Papercrete And Me

New window in cut out section of wall.

When building with papercrete there are two basic methods of construction. One is similar to building with concrete blocks. You mix the papercrete and form it into blocks. The other way is to make forms right where the walls will go and pour the slurry into them. As I’ve shown before I am using a hybrid of the two methods. I make my wall forms, pour in the slurry and embed blocks in it.

Notice the crack at the left top of door.

There are several advantages to using this modified slip form method. The one I am going to highlight today is the fact that the walls actually shrink very little. I noticed when I was building with blocks and mortar that the mortar would sometimes shrink a lot or the walls would separate at certain weak points. When pouring the walls in place and making sure they wrap around the entire building with no breaks there is little shrinkage and no cracks. Cutting out openings after the wall has cured for a couple of months (or however long it takes in your climate) eliminates weak areas and cracks.

After curing you can cut out the openings for the doors and windows. I have tried using a sawzall and my small chain saw but neither was up to the task. The blade of the sawzall was too thin so that when the piece of wall was cut out it was hard to push through because it was sort of wedged in. The small chain saw didn’t work well because the bar was too short and didn’t go all the way through in some places.

What I had to do was borrow a chain saw with a 24″ bar. What a difference! It cut like butter. Made me wish I hadn’t spent so much time with the other tools. So when you are planning to do your cutting borrow or buy a suitable chain saw and save yourself a lot of work.

Of course before you can cut you have to mark where your openings will go. I have this peeve about windows and doors being at different heights. Is it me or is it annoying to look at some of these mobile homes that have windows of all different shapes and sizes placed any which way? I hate that! So I used the French door opening as my guide (because it was the highest) and went around from there with the level marking the tops of all the openings. Then I marked the width and height of each opening. I added 1 1/2 inches to each side of each opening to allow for the frames. Then I fired up the saw and cut them out.

WARNING: I have never seen so much dust in my life. It looked as if there was a fire in the building with smoke-like dust pouring from every opening. You literally couldn’t see your hand in front of your face and it was absolutely impossible to breathe while cutting. I didn’t use a mask or respirator and am sorry now. So don’t even think about doing this until you have the proper protection.

Cutting out a window. Always use proper respiratory protection.

I used 2 x 6 lumber for framing. I just screwed them together and squared them up. Then I slid them right into the opening. I haven’t done this yet but I will probably put some anchors through the frame and into the wall a few inches to keep it stable. The doors will definitely need anchors. I have some threaded rod but may try the masonry ones. I forget what you call them but you slide them in and turn a sort of screw and the end in the wall spreads out – like a molly.

Large window.

Once the frames and anchors are in I will use some of that expanding foam insulation and go around sealing all the gaps.

Hanging doors is an art I’ve never developed so I’ll need to get some help with that. I’ll keep you posted.

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This entry was posted by Judith on Friday, January 28th, 2011 at 5:31 pm and is filed under What Was I Thinking???. 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.