CHEAP
CEMENT! FARMERS TALKING TO FARMERS about ‘tricks’
of the rural, home building trade. MICKEY MOUSE
THE CEMENT IN MY NEW FARM HOUSE? 
You BET!
Big, greedy corporations have been
MANDATING the costly way you do things now, since
1928! GET A GRIP Who (except #*%&(& Portland
Cement corp) sez ‘my way or the highway?” Not ANCIENT
ROME who built everything in cement using natural
sources, rules and concepts. Only person who's going
to object besides PORTLAND is city inspectors, but you
don’t have those Up in Michigan or at RUSHING River,
IDAHO where you're building, do you? There, cutting
cement costs in HALF not only sounds good but you
could spend the money on a hundred bare root fruit
trees and if any damn inspector comes around, give him
a few bushels of APPLES! Besides, once it's up, is he
going to take a core sample?
ALWAYS go for the Cheap
cement recipe that is where there isn’t a weighty LOAD
on it . Sounds pretty neat, but we’re curious as to
how the newly laid ‘Mickey Mouse cheap mix” block will
hold up to the elements if it takes a few days to
construct, seal, and roof the building. ELEMENTS?
OUR RESIDENT EXPERT
tells us: "Well, if you’re Mickey mousing cement, KEEP
THE FINISHED WALL dry. Varnish the sucker and Put a
roof on it!
OUR QUERYING FARMER
ASKS: If I were doing this, it would be over several
weekends, and I’m wondering if I could safely leave
the partial walls etc.?? Maybe after your experimental
brick has cured you can check its water resistance in
that state, I’d try to mix up a batch myself, with a
hand mixer but my wife doesn’t let me near her kitchen
stuff .
TIV, OUR FARMER & a
true JACK OF ALL TRADES knowing how to use every tool
that exists, answer. “Go to a Lowes, Builder’s Square
or similar building supply house, go back in the
section which has pails of bedding mud for drywall
joints, mortar mix etc. and look at the various tools.
Among them will generally be two brands of mixers for
insertion in a half-inch drill for mixing small
quantities of mortar and paint. You will use it to mix
soaked cardboard boxes or any paper fiber source.
If you soak paper
strips overnight it pulps even easier and more
quickly. You can go out and find a hundred boxes
behind a store, soak them in a hard plastic kiddie
pool and build a fibrous freebie cement with 10%
Portland in the mix. Cellulose brick will shed water.
It will be more absorptive if rained upon. That won’t
cause any deterioration in the cellulose/cement brick,
but until the excess water is re-evaporated the
compressive strength would be reduced somewhat. Sand
and cement don’t compress but the cellulose component
can (like sawdust or paper cellulose Cement is heavy
on the sawdust)---not too important if there is no
load on the wall.. After the walls are erected or
after a roof-panel is made of the stuff and raised, a
water-shedding paint should be applied. Take your
choice of cement-paint (read the label) or acrylic
latex-based paint.. Note that each has advantages and
accompanying disadvantages. You can patch small
joints, cracks or damage to a cement-paint wall with a
little cheap Portland and water cement paste. You have
to use epoxy to repair a wall painted with acrylic
latex. Embed roofing fiber-tape for larger repairs
(comes in four-inch rolls)
Making and testing
samples is always advisable before
plunging ahead. Tiv the farmer says
this stuff works fine. It was the subject of an
article in Countryside four or five years back for
someone who built himself a quickie, small dome, and
Jack Bays (don’t know if he is still alive), an
eccentric in Cedaredge, Colorado, used to sell a
king-size malted-milk mixer you dropped in a
fifty-five gallon barrel to mix this and other good
stuff of his devising. Since it was then more
available and of even less value (stores paid you to
haul it off), he used pulped cardboard boxes, in which
the fibers are a little stronger than those in paper.
There have been some recent developments along these
lines, and one patent "Tridex" which used junk
materials like this to make an extremely strong
building panel with good insulation characteristics.
