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Abstract

For this project I made a box out of papercrete and painted it with a natural home made paint. Making the papercrete itself was simple and fun but the construction of the box itself was extremely difficult. On the box itself I spent upwards of 15 hours creating the materials and building it and then an additional 10 hours focusing on the looks. For the most part the box does fulfill the criteria set that i laid out for it. If given the option I would like to reattempt this project. There are many things I would do differently to mak the box more visually pleasing and lightweight.

Background

R.O.S.E. is an on campus organization at HSU dedicated to recycling office supplies to help students and reduce waste. R.O.S.E. is just starting out and needs drop boxes in populated areas on campus to increase the effectiveness of their organization and promote awareness of it. This project will be completed before June of 2011 and the drop box will be located in either the library or the Social and Behavioral Sciences building.

Price for my project

Quantity Material Source Cost ($) Total ($)
90 lb Concrete Lowes Donated -
50 lb sand Lowes Donated -
1 Natural dye phoenix ceramic 1.50 -
1 clay phoenix ceramic 1.00 -
1 Flour Safeway 2.99 -
1 floppy discs ROSE Donated -
30 lb paper anywhere recycled -
- 5.50

Price if all materials were purchased

Quantity Material Source Cost ($) Total ($)
90 lb Concrete Lowes 5.26 5.26
50 lb sand Lowes 3.58 8.84
1 lb Natural dye phoenix ceramic 1.50 10.34
1 lb clay phoenix ceramic 1.00 11.34
3 lb Flour Safeway 2.99 14.33
30 lb paper anywhere recycled 14.33
- 14.33

Objective

The purpose of this project is incorporate recycled office materials into a drop box that will be used to raise interest in the R.O.S.E. Center. The drop boxes will be sturdy enough to hold a range of office supplies from manila folders to adding machines. We will incorporate recycled materials and office supplies in the structure, design, and decoration of the boxes. The boxes will have an artistic eye catching element, as well as a functional use for collecting materials. A way of gathering materials from the drop box to take back to R.O.S.E. must be part of the design as well. Appropriate information about R.O.S.E. and the drop box will also be incorporated into the design


Criteria

Criteria Constraints Weight 0-10
Material Must be made from recycled materials found in offices 8
Appearance Must be ascetically pleasing 9
Advertising People need to know what the box is for 10
Holding ability The box must be able to support a box full of supplies 9

Purposed Time Line

3/13-15 Molds constructed and slabs poured > 4/9-11 Box constructed > 4/25-29 Box painted and finished

Literature Review

This is a review of literature on building and creating artwork using recycled materials for creative constructing of a Drop Box for ROSE.

Building with Alternative Material Basics

The purpose of building with recycled materials is to help reduce the amount of raw material that goes into manufacturing.[1] Plastics, papers, glass, and various metals that were used in one medium are cheaply re-manufacturing them into another. In the same respect people have been making not only building materials from recycled products but art as well. These projects can range from 3D sculptures to creative and interpretive canvases, for this research I will not be focusing on sculptures. Many alternative building material options not only offer less less of an environmental but increased efficiency.[6]

Types of materials and Art made from recycled waste

Papercrete

Papercrete is a hard building material made from mostly paper then small amounts of cememnt and lime. This material is extremely durable and in many aspects better than conventional construction materials. Papercrete is a better thermal insulator than conventional concrete and has a higher fire resistance than Masonry brick.[2]

Floppy disc art

Artist Nick Gentry makes paintings over a canvas made of floppy discs and cassette tapes and integrating their look and texture into the artwork. While this subtracts from the actual recycle of the available material it does create a new creative medium.[3] His art focuses on decorating outdated media storage devices.

Recycled Glass surfaces

Recycles Glass surfaces are waterproof and artistic. Usually they are constructed from 85% glass fragments and 15% bonding materials such as resins or cement.[4]

Recycled Plastic structures

Recycled plastic remolded into walls create good translucent wall material. The Taipei amphitheater is made completely from recycles bottles from Taiwan.[5]

