Papercrete And Me

Different sized blocks make a messy looking wall.

This line of blocks will extend down the road as more batches are mixed, poured and cut.

Making blocks has always been my favorite part of working with papercrete. I think it’s because it’s something that can be done without the help of other people. I loved getting an early start, having all my stuff organized so I could move right along assembly line style. On a good day I could make about 10 mixer loads of blocks, one batch after the other in a long line down the road. I just got into a good zone. It’s like meditation.

I must admit that constructing a wall with the blocks was not enjoyable at all. It seemed like a lot of work and didn’t come out very well. I learned the hard way the importance of making uniform blocks. Mine were all different sizes so when they went into the wall the result had a definite “rustic” effect.

It was when I had the walls up to about 8 feet that I realized the job was too big for me so I decided to cut the main room in half. I would finish that room leaving the rest of the house as an an outdoor kitchen and patio. I set up forms to slip form this dividing wall and was amazed at how beautifully it turned out. Right then I knew I would not be stacking any more blocks into walls. I would slip form my next building entirely.

But what would I do with all those lest over blocks I had so enjoyed making? I had stacks of them all over the place.

Hundreds of blocks were stacked all over the site.

Cutting blocks to the width of the form. Slip form/ block wall behind me.

What I decided to do was use a hybrid method combining the blocks with slip forming. I took some blocks and cut them on the table saw to the exact width of the inside of the form. That way I could pour slurry into the form, drop a block down on top of it and add more slurry over it. This resulted in a nice uniform wall with texture provided by the courses of blocks embedded in the papercrete. 

The first little building using this hybrid method came out great but I knew I could do better. For one thing the cutting of the blocks was time consuming and made a terrible mess.

This time I am leaving the blocks their original haphazard sizes. I am placing them in the wall on their sides so they are completely embedded in the slurry and are not visible in the finished wall.

The finished wall is really straight and uniform. More pictures next time.

One very definite of using the blocks this way (other than the time and mess involved in cutting all the blocks) is that it saves making fresh slurry. The blocks take up about half the volume of the wall. So this uses up a lot of blocks and I don’t have to mix up all the slurry it would take to slip form the walls.

The blocks are set upright in the form and will be completely embedded in papercrete.

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This entry was posted by Judith on Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010 at 10:15 am 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.