And even a limited load bearing capacity. There is a
man name Mike McCain in Columbus New Mexico building
roofed, insulated structures for .75 cents per square
foot. Mike uses a material that is made on site in a
home made machine that cost less than $100 to build
from scrap. Mike calls this material "Fibrous Cement"
because he uses a mixture of 10% cement, 30% screened
dirty sand and 60% water soaked paper. Yep, I didn't
stutter and this is not a typo. I said PAPER, as in
discarded newspaper, junk mail, slick circulars, even
cardboard. Staples, paperclips, small rocks, high clay
content or pretty slick paper can all add to the
strength of the mixture. Yha-hoo! Finally a good use
for junk mail! Fibrous cement is amazing stuff. Mike
makes adobe like blocks from it and uses it like adobe
blocks. Properly mixed fibrous cement has a load
bearing strength greater than adobe, and is lighter
than adobe and has an R value of 2.8 per inch. That
means a 1' wall has a value of about 33+ R value a 2'
wall would be 66.7. It will hold a screw, you can
build the structure then cut the doors and windows
with a chainsaw. Mike builds the walls and roof from
this material. Fibrous cement will not burn and
termites will not eat it. You can paint it, use it
like plaster, seal it with hot tar or cover it with
elastometeric plastic coatings. It is easier to work
with than regular cement since it is lighter and too
much water simply drains away instead of weakening the
mixture. It is not satisfactory for footings or
situations where it is subject to high continuous
moisture saturation. Mike does construct buried
structures. This method makes Cob look onerous. You
can construct any size or shape building you can dream
up with Fibrous Cement. You can use a slip form and
pour solid walls if desired. Fibrous cement blocks are
hard enough to stack after a few hours in the New
Mexico sun and may be used after a few days of curing.
Mike constructs domes and round buildings with simple
poles or cable ceilings/roofs covered with fibrous
cement. Any shape is possible. Mike makes simple
machines to mix this stuff out of discarded auto
differentials, old lawnmower blades and 55 gallon
barrels or old stock tanks. Currently he is using an
old used 7' x 2' high stock tank and a 22" lawnmower
blade. The tank is mounted over the driveshaft of the
old differential and the lawnmower blade is attached
inside the tank. This makes a device similar to a
large blender. One of the axles is attached to a
universal joint and drive shaft which is then attached
to the lug nuts on a drive wheel of a vehicle on jack
stands. When the vehicles drive wheels turn so does
the lawnmower blade. This does require a high torque
drive system to move the 22" blade in a full tank of
slurry, i.e., needs a V8! Mike starts the vehicle and
starts filling the tank with water. As the tank is
filling he is tossing in slightly separated old news
papers, junk mail etc, etc.. The lawnmower blade
begins creating a slurry out of the wet paper
immediately. When the tank is almost full, Mike adds a
few buckets of dirty sand and a bag of cement. After
churning for a while, mike drains the tank onto some
wire mesh to extract a lot of the extra water and to
make the slurry easier to handle. The water is clear,
it contains no cement as the fibers of the paper have
soaked up the cement. This water could be collected
and used in the next batch. I have pounded my share of
tires and I don't find it over bearing but believe me
this looks a lot easier. I made a test batch in our
kitchen this afternoon using the above formula and the
wife's blender.(She was not here and did not witness
the mess I made. I did not ask permission to put
cement in her blender, thank God I didn't have to go
through that).I made about 1000 Ml of slurry and I
have a 3" x 4 " block about a 1.5 inches thick now
drying in the sun. Here's how I did it. To make it
easier on our 20 year old dime store blender I soaked
a 2 quart sauce pan full of news paper cut into strips
before putting them in the blender. I put about 400 ML
of water in the blender and started it on its highest
setting. Then I started dropping in wet newspaper
strips in gobs. Watch it, that damn stuff tries to
come over the top when you add paper and it goes in
every direction.) The old blender would groan for a
while then change sounds as it liquefied the mess.
Sometimes I added water, and sometimes I added
paper until I had a thick slurry of paper and water up
to the 600ML line on our blender. Then, I added 300 ML
of dirt and 100ML of cement. (This is a 60% paper, 30%
dirt 10% cement formula. A tablespoon is 150ML).Boy,
did that old blender groan. It also got kind of hot.
Finally, when the old blender seemed to have had about
enough and was ready to choke down, I stopped and
poured the mixture over some hardware cloth to drain.