Paper-mache

Natural Paint

Concerns

How to Build Your Own

  1. You must begin soaking paper in water, thin paper like news paper is best. The paper should be torn into small pieces or a mortar mixer can be used to chop the paper into fine pieces. The paper must soak for at least 24 hours. Be prepared to soak up to 20 pounds of paper depending on the size of what you are trying to make.
  2. While the paper is soaking it is time to make the mold of what you are building. For my project i made two 4' by 1.5' frames out of wood and lined them with plastic so the mix would not stick to the inside of the mold.
  3. Once your paper has been soaking long enough to make a mud like texture soup it is time to mix. You will need a concrete mixer for this step. for the purposes of stability I used 10 pounds paper (with the water squeezed out) and 10 pounds of Portland cement mix with a 32oz cup of sand thrown in. Enough water should be added so that the mixture is a thick flowing singular mass, there should be no balling of small amounts of mix. Allow the mixer to run for at least 20 minutes(the longer it runs, the better).
  4. Pour the mix into the mold which should be on flat ground. Using a simple device called a screed you can check the thickness of your slab and smooth out the top. Once the slab is the desired thickness and smoothness let the slab cure for 24 hours before attempting to remove it from the mold.
  5. Allow up to 7 days for the slab to cure before attempting to work with the material. If you do not allow this much time the material could potentially warp or crumble.
  6. Now that you have your slabs ready to build with there are two important things you have to consider: 1, where will the box be used and will it ever need to be used. My box weighed about 60 pounds and transporting became a huge concern. I was able to work around this by creating a box that can be easily disassembled, as you can see from the photograph.
  7. When attaching the pieces to each other use drywall screws and some type of adhesive.
  8. If you chose to use the mini box stacking route like i did you will need to make some type of busing between the pieces to reduce friction. Given the parameters of the project i used cardboard.
  9. Decorating and painting the box is all up to you. I Painted my box with flour based Natural paint.

Images

Testing Results

In testing the box fulfills all of the criteria except ascetics (my personal opinion). The box is strong enough to stand on its own and hold many items placed in it.

Next Steps

The next steps would be to try and create another box using a monolithic pouring method and testing how thin the box can be made while still being strong enough to stand up on its own.

Conclusion

Overall i am not satisfied with the end result. one small problem at the begging lead to an escalating series of events that made most of the labor time fixing little snags here and there. The biggest problem was when i made the 3 sub frames of the box i found none of them lined up correctly. The solution i used was by thinking in the mindset "i planned on doing this so i could..." then artistically corrected the issue by using filler to make it look like one box was melting on to the one below it, then making the bottom box seem as if it is supposed to be offset. Hopefully this is the impression people will get when they see the box. While i was initially very enthusiastic to use this new material that seemed like it had tons of potential I ended up hating it. The material is sturdy and light compared to traditional concrete it isn't very impact resistant and seems to flake off quite easily. The paint and the cardboard bushings i used seem to have taken care of the problem but i feel like building the box out of wood would have made the end result much more visually pleasing with more stability.

Lessons Learned

By far I learned how time and labor intensive it is to work with this material. When pouring the papercrete on the first day there were large chunks of paper in the mix instead of being evenly distributed in a homogeneous mixture. On the second day of pouring the mixture was smoother and the paper was more evenly distributed throughout the slab. Nect time i would soak the paper longer and use some type of mixer to break up the paper more.

Also next time I would make a 3 dimensional mold and do a monolithic pour. Had i attempted that im sure i would have completed the project in less than half of the labor time. At times when i was building the box i felt like it would have been easier to pour 1 giant block of papercrete and carve it out like a pumpkin.

One very important thing i learned about working with natural paint is that it shrinks a lot when it dries. The paint needs at least 3 coats and cracks around curved surfaces.

References

  1. Balogh, Christie. 1997. An Overview of Recycled-Content Building Materals: Their Uses and Applications. Self publication.
  2. Mohammed, Bashar. 2009. Papercrete as Infill Materials for Composite Wall System. EuroJournals Publishing.

[3] Gentry-Nick. 2010. “Paintings.” http://www.nickgentry.co.uk/.

[4] Whaley, Tim. 2010. “Let it Live Again...” EnviroGLAS. http://www.enviroglasproducts.com/.

[5] Studstill, Kyle. 2010. “Taipei Amphitheater Built From Recycled Bottles, Cooled By Falling Water.” PSFK Salon. (April), http://www.psfk.com/2010/04/taipei-amphitheater-built-from-recycled-bottles-cooled-by-falling-water.html

[6] Kaulfuss, Oliver. Mahal, Armit. and Cable, Chris. 2010. An Investigation into Sustainable alternatives for Buildings Components. APSC 262.

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