Paper Houses

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CODES

When considering building any kind of innovative house, the first question that comes to mind is: What about building codes? We've little doubt that papercrete and fidobe will be included in the universal building code ...eventually. Until then, you're left with three main options:

1) In many rural counties, particularly in the West, there are either no building codes or the existing codes are loosely enforced. Both Andy and Virginia live in counties without building codes. A good strategy for any would-be innovative builder is to choose a likely looking coun ty, drive around until you locate a suitably "alternative" looking house and ask the owners what they did about codes.

2) Here in New Mexico (and this probably holds true for many other states) you can apply for an "experimental" permit. This requires drawing up a set of plans and having an engineer sign off on them.

3) Talk to your local building inspector. While many inspectors are strictly by-the-book, there are some that are open to new possibilities and will work with you. Mix up a sample of papercrete or fidobe so he can hold it in his hand and rap it with his knuckles. Fidobe in particular might qualify under your state's existing adobe code, particularly if you called it "fiber-enhanced adobe," emphasizing the word adobe. We know of one papercrete house being built with a perrnit in Arizona. The building inspector insisted that it be built post-and-beam, with the papercrete used only as infilling. This requires more lumber, but it is a very convenient way to build.

MIXERS

Ideally, in the future papercrete or fidobe blocks will be manufactured by local entrepreneurs and sold by the truckload. In the meantime, you've got to make your own blocks and that means building a mixer.

Your basic papercrete mixer is nothing more than a huge kitchen blender, consisting of a tank, a blade and a power source. The smallest mixers use a 55-gallon barrel, a lawn-mower blade and a two-horsepower electric motor, but this setup is a bit small for serious production.

Currently the most popular mixer design - and the type used by both Andy and Virginia - is the "tow mixer," invented by Mike McCain. It consists of a 200-gallon steel stock or plastic water tank riding atop a recycled automotive rear end. In a car, the drive shaft turns the wheels and vice versa: turn the wheels, and the drive shaft will turn. This is the key to Mike's tow mixer design. He cut off most of the drive shaft, but leaves several inches of it sticking out of the differential; he then runs the shortened drive shaft through the bottom of the tank and affixes a riding lawn-mower blade onto it. When you tow the mixer behind your vehicle, the blade spins rapidly and with great force. Under ideal conditions, you can mix a batch of slurry by driving a block and back, though more typically it takes about a half mile in each direction.

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