Sean Sands' Papercrete House

First, we'll look at Sean Sands' project. The key piece of equipment in his paper block "factory" is the mixer, which consists of a 55-gallon drum with a lawnmower blade in the bottom, powered by an old pickup truck for which he paid $150. What he has created here is a huge version of the everyday kitchen blender, and it works on the same principle -- the "glop" gets sucked down the center of the blender to the blades, then returns up the walls to the top, where it is pulled down to the blades again, over and over until the right consistency is obtained.

The old truck which powers the mixer is on the right side of the picture, and on the bottom-left corner is one of two 55-gallon drums in which newspapers and magazines are soaked until they are soft. In the background is a wall of fibrous cement blocks drying in the sun.

Sean adds a shovelful of cement to the mixer. Each batch requires one shovel of cement and three shovels of sifted sandy dirt to a drum of newspapers and magazines. "Glossy" magazines work fine -- in fact, they are preferred, because the "slick" magazine paper contains clay, which is beneficial to the mix. One soaker drum of paper will make 20 blocks.

 

When the batch is ready, he unplugs the opening at the bottom of the mixer and lets the slurry ooze out. Wearing rubber gloves, he spreads the slurry evenly over the draining tray, which allows excess water to drain out. The draining tray consists of a sheet or corrugated steel curved into a U-shape. Over that is a layer of chickenwire, and a layer of plastic shade cloth. Each batch makes five or six blocks, which he calls "bunker blocks" because they are made with sandbags, and retain the sandbag shape when dry.

While the slurry drains, he readies two plastic sandbags. The sandbags are inserted into two-foot lengths of six-inch galvanized stovepipe, and each stovepipe rests in a five-gallon plastic bucket. Then, after inserting a funnel, he shovels slurry into the sandbags.

The sandbags are placed inside a wooden form.

Then he tamps them down with a hoe. This results in a denser, more evenly-filled block. The form can be removed immediately and then , after 12 hours of drying, the bag can be peeled away from the block. The sandbags are reused indefinitely. The blocks are then stacked to dry for several days, at which time they can be used for construction.

Sean views block making as a form of meditation. Many repetitive jobs can become deadly dull after awhile, but for him, making blocks is part of a highly goal-oriented process that engages his full energies (he is not just making blocks, he is building houses). Standing in front of a wall of blocks drying in the sun, Sean holds a finished block with one hand to show how light it is. Each block weighs approximately 15 pounds, and contains 10 cents worth of cement. All other ingredients are free -- talk about cheap!

Colored glass blocks make a nice skylight at the top of the house. The blocks are beautiful shades of red, blue and green. One-hundred-fifty bottles were inserted into the walls for light. The interior of the house has a snug, cavelike feel. There are no right angles in this house -- all surfaces are curved.

This house contains no wood, which helps to explain its low cost. The main arches were formed with wire "livestock panels" curved into position and covered with 1-inch chickenwire. Then the wire was covered with a slurry of well-drained fibrous cement. After curing, he then laid down a layer of "bunker blocks" and covered this with more slurry. The only reason for using wire at all is to hold up the fibrous cement as it hardens. Once the fibrous cement cures, it makes a very strong roof. Sean and Mike are experimenting with casting curved roof panels on the ground, then lifting them into position when they are dry. Such a method would require no wood or wire to build the roof of a house, and a roof would go up very quickly.

Sean plans to add a final, water-resistant coating to the outside of the house. Ordinarily, he adds one shovel of cement, and three shovels of sandy dirt to a batch of paper slurry. To make his surface coating, he plans to experiment with the following mixture: to a load of paper slurry, he will add two shovels of cement, two shovels of lime, six shovels of clean sand, and possibly salt as a hardening agent. This he says, will give him a hard, water-resistant, surface-bonded, final coating.

This house has no foundation -- it is built directly on bare dirt. Much of this house is underground. Rather than digging the hole first and then building the house around the hole, Sean built a low wall with the roof over it first, and then went in and excavated the inside of the house. This, he says, has advantages:

"This allows you to get a structure up very quickly, and then go under, where you have a microclimate. It's sheltered from the sun, the rain, the freezing, and you can work all day inside without any discomfort. With conventional construction, if you're stuck with your building half up, it's deteriorating, you're spending money for commuting, paying rent for accommodations, you might lose heart because it takes too long. This way, our arm is to get up the structure as quickly as possible and as cheaply as possible, and then you've got a place you can stay, and you can work inside, night and day, in any sort of weather, and you're protected."