After about 30 minutes the slurry could be formed into
a block for drying. Pretty impressive, if you're
significant other doesn't witness the stress on the
kitchen equipment. The finished home must be
waterproofed with polymer varnish. According to Mike
McCain "Fibrous Cement was invented and patented in
1928 but it was too cheap and simple to be profitably
promoted so it fell by the wayside." It
probably also didn't help that this methodology was a
CHEAP ALTERNATIVE to wood construction. In that era,
wood and wood fiber production for paper was very
closely guarded by the Hearst and Du Pont families
because they owned most of the timber tracts and the
chemicals for processing wood fiber into paper. The
hemp industry and even the minor little rammed earth
industry that tried to get started in the mid 30's
fell victim to "big money interest" and "big
Government co-operation." There is far more detail
than I really can go into here. If you want to know
more about Fibrous Cement then here is the info. Get a
great new magazine called "Earth Quarterly" from
EarthQuarterly, Box 23, Radium Springs, NM 88054.It's
about $3.00. (1995) You can subscribe for $10 for 4
issues per year. Get issue # 1 for a super article on
Fibrous Cement. These people used to publish Dry
Country News and had a web site but this site mentions
nothing about Earth Quarterly or Fibrous Cement. Their
new website is http:// www.zianet.com/earth and should
be up shortly. Look for it. Phone # 505 526 1853.
Order Mike McCains book for $29 including shipping at:
New Vision Building, Unltd., Box 695-EQ, Columbus NM,
88029. Or find it used for a buck at ABEBOOKS.COM
~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~ MAKING
YOUR OWN CEMENT BLOCKS FOR a quarter EACH! Someone
on the list said that they had gotten some concrete
blocks for $0.70 per block. If possible, I would
certainly like to know the source for that block. I’ve
visited two lumberyards and a couple of construction
companies and, so far, lowest price I've found is
$1.39 per block. We're looking for concrete block to
construct a block wall a couple of block high around
our garden. At a $1.39 per block, we might have to
abandon the idea. At $0.80 or $0.90 per block we could
still do it. The highest quoted price, BTW, was $1.89
per block. ANSWER: Our list Leader, the multi careered
Tiv said that it would be cheaper to make up one or
several strippable forms with tapered blocks fastened
to the bottom-board---twist lock hinges, removable pin
hinges, or DIY clamps to hold the form together for
pouring and setting up. Oil the surfaces with old
motor oil. AT last a use for that! That alone makes it
worth the price of admission! (My attempt at turning
it into fine ladies' soap having failed.) If you buy
bags of Portland cement, a pickup load of sharp sand
and gravel, mix with a shovel or hoe in a wheelbarrow
or on a piece of oiled plywood, a block would cost
$0.25 to $0.50, depending upon how strong the block
should be for the proposed use. Doesn’t sound like you
need much strength, so thin out the mix a lot---make
some samples to establish the minimum of
Portland---also use a lot of gravel, very little sand
so less cement is required.
You can coat and
stick-together gravel surfaces with less cement paste
than sand takes. My recommendation for absolute
lowest-cost is an all-gravel mix since surface
porosity should not be of any importance in the
garden. The only place you can buy concrete block for
70c today is from a demolition contractor or salvage
yard. What's cheap that could be added in? Clay soil?
Peat if you live near a bog, hay like the Indians used
for adobe bricks? Get creative. Coffee grinds? Nah
they're too fine on my roses!
Tiv: this Mickey
Mouse stuff works fine.
It was the subject of an article in Countryside
four or five years back for someone who built himself
a quickie, small dome, and Jack Bays (don't know if he
is still alive), an eccentric in Cedaredge, Colorado,
used to sell a king-size malted-milk mixer you dropped
in a fifty-five gallon barrel to mix this and other
good stuff of his devising." GOOGLE "jack bays" +
cedaredge just like that, many articles on him. "Since
it was then more available and of even less value
(stores paid you to haul it off), he used pulped
cardboard boxes, in which the fibers are a little
stronger than those in paper. There have been some
recent developments along these lines, and one patent
"Tridex" which used junk materials like this to make
an extremely strong building panel with good
insulation characteristics.
NOW, IF YOU ARE INSPIRED, GOOGLE
“IMAGE SECTION”, seeking words “MAYA” + STELE
combined and you will see some unique cement columns
that have totem faces and bodies in them …not added to
cement mix, no… carved into the stone. If you could
figure a way to carve fresh cement like that, or pour
it into molds, pour faces/ tiles in cement, get those
geometric forms....wow.
~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~
Our
POSTER is ANITA SANDS HERNANDEZ, Los
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