Building a House Out of Paper Pulp in Roswell, NM

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Moris Wheeler
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1 Background: Building a House Out of Paper Pulp in Roswell, NM By James Keele May 24, 2012 Back in about 98 I met a man at a Deming,NM State Land Auction who had built some structures made out of fibrous cement (paper pulp) in Columbus, NM. I went down there to look at them and thought there may be something to this kind of building construction, particularly for people without a lot of money. I purchased for $25 his small book on how to make the material for a building project. Then in 99 at a State Land Auction in Roswell,NM I purchased an one acre lot in the Chihuahuita area of Roswell located about one mile from the downtown area of Roswell. I thought this would be a good place to build a reasonable house made out of the fibrous cement. I designed a small house about 31 by 30 (930 sq. ft.) to be an adobe style house with a flat roof. It was to be a two bedroom house with one bathroom. The kitchen, dining area, and living room were to be combined all together in one big room. A main problem in getting the house built was to get the plan approved by the permit office in Roswell. I termed the blocks that were to be made with paper pulp, cement, sand, and dirt: adobe blocks. That did not seem to be two big of a problem for the permit inspector. But the floor, foundation had to rigorously conform to the city codes. Also, required were two beams of reinforced concrete to be poured on top of two walls. The electrical wiring and plumbing had to conform to city codes and be installed by licensed tradesmen. The plan was approved and I began construction. Construction: I experimented in the front yard of my home here in Santa Fe, to find the best mixture of paper pulp, cement, sand, and dirt to make the adobe blocks. I found that that a mixture of one part (by weight) of dry recycled newspaper, one part (by weight) of cement, one part (by weight) of sand, and one part (by weight) of dirt worked pretty well. The bulk of the volume of the finished adobe block was due to the volume of the pulp, making the block light weight (about 1/5 the weight of a concrete block of the same size.)

2 Figure 1: Electric Pulp Making Machine I didn t have a paper pulp making machine so I made one. Figure one is a picture of the machine I finally used. It consisted of a small barrel with a cutout in its lid for inserting the paper. A steel shaft runs up the middle of the barrel with four rows of lawn edger blades separated by 4 diameter sewer plastic pipe around the shaft to keep the paper from wrapping around the shaft. A slanted board is attached lengthwise to the inside of the barrel to throw water and paper back into the blades as they are rotated. The shaft protrudes through to top and bottom of the barrel through sealed ball bearings. The bottom of the shaft is attached to a big pulley connected via a belt to a 2hp 220v ac electric motor. To make pulp, the barrel is filled with water to about a 2/3 level. Then paper, presoaked in water, is inserted in the top of the barrel. The motor is turned on and in about two minutes you have pulperized paper. Then the water and pulp is drained out of the barrel into a horse trough where the water is drained from the pulp through a hole in the bottom of the trough. The pulp is held in the trough by 1/4 wire mesh. The paper is presoaked in another horse trough that contains water. To get the water in the barrel fast, I rigged a big water holding bucket above the barrel to hold enough water for one load of pulp making. The bucket was automatically filled with water by using a garden hose and a float valve. A big pipe from the bucket to the barrel with a big valve allowed the water to flow fast into the barrel. The adobe blocks were made using a form consisting of two long 2 x5 boards separated by about 11. They sat upon plastic garbage bags directly on level ground. The adobe mixture was poured into the forms, smoothed out, and then cut into blocks with a cookie cutter made out of wide shovel. After some drying the blocks were taken out of the forms to dry for several days.

Figure 2: The cement mixer used in mixing the pulp, cement, sand, and dirt. The mixture of adobe was assembled in a conventional cement mixture shown in Figure 2.

3 Figure 2: The cement mixer used in mixing the pulp, cement, sand, and dirt. The mixture of adobe was assembled in a conventional cement mixture shown in Figure 2. The mixture was wheeled to where needed in a wheelbarrow or in a five gallon plastic bucket. The outside stucco was a mixture of the pulp and regular stucco. No wire was necessary to stick the stucco and pulp mixture to the wall. It stuck, weathered and held up. The inside walls were plastered and the plaster stuck well. Problems: I didn t know it at the time when I purchased the lot, but I found out later that the Chihuahuita area of Roswell was one of the worse areas in Roswell for proverty, crime and gangs. This area was where the first Mexicans from Chihuahua, Mexico who came to Roswell settled. I was planning on staying in my VW Westfalia Camper at nights with the camper parked on the lot. The first night I was staying in the camper I heard what sounded like an AK 47 shooting off in the alley behind my lot. I drove the camper to an RV camping spot to spend my nights. The first man I hired was a young local.i didn t know he had a criminal record. When I had to go back to Santa Fe for a week I left a $900 cement mixer chained to a tree. When I returned, the mixer was gone. It was reported that this young man had stolen the mixer. I didn t see him again during the construction. I hired an older man to wheel the adobe mixture to pour as a subfloor of the house before the concrete floor was to be poured. After a while he developed heart problems from the hard labor and had to quit.

I hired a Mexican man who was involved in a divorce and worked on a dairy farm near Roswell. I asked him he knew how to lay adobe blocks to make a wall. He said yes.

