People Who Live In Wood Houses…
Our culture doesn’t look kindly on houses built of unusual things. When most people hear that you’re building a house out of paper, the first thing they say is that paper is flammable. These are usually people who live in houses made of wood.
When we built the walls of our house we made a few small brick-sized blocks that we set aside to experiment on. Once they were completely dry, we placed them in a raging campfire. Except for a few charred edges, they did not burn. We attribute this to the addition of dirt and portland cement, but have heard that just the addition of portland cement alone will keep the blocks from catching fire.
When I re-make my first block today, I’ll leave a little on the side to dry and experiment on again.
Carrie fired up her drill press and made four batches of paper for me yesterday. Enough to finish filling the form. Since I didn’t add enough Portland cement to the first batch, I’m removing it all and adding it to the new mix. It’s important to fill the form completely in one pour. Otherwise it will separate at the seam.
When we built our house, rather than make blocks, we poured the paper/dirt/portland cement mix into forms attached to a wood frame on top of the tire foundation. We finished the walls in the fall and lived in the house during the winter while it dried. Eventually we covered both the inside and out with two layers of stucco, but the first year while they were drying, they were bare. I remember sitting in the house during the day and seeing daylight appear between the layers in the middle of winter. I spent many hours stuffing pink insulation between the cracks, and then buying cans of foam insulation and using that to fill them. As it dried, the papercrete shrunk. Not such a problem in warm weather, but it was a challenge keeping the house warm that first winter. Our ceilings were also made of papercrete, which is where a lot of the heat escaped, either passively or entrained by the winter winds passing over and around the walls.
Now our walls are completely dry and stuccoed, they are quite insulatory. We don’t have air conditioning and heat with only a wood stove in winter.
February 2nd, 2011 at 9:30 am
NASA warns public to prepare for a, “once in a lifetime super solar storm event.” This event can start at anytime with little to no warning. NASA’s Heliophysics Division said: “We know it’s coming but we don’t know how bad it’s going to be.” Are you ready and know what to expect, let alone how to prepare?
All we can do is to make sure that we are prepared. Go to http://www.survivaltraininggear.com. Your number one source for survival training gear.