kenb wrote:
Since it was the flexing that was the problem. I got a bale of cellulose insulation, mixed up some paper-crete slury with it and used something like a ceiling texture sprayer to put a thicker ( 1/4 - 3/8 inch ) layer on top of everything. That was five or six years ago, except for the very center of the top where I didn't put much of a layer on it, it is still in fine shape and still makes a nice garden shed.
kenb, would you please say more about the ceiling texture sprayer you used? Do you think one like this one available at Harbor Freight would work to spray a 1/4 to 3/8 inch mixture such as what you described?
Here's the link to the Wagner electronic texture sprayer that I'm wondering about that Harbor Freight currently sells for about $100:
http://www.harborfreight.com/electric-texture-sprayer-kit-96123.html Also, do you think that spraying your sort of papercrete slurry mixture onto a frame covered in sewn-together poly-net bags would produce a strong, durable weatherproof shell?
That's what I'm hoping to do with one experimental building this spring.
Another experiment is to build clay-papercrete wall forms and fashion a "hexayurt" of them, and then spray on a durable shell coating of clay-flour-fiber-crete. (The hexayurt, if you are not familiar, is an open source creation of Vinay Gupta that, in its simplest form, uses 4x8 foamboards. I'd rather fashion it of boric-acid-treated papercrete wall forms.)
Am trying to keep costs to the bare minimum -- out of necessity, and for documenting and proving that a durable structure can be built of recycled and reused materials for dirt cheap. Would really like to avoid having to buy a $265 stucco hopper and $500-plus compressor and $400-plus generator in order to be able to spray the shells and finish coats.
If one of these comparatively inexpensive electronic texture sprayers -- like the Wagner one -- would do the job -- albeit more slowly -- I would be quite happy. And that puts the upfront equipment investment much more within the realm of possibility in third-world environments.
I HAVE found plans for building a stucco hopper / sprayer for about $30 -- but it still requires an expensive (high force 8-plus cfm at 90 psi) compressor and a generator capable of producing 14-plus amps at 240 volts to run that sort of compressor.
The (free) plans for building the $30 hopper sprayer are found here:
http://www.johnkingsley.ca/strawbale/sprayer/v1.html If ANYONE has any experiences -- positive or otherwise -- of spraying papercrete or mud stucco slurry mixtures with a drywall texture sprayer, please share them.
Thanks,
ken
