can be obtained by extending the portland paste by adding both metakaolin pozzolan and perlite aggregate, essentially making mason's mortar and then adding in the paper fiber. Polypropylene fiber and specific processing additives can be added, to further enhance the strength and character of the finished product.

It is advised that you first make the mortar to insure an even mix, then add the fiber , reducing the fiber volume to one fifth to make a stronger mortar or plaster.

Our suggested standardized mix for papercrete bricks is as follows-

For one cubic yard mix:
2 cubic feet of portland cement
2/3 cubic foot of metakaolin pozzolan
12 cubic feet of perlite or plaster sand
125 pounds of short aspect paper fiber (newspaper)

At Eve's Garden we have based all of our research on the employment of the standard adobe building system of the American Southwest. Therefore we make several managable-sized bricks and either mortar them, or drystack and surface bond, as has been done with adobe for 3000 years. Our mortars have a phenomenal affinity for our bricks and we have had great success with plastering without the use of stucco net wire. Even greater success has been obtained by dry stacking the bricks and using our mortar as a surface bonding agent. Following sound building practices such as perimeter foundation and load distributing bond beams, along the line of the approved building code for adobe brick construction, yields a strong, energy efficient, super insulated (R40 per foot of thickness) building system.

Architecture and Safety

Most of the structures in the world are made of mud, stones and sticks. Many of these structures collapse in earthquakes and injure or kill people.

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Here is a photo of the earthquake that struck Turkey in 1999. Notice that the dome structure is still standing while most of the other buildings around it have collapsed.

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Around 100 A.D., Roman builders rotated an arch around its vertical axis and discovered that it creates a strong three-dimensional shape -- the monolithic dome.

Papercrete, which has a concrete-like strength, but without the heavy weight of concrete, allows us to return to classical architecture. Here are some domes and arches we have built as part of Eve's Garden Bed & Breakfast...

And some photos of the construction process...

Stucco Tools

A great tool for building papercrete homes is this stucco sprayer. It can be used for a wide range of papercrete mixes , from progressive stiffening form-work to colored mixes of papercrete stucco.