Paper homes

Paper homes: An idea to build on
By Christopher Solomon
article from:
http://realestate.msn.com/Improve/green/Article2.aspx?cp-documentid=5545522>1=10534


Constructing a house from something as flimsy as paper may seem crazy, but more people are discovering that a material called "papercrete" is inexpensive, strong and surprisingly durable.

* What's a 'green' home, anyway?
* 16 easy ways to save water
* The best 'green' materials for your home

Our culture doesn't look kindly on homes built of unusual stuff. Even fairy tales frown on them: The big bad wolf blew right through that piggy's straw house. Ditto the porker's house of sticks. And the old woman who lived in the shoe? She didn't know what to do. A house made of paper would then sound crazy, right? Hold on.

Buildings made of paper are real -- and they don't simply turn to mush in a rainstorm. The most well-known of these, the shelters designed by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, are crafted of cardboard tubes. Resilient and sometimes elegant, Ban's designs have housed people after earthquakes in Japan, India and Turkey.

A handful of paper homes in the U.S., including an experimental one at the University of Arizona, also have been constructed of baled wastepaper.

But perhaps paper's most promising use in home construction is as a key ingredient in what's often called "papercrete." In a nutshell, it's an industrial-strength papier-mâché that can be made by almost anyone, cheaply, formed into blocks and used like bricks.

"The interest in this has exploded in the last three years worldwide" as people look for cheaper, more environmentally friendly ways to build, says Barry Fuller, alternative building specialist and creator of the Web site "Living in Paper."

Papercrete's reach is still extremely small, but it's growing: from fewer than 20 papercrete structures in the U.S. three years ago to around 100 now, according to Fuller. He's also consulted with papercrete enthusiasts across the world, from South Africa to Great Britain.

A simple mixture

In its purest form, papercrete is simply paper, water and portland cement. People often add sand for extra strength, fly ash to make the mix set harder or dirt in place of cement for a more earth-friendly, adobelike substance.

There's some disagreement over what type of paper is best to start with -- some say newspaper, while others claim almost anything will do. (One of the first discoverers of papercrete, a printer named Eric Patterson of Silver City, N.M., used junk mail in his original recipe.) Either way, it must first get pulped with water. Since papercrete homes are almost always built by individuals, to create this mash people build what essentially are huge, homemade kitchen blenders, often in 200-gallon tubs, with a lawn-mower blade as a stirrer.

The final, oatmealy slurry is poured into forms -- usually fat bricks resembling thick boards or cinder blocks.

The resulting blocks are "like a really light-feeling pine. They sound like wood when you tap on them," Fuller says. "And they give a little bit when you push hard on them."

The blocks' drying process can take weeks, even in hot, dry weather, which explains why most papercrete homes appear in the Southwest. And a finished home often looks like an adobe building or a straw-bale home.

Surprisingly durable

If all of this sounds a touch experimental, it should. Papercrete hasn't yet been tested for its use as a building material -- at least to the evaluation standards of the International Building Code, which is used by most of the country. In fact, there's not yet even any established means for evaluating papercrete as a building material. Only when it's been tested successfully might the IBC be altered to accommodate it. This entire process is expensive and can take years, those familiar with the process say.

Still, papercrete might surprise you in a number of ways, including its response to the elements:

* Fire. You might think a house made with paper would be a tinderbox. Not so much. "The blocks will burn, if you throw them on your campfire," says inventor Patterson. But when a flame is held to a wall, the papercrete mostly just smolders, say those who have tried it. And some who've worked with papercrete say brushing boric acid on blocks around outlets and other more fire-prone areas fireproofs them.
* Rain. Water isn't the nemesis you might guess, either. While papercrete enthusiasts say they wouldn't necessarily encourage someone to build a home in the rainiest climate -- say, in a rain forest -- structures are going up everywhere from rainy western Washington state to thunderstorm-prone Missouri. Some experts do advise using sealant on walls, though, and not using papercrete as an outer roofing material.

Overall durability seems good, too. In his search for old papercrete structures, Fuller found a large, abandoned sheep-shearing shed with wings made of papercrete north of Alamosa, Colo., built in a floodplain, that he guessed was at least 20 years old, and made by another papercrete innovator, Mike McCain. Other than some cracks in the stucco, "it was in remarkably good shape,” he says. "The wood trim on it was in much worse shape than the papercrete itself."

The pros of paper

While it's true that papercrete hasn't been subjected to IBC testing, there's been plenty of experimentation by enthusiasts and at least one university. Some of the more widely acclaimed papercrete pluses include:

Strength. Testing of many papercrete recipes done in conjunction with Arizona State University's Fulton School of Engineering found that "basically strength is not an issue," says Fuller. "It is stronger than some softwood and less strong than some hardwoods."

Apostolos Fafitis, an associate professor who supervised the testing, notes: "It has adequate strength for, say, two or maybe even three stories. It's also very light, so it's good for panels, for walls."

