Inexpensive ceiling and wall board

Hi
I started a post back in 2021 I think it was about building a semi underground house.
I've had a knee operation since so work has been non existent.
Fortunately, I've had lots of time to think about how to save money as the cost of materials here in Bulgaria have shot up in the past couple of years.
I found this book on the internet:
https://www.academia.edu/22223899/Latex_Concrete_Papercrete_Roof_Flying_Concrete_we_think_we_have_found_the_way_we_will_do_roofs_from_now_on
Very interesting stuff, especially the great way of building a mixer!
So I experimented with different things until I found a really cheap material for making the ceiling boards in my house. I did a trial run using some old cement I've had sat around for ages, acrylic glue and water painted onto and into garden fleece stretched over a table frame.
Here are my results:
   
https://youtube.com/shorts/bWn1fg7kH_M?si=QyMGHFOLG1CI_ooF
What do you think? Obviously the results would be smoother and stronger with new cement and a couple of more layers. I like how it's still flexible.

Adam, can you make shorter videos please?
Have you thought of just putting the cloth into 20 L of cement slurry and hang the cloth on a bar?
What are you trying to achieve with this 'ceiling' material?

Nice idea, Adam! It's got me wondering if something similar might work for one of my ceilings that needs repair. How are you planning to attach the ceiling panels?

Good to see you back in action!

John C Daley wrote:Adam, can you make shorter videos please?
Have you thought of just putting the cloth into 20 L of cement slurry and hang the cloth on a bar?
What are you trying to achieve with this 'ceiling' material?

Hi John

I though about it but worried that the material would hang in ripples and not flat.
I will fix it flat on top of the beams then paint the slurry on.
It's just a cheap alternative to expensive boards.

What are you calling expensive?
Have you thought of old parachutes, hession?
I take it you will not have ceiling insulation and what sort of roofing do you have in mind?
What size are we looking at?

John C Daley wrote:What are you calling expensive?
Have you thought of old parachutes, hession?
I take it you will not have ceiling insulation and what sort of roofing do you have in mind?
What size are we looking at?

All things are relative. I can't afford to buy boards and building materials so I'm recycling lots of materials from abandoned houses in the village. I had thought of using old handmade wool carpets but wool isn't alkali resistant I think. As for old parachutes there's no chance of that here. Bulgaria is a difficult place to source many things people take for granted in more ' advanced' countries.
I have got insulation sorted. I'll post pictures on my other post as and when I get around to it.
The roof is black locust beams, some decades old, thick and hard as iron, some cut a couple of years ago and are seasoning. All the roof tiles are from a falling down barn, I have permission to take them.

Please post pics when you do it, Adam, I'll be very interested to see how it works!

John, as Adam says, things in Bulgaria are VERY different! Nothing gets thrown out, old stuff is generally completely worn out, there are no second hand shops or reclaim yards, and things that could be obtained easily in Australia, the UK, or US, can be expensive and hard to source. No old sacks or hessian material available, for example, sacks are all woven plastic. The country was very poor under communism, and then the fall of communism brought the worst of modern capitalism, shops full of cheap tat.

Adam is using what he can get to rebuild a ruined old house. He's getting some of what he needs for free from other ruined houses, which is great. These houses were made mostly using local materials, even the ones built in the 50's and 60's. My main village house is late 1950s, looks in design like a typical 1950s triple fronted house with a hip roof, the same as were built by the thousands in Aussie city suburbs around that time. The outer skin used modern materials, cement flat roof tiles and cement render on the walls. But underneath, the building materials are all traditional and locally sourced.  A few red bricks, a lot of mud, a lot of straw. Timber is used in the round or roughly milled slab.

The original ceilings were probably a form of lath and plaster. In my main house, the ceiling beams are round wood, usually not even debarked, with no consistency in sizes. Lath is whatever plant material was available, long straw, sticks, even corn stalks. The plaster looks to be earth mixed with lime and horse manure. Very labour intensive, and hard to get an even vaguely even finish. And then once the house is no longer maintained, tiles slip and the roof develops significant leaks. If that continues, the ceiling decomposes.

Using old floorboards for the ceiling isn't an option, either, both because the beams will be uneven in size and because old flooring in usable condition is very hard to find. Most houses didn't have milled floorboards. Only one room in my house does, and according to an older local it was considered a very good house because of that! The other rooms have earth floors covered with lino, and the front room (over the cellar) has a floor of rough milled timber slabs covered with straw-clay covered with a carpet.

Unfortunately it's turned out harder than expected to renovate using traditional or natural materials. They're hard to source, and often simply not available. For example, wheat straw is now all short, and bales are the big round ones. I haven't been able to source small straw bales. And the generation who built those old village houses has now passed on.

Thanks Jane, I have a better idea of the situation.
Very challenging I can see.

Hurdles made from small branches and reeds with a fairly tight weave, then daubed with cob, would be another way to produce panels.

It's certainly interesting, John! Plenty of challenges, lots of unexpected, and things that haven't worked as planned with our house and intended move.

But it's a good place. In the rural areas, though many of the villagers are still quite poor and some are extremely poor, it's very like being in an Aussie country town back in the 70s. Slower paced, friendly people, go out for a walk in our village and you won't just have people you don't know yet say hello (well, not hello, it's "Zdravey" in Bulgarian!), you'll be invited in for tea and leave with a bag of produce from their garden!