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BARRY'S LATEST CONSTRUCTION PROJECT IS COMPLETE:
Mr. Barry J. Fuller
(see About Us) made over two thousand blocks and 100 roof panels needed for the walls and roof of Paper Palace One. Testing was done on blocks composed of various combinations of waste materials including clay, crushed glass, fly ash and cardboard. The structure includes a curved wall, glass block windows, porch roof with tiles, MDF doors with stone tile inlays, an ornate circular porch wall opening with east-facing glass sculpture, and papercrete roof.
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The structure is being monitored for three years with sensors feeding data to
a Campbell box - left. Real time readouts of interior and exterior conditions
are shown below. Notice the extremely low power consumption readings.
Power consumption and interior and in-roof temperature and moisture, are updated
every 15 minutes and compared to exterior weather station conditions. This is
telling us a great deal about the properties of papercrete in actual living conditions over time. |
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| Right - Interior of Paper Palace One looking east. Truth window on the left.
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For the past two years, Living In Paper, has worked on structural tests of the material. The results of the tests have proven that papercrete is more than adequate for two-story load bearing residential construction.
Recent tests have shown that the R-value of our new mixes is even higher than previously indicated. The last two tests place the R-value of our walls at 3.01 per inch - about R-36 per foot. The R-value of new wood frame construction is by building standards R-19.
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East facing side of Paper Palace One.
Porch roof finished. |
Interior of Paper Palace One looking west.
Circular truth window on right shows
exposed blocks |
RECENTLY FINISHED
PAPERCRETE HOMES:
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Joyce
Plath and Shane Keller have recently finished a beautiful papercrete
forest cabin in northern California with paper floors and clay exterior
and interior finishes. The photos speak
for themselves. |
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RECENTLY FINISHED
PAPERCRETE HOMES:
Barbara
and Mike Thomas are artists living in northern New Mexico. Mike is an
accomplished sculptural welder and Barbara paints and works with just about any
medium including papercrete - as evidenced by her 10 foot croc below and on our
Home Page. They have a very interesting story about the insulative property of
papercrete which is quoted verbatim here:
"...We
were gone the last three weeks of Dec. 2006 with no heat. Temps were running 3 to 15
degrees at night and never over 40 in the day. Forgot to leave south curtains open
and
after three weeks on New Years Eve we got home and it was 54 degrees in the house."
I think it's safe to
say that papercrete is a superior insulating material.
PAPERCRETE IN WET CONDITIONS:
This edited
letter came from a gentleman who lives in a very wet and humid location in
Missouri. He consulted with me and then
immediately built a pump house. The pump house was an experiment to test papercrete in wet conditions. He is
very satisfied with the performance of the
material and is
starting his family home.
August 1,
2007
Barry, I said
I’d send you a photo of my fibrous cement pump house in South Central Missouri.
Here it is.
The pump house
is 7’ x 9’ x8’ high walls on the outside. There is a reinforced concrete
footing and a stone masonry stem wall. The outside is finished with one layer
(1/2”) of homemade stucco---Portland cement, slick lime, masonry sand, and
water. We added no color and textured it with a brush. After one year
the stucco has developed two small cracks at the corners at the top because I
put it on a little too thick there.
In hot weather
the pump house is cool inside---twelve degrees cooler than outside (without
cooling equipment). We’re
storing pumpkins in it now.
It was easy to
build. My children did much of the work, sometimes unsupervised. My son who
was then 13 did the stone masonry and they all worked on walls down to the 8
year old with the 13 year old driving the van to pull the tow mixer, which was
made by the 11 year old.
I am pleased
with the material, and we are about to start building fibrous cement walls on
our new house any day now.
Thanks for your
counsel, Barry.
Till next
time, Greg Penn 417-683-9000
PAPERCRETE IN THE SNOW:
Anyone concerned with papercrete's affinity for water needs to talk to Shane Keller and Joyce Plath in Northern California. Shane and Joyce have nearly completed a two-story papercrete cabin with clay interior and exterior finishes. The blocks used to build the cabin were buired in snow for months. This structure is located in an area which cannot be accessed in winter due to heavy snows. Take a look at Shane and Joyce's beautiful design in the first snow of a Winter Wonderland.
WOMEN INTO FIRE AND PAPER:
Many women attend our workshops and build their own homes. Judith Williams is an independent builder and innovator. She has devised a special papercrete/pumice mix which produces extremely light, strong blocks. She has also designed and tested a fireplace which works in close proximity with papercrete. Here's her post and beam structure, well underway, in New Mexico.
Check out her beautifully-done
website.
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