The blocks' thickness helps their strength hugely, too. An experimental papercrete home built by Fuller, dubbed the "Paper Palace I," has a ridiculously heavy, six-ton papercrete roof that's 18 inches thick in places. ("I did it that way because I wanted to see if it could be done," he says.) But the home's bottom blocks bear a weight of just five pounds per square inch, Fuller says, because they're a foot thick.

Insulation. Papercrete is a good insulator, keeping homes cool in the summer, warm in the winter. "As the saying goes, 'Heat it with a candle, cool it with an ice cube,' " says Gordon Solberg, author of "Building with Papercrete and Paper Adobe."

Just how good an insulator? Depending on the recipe of papercrete, tests showed an "R-value" of anywhere from 1.75 per inch to more than 3.01 per inch -- "but most in the high 2s," says Fuller. (A high R-value means less money on heating and air-conditioning bills.) So a papercrete home with walls using 12-inch blocks could have an R-value that's more than 30. By contrast, says Fuller, the walls of the old tract home he lives in, made of uninsulated, open-celled concrete blocks, are a total of R-1.75. New-home construction in Arizona requires R-19, says Fuller.

Tim Pye and his wife, Catheryn Swann, are taking advantage of papercrete's insulating prowess for their off-the-grid home outside of Sedona, Ariz.

"It's fantastic," Pye says of their home. "It's quiet." And it’s quite warm in winter, with just a little help from the in-floor radiant heat, which is powered by a wind turbine and solar panels. And even though the house is in the desert, there's no air conditioning; the house stays so cool in summer that the couple simply opens the doors and windows at night and shuts them during the day, to regulate the temperature, he says.

Cost. Many people get into papercrete because they want to build a cheaper home. Costs vary hugely, however. Some people have built the simplest structures for less than $10 a square foot. "To be safe, I tell people it should be possible to save 30% on construction costs by building with paper," Fuller says. Doing your own labor will save you more. "I know I can save 50% or more because I will build it myself," he says of the split-level, 3,500-square-foot home he's planning.

The green question

Cost-savings aren't the only thing driving papercrete enthusiasm. Many people are also lured by the idea of a more eco-friendly house.

But how "green" is papercrete?

Sure, the technology recycles a lot of paper. And the material's such a good insulator that it tamps down electricity costs. But "I'm not particularly enthusiastic," says Bruce King, director of the Ecological Building Network in San Rafael, Calif.

While conceding that he doesn't know a great deal about papercrete, King says he does know that papercrete recipes almost always use portland cement --"so that alone to me is already a nonstarter." Why? Because the production of portland cement, which is literally the glue that binds together concrete, accounts for anywhere from 6% to 8% of all greenhouse gases produced by human activity today, according to industry and government estimates, says King.

King says he is working with others to come up with a suitable, more environmentally friendly substitute for portland cement.

Papercrete's next champion

While the biggest thing holding papercrete back from wider adoption may be the lack of IBC testing and acceptance, many enthusiasts say what's also needed is a papercrete "champion" -- someone to step up and spend the money to popularize it and legitimize it.

Zach Rabon may be the person to do it. He's president and founder of MasonGreenstar, an alternative building company that plans to open a papercrete-block factory by year’s end.
A papercrete house in the Southwest / Photo courtesy of Eric Patterson

"We're getting ready to put in a little over a million-dollar plant here in Mason, Texas, that will be able to create 7,500 blocks" in a 10-hour cycle -- or up to 15,000 blocks a day, says Rabon. In doing so, the plant will use up to 30,000 pounds of recycled newspaper, phone books and lottery tickets daily. And, notes Rabon, "We'll definitely have a block in the near future that is going to have zero cement."

The plant is believed to be the nation's first mass-production papercrete block facility, making a patent-pending product Rabon calls the Blox Building System. "We're creating a pre-insulated block, essentially -- and I think that will sell all over the world." The Blox are the dimensions of cinder blocks, with a hole in the center for rebar or wiring, which makes them easily understood and used by masons. MasonGreenstar also is offering seminars to contractors and masons on how to build with them, Rabon says.

The Blox will be offered for around the cost of a cinder block, which right now is about $1.79, says Rabon. That's more expensive than making them yourself, say other papercreters -- but also a heckuva lot less mess and effort.

MasonGreenstar also has started the long process of getting its block tested and approved by International Building Code officials, something Rabon hopes will happen by early 2009.

Still, homeowner Tim Pye thinks that for the foreseeable future, papercrete will be seen as too odd -- too much like the earthships or geodesic domes of yesteryear -- to be embraced widely, or even not-so-widely.

But Eric Patterson, papercrete's inventor, has a rosier outlook.
"It will eventually get there," he says, "because it's smart."

To learn more about papercrete, visit the following Web sites:

http://www.papercrete.com

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/papercreters/

http://livinginpaper.com

http://bloxbuildingsystems.com

http://papercretenm.com