Papercrete And Me

How did building with paper begin?

As far as I know there was a man back in the ’30s (or maybe earlier than that) who came up with the idea of papercrete and even went so far as to get a patent on it. But it is a very hard thing to patent seeing as how the ingredients are so readily available and the mixing is so elementary.

I guess it was about 15 – 20 years ago that Eric Patterson and Mike McCain, working independent of each other, came up with the concept of mixing paper with cement and coming out with a product that had strength  but was at the same time lightweight and adaptable to many applications.

I met Eric at a papercrete conference at the U of AZ last Oct (more about that later if I don’t forget). Eric is a printer by trade and was looking for a use for all his waste paper. He mixed up a batch of paper and cement in his kitchen blender (broke the blender) and his version of papercrete was born.

At the same time Mike McCain was working with a very similar product in S CO. He has since relocated to S NM. He was the one who came up with the plan for the now famous tow mixer. He took a stock tank, mounted it on the modified rear end of a car, added a lawn mower blade and voila! He had a batch mixer to which he added water, paper, and cement. This is the very same mixer that I use now.

Eric built an addition to his house and Mike built a home for his mother in Columbus, NM.
I believe Mike is now manufacturing blocks for sale. I’m not sure if Eric is doing much with it any more. Mason Greenstar in Texas has patented their secret formula and are mass producing blocks at their plant.  They are the high end of papercreters. Most of us are working on our own either building houses or using it in other creative ways, such as you with the landscaping. Some are doing very artistic things. Barry Fuller in Phoenix (www.livinginpaper.com) is doing a lot of testing, very technical and scientific.
Clyde T. Curry has done fantastic things at his place in Marathon TX (www.evesgarden.com).

Tags: Building with paper, Papercrete

This entry was posted by Judith on Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 at 8:32 pm and is filed under History of Papercrete. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.