Building For The Future

Building for the future

By MATT PHINNEY,
September 4, 2006

MASON - Zach Rabon said he was a bit of a hippie kid growing up, but not a ''tree-hugger'' by any means.

After graduating from high school, though, he studied ecology and conservation of natural resources at Texas Tech University. What he learned there scared him, he said.

''We take so much for granted,'' he said. ''We walk around and we see the trees and we see the rivers, and we think it will be there forever. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when we run out of natural resources. Something has to be done.''

Now the Grateful Dead fan is a makeshift eco-scientist, studying new formulas for '''' building blocks, made mostly from recycled paper, or cellulose. He has created the Blox Building System, a variety of building blocks that represent an alternative to traditional building material.

'papercrete'

The Eco-Blox is 60-percent cellulose, 30-percent cement and additives and 10-percent water. The mixture creates millions of air pockets that act as insulation.

Much of the cellulose in Rabon's blocks come from discarded lottery tickets, phone books and newsprint, he said.

''You can't get simpler,'' Rabon said. ''You eliminate framers and painters and cut out all that labor cost. This is one real quick, simple process, and it produces zero waste.''

While it may be made out of mostly paper, it will take much more than a big, bad wolf to blow these blocks down.

The eco-friendly 'papercrete' blocks have been hit with sledgehammers, set on fire and put through simulated tornadoes - and someone even shot a bullet at one. Nothing has hurt them yet, Rabon said.

Rabon's company, Mason Greenstar, has built several homes with his blocks in this small Hill Country town. Rabon said the need for eco-friendly building material is growing throughout the world and wants to ship the blocks to developing areas overseas.

''Something has to give,'' he said. ''It takes an acre of cut lumber to build one 2,000-square-foot home. And it takes 30 years to regenerate that acre. There is not enough material to rebuild New Orleans, and there is a lot of interest this overseas in Third World countries where the population is doubling and there is nothing to build with.''

The concept of using processed paper to make building blocks has been around since the 1920s, said Kent Rabon, Zach's father and a homebuilder for more than 30 years. For some reason, interest disappeared but is now back in force, in part, he said, because of the shortage of traditional building materials and the rising cost of building homes.

Mason Greenstar is building a 2,000-square-foot house out of the blocks. The building in Mason looks like an adobe home. Zach's home for the past three years is a 3,200-square-foot home in a more traditional style than the newer adobe house, and is largest single story building in the world made out of the bricks.

The blocks cost $2 a piece, and a home can cost anywhere from $80 to $100 a square foot. The processed paper, or cellulose, also is an excellent insulator, Zach Rabon said.

''You can set the thermostat at 75 degrees and the air conditioner won't come on for two days,'' he said, ''and the same thing with the heat.''

The blocks are advertised as mold-, fire-, termite- and water-resistant, as well as lightweight and highly insulated. The blocks, which are 14 inches long, 10 inches wide and 4 inches thick, weigh about 8 pounds.

According to Livinginpaper.com, a Web site dedicated to 'papercrete', the basic components are water and nearly any kind of recyclable paper goods - cardboard, glossy magazine stock, advertising brochures, junk mail or just about any other type of ''mixed (lower) grade'' paper is acceptable.

However, waxy paper and cardboard are not used in the Rabons' blocks.

Barry J Fuller, creator of the LivingInPaper Web site, has been studying the papercrete industry for three years. He became interested in alternative building materials when he decided to build a low-cost home - without taking out a mortgage.

Fuller got a grant through Arizona State University and eventually met Zach Rabon.

'Papercrete' houses are gaining wide support in rural and urban areas alike, Fuller said. He is building his 700-square-foot home in Tempe, Ariz., for about $40 per square foot by doing the labor himself.

The house will have a stucco coating and won't have to be repainted for about 20 years, he said.

''No. 1, it's affordable,'' Fuller said during a phone interview. ''I am putting some really artistic touches around the door and windows. It's extremely solid and sustainable. There is a great environmental investment because I'm using something that would otherwise go into a landfill.''

Fuller is using his neighbors' discarded mail and packaging from grocery stores as cellulose.

The problem with 'papercrete', as with any alternative building material, is public perception, Fuller said. People don't know much about it, and early buildings looked primitive.

Advances in 'papercrete' are helping to make the homes look more middle-class and mainstream, he said.

The Rabons got the idea to make 'papercrete' after Kent took a trip to Marathon and met Clyde T. Curry, the operator of Eve's Garden Organic Bed & Breakfast and Ecology Resource Center, and a longtime proponent of papercrete.

Curry began studying' papercrete' about eight years ago when he constructed a building, the roof of which required a truckload and a half of Ponderosa Pine. He felt that was a waste of much timber and wanted to find a better way to build.

Curry has made about 15,000 bricks since he began studying 'papercrete' eight years ago.

Kent showed Zach one of Curry's blocks, and the younger Rabon, who had bought the Mason Ready-Mix Plant years before, immediately began looking at various formulas.

Building the blocks is basically the same as mixing cement. The ingredients are mixed together and poured into molds. The molds are dried in the sun, forming the blocks.

Mason Greenstar buys the cellulose from a Houston company, but hope to have a plant soon that will allow them to use paper recycled in Mason. The company can make 2,000 blocks a day, and there is no inventory at the plant: What they build is immediately sold.

It takes 8,000 blocks to build a 2,000 square-foot home, Kent Rabon said. Three blocks are used for every square foot, he said.

''You can sit here in the heat of the day, and it's still pretty comfortable,'' Kent Rabon said, taking a break from working on his house. ''There is a mind-set of the same thing over and over. In this part of the world, some people don't accept new ideas very well."

''But they are slowly coming around.''