4 I hired a Mexican man who was involved in a divorce and worked on a dairy farm near Roswell. I asked him he knew how to lay adobe blocks to make a wall. He said yes. He started building the south wall, but at about 3 feet high I saw that the wall was crooked and curved. I didn t make the wall over, but should have. I showed him some alignment procedures for laying blocks (I had never done this before either) and the walls became straighter. Figure 3 shows the south wall. Figure 3: Photo showing the south curved wall. I had planned to make a flat roof out of the pulp mixture and seal it off with an elastic rubber sealer. But the pulp mixture didn t dry fast enough for the seal to stick to the pulp mixture. After a year or two the wind blew the seal off and rain created massive leaks. I eventually installed a tin hip roof on the house, which I should have done in the first place. Figure 4 shows a picture of the roof before the tin roof was put on the house.

Figure 4: Photo showing how the elastic seal didn t stick to the fibrous cement. I started spending my nights in the house after it was finished enough that I could stay in it.

5 Figure 4: Photo showing how the elastic seal didn t stick to the fibrous cement. I started spending my nights in the house after it was finished enough that I could stay in it. It became apparent the gang in the neighborhood didn t like me being there. They started coming through the yard in the middle of the night making a lot of noise. I told them to be quiet and leave. They left, but later when I was settled back in bed, they came back and threw a brick through a window in my van. I realized then I needed a chain link fence around the property to keep them out of the yard. Just after building the fence, during the middle of night the whole gang came through a hole in the fence they made. I stood by the open front door of my house with my rifle leaning just inside the door frame. When they arrived in the front yard I asked them what they were doing. They said they were borrowing my yard. I told them to get out. Then one of the gang members said as they were leaving: You can call the police if you want to. I did and a police car eventually came out. While the policeman and I were talking in the front yard, we heard the neighborhood dogs barking (a lot of barking dogs in the neighborhood all the time). We walked behind the house in the back yard and caught two drunken boys in the yard. The policeman arrested them for being drunk, not trespassing, and hauled them off. With the rest of the gang probably over the other side of the big fence, I decided to spend the rest of the night in a motel, my life being more valuable to me than the house. The next morning I discovered the big hole in my new fence. I discovered one of the panes in a double pane window had shattered over the kitchen sink. I first thought it was broken by a gang member. But on further consideration I decided it was broken by strain caused by the walls settling. I removed the broken pane and left the one pane window standing. Later, when I first rented the house to an upand-coming young lady who had a job in Roswell, I had a similar problem. She called me one day frightened out of her wits, to tell me that a neighbor had come over and broken the front double pane window. I let her out of the rental lease whose time had not expired. But again the problem was the house wall settling and leaning toward that wall that was not properly built straight and true.

6 Wiring the house was a problem for the electrician. He would saw grooves in the wall to lay the wires. Later I would plaster over the grooves. But after a day or two of cutting grooves, he became ill breathing the dust from cutting the grooves. Eventually he wore a mask to finish the wiring. When the house was ready to be painted on the inside, I had some old paint that had a little bit of mold in it. I painted one of the inside walls with it. After the house was finished and rented for a while, the windows and some of the walls became moldy. It took me a while to figure what was causing all this mold to grow. The inside of the house was very tight, that is, there was little or no circulation of outside air in the house. So to solve this problem, I created two outside air vents, one in each bedroom so outside air could equalize the inside humidity with the outside humidity. This worked pretty good. The accumulated mold was washed clean and did not appear again, but just a little. The mold that appeared in the house would probably prevent a person interested in buying the house from getting a loan. So I plan on just renting it out the rest of my life. The mold that appears there now is very little and not a problem. It took me about a year to complete the house. There was a lot of driving back and forth from Santa Fe to Roswell. But I was strong and healthy and made the trips and the construction work without problems. What I would do differently: I would do several things differently if I started all over again: 1. I wouldn t build in the Chihuahuita area of Roswell. 2. I would install a tin overhanging roof from the beginning. 3. I would use steel rods to support the walls and roof. 4. Instead of using adobe blocks, I would use forms to pour the walls. 5. I would have the electric wires and plumbing installed before the walls were poured. 6. I would plan for and allow outside ventilation to the inside. Some pluses of using fibrous cement for the walls: 1. Wall and insulation created at the same time. 2. Stucco and plaster sticks and wears well. 3. The re-cycled paper is available cheap at the city s re-cycling place. 4. The house is well insulated from the hot and cold weather. It takes very little heat and air conditioning for the house. 5. The pulp mixture does not burn. It can smolder a little. 6. Appears to be bug proof. Some Minuses of the fibrous cement: 1. It can absorb water if exposed to water unsealed. 2. It can harbor mold if left wet.

3. It is labor intensive to make the fibrous cement (pulp mixture). But it can be made fast. 4. For use in a lot of construction, the fibrous cement would have to be approved by the state. 5.

7 3. It is labor intensive to make the fibrous cement (pulp mixture). But it can be made fast. 4. For use in a lot of construction, the fibrous cement would have to be approved by the state. 5. Have to build your own pulp making machine. Closing notes: After about 11 years the house is still standing and is being rented out. The little girl who was being raised in the Mobil home next door now is a mother with two kids and is renting and living in the paper house. I don t always collect the rent on time. The experience was worth it. Figure 5 and 6 below are pictures of the house I took in May of I had it rented to an atv mechanic at the time. These pictures do not show the tin roof I later put on the house. Figure 5: Front of house (The renter wanted bars on the windows).

8 Figure 6: Photo of the back of the house. Door on the right opens into the hot water heater compartment.

WEEK 4 COMPLETE SIDING & EXTERIOR PAINTING

WEEK 4 COMPLETE SIDING & EXTERIOR PAINTING INSTALL DRY WALL CLIPS (STAFF) Safety Briefing Complete siding Caulk exterior plumbing & electrical boxes First Coat Exterior Second Coat Exterior Install siding