http://www.padobe.com/

WARNING! Papercrete is experimental, use at your own risk. Build a test shack first to test things out! Padobe (paper adobe) is one of the terms used to represent papercrete. Padobe is often refered to as a paper and cement mixture with no sand or soil. There are other terms of papercrete, Fidobe is usually considered local dirt/sand and paper; Tuffstone contains clay; Paclay is paper and clay; and Papercrete is all inclusive, but usually contains sand/dirt, cement, and paper. Papercrete with cement and often sand is the recommended mixture by the experts and used in most houses. I refer to padobe here as 100 percent paper.

Papercrete is very simple to make. You take paper/sand/cement/clay/lime put it in a tank or trashcan with water, grind it up with an electric or gas mixer, (strain it) pour it into a form, and let it dry for a month. The resulting solid is of surprising quality.

The papercrete/padobe mixture I am experimenting mainly here is 100 percent newspaper, with no soil, sand, cement, or lime used at all in the mixture. The main reason why is too eliminate the cost of cement. There are other reasons such as simplicity too. After the walls are dry a thin layer of stucco or paint can be added for fire and water proofing.

The goal is to provide plans to build a conventional looking house, including tools, for less than $10,000. Rather than paying rent, why not build your first home inexpensively. However, the more you investigate these alternative techiniques, maybe you should tear down your stick house and build with alternative materials and photovoltaic energy in the first place. There are now only 26 percent of the natural resources available per person as in 1900 in the United States, dropping everyday.

Many other excellent construction techniques include rammed earth, cast earth, tires, earthships, cob, ferrocement, strawbale, domes, and the list goes on and on. However, for the overall construction papercrete to me seems the most promising (other than Kirkays rock-cement method). It is a free insulating waste material capable of being turned into an object of any shape. I am experimenting in making trusses out of 100 percent paper. You can make crafts and sculptures. I like papercrete since you do not tear up the ground as much.

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