newspaper bale construction

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hello,

i've heard of strawbale housing but has anybody heard of anyone making a building from newspaper bale. i imagine baling newspaper into a thick stack with wire, then running them through rebar and stacking them high. would this work? alternatively you could stack them without rebar but attach four point barbed wire in between stacks, and shape into a dome. (just like the architect who stacked sand bags together sandwiching it with barbed wire, into a dome.)

would this thing work? or would this whole scheme fall all over my head? i'd like to really help get newspaper out of the landfill!!!

jo

-- jo veno (joveno@hotmail.com), April 25, 2000

Answers

Newspaper bales, in my opinion, would be too dense to provide you with insulation like straw bales do. I run all of my recyclable paper through a chipper/shredder and work it into the soil. The c/s makes it look a lot like ground cellulose insulation.

Are you aware of fiberous cement or paper crete? It uses newsprint mixed with cement, water, and sand or dirt to form a building material. Blocks can be made or forms can be filled as with cement. It is said to have an insulating factor because of the paper, and when sand is used, said to have a thermal mass to retain heat. The paper makes it fairly light weight. It is not waterproof however and must be coated. For further reading: http://www.northcoast.com http://www.papercretenews.com/index.html http://www.concretehomes.com http://www.oikos.com http://www.zianet.com/earth/index.html

-- greenbeanman (greenbeanman@ourtownusa.net), April 25, 2000.


If your local library has it in their periodical section, the May 2000 issue of Mother Earth News (gasp!) has a fairly good article on papercrete.

-- Eric Stone (ems@nac.net), April 26, 2000.

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