Winters are cold here in Portugal, for some reason it feels colder than I remember it being in South Africa.
Fortunately we have a cast iron fireplace
Unfortunately it is not very efficient
Added to that our house is cold...
But, I got started on a mission to make paper bricks, to burn in the fireplace and burn they will.
The lovely mess you see is the product of water, waste paper from our house and wood shavings. The wood shavings give it the brown colour, usually it would be an off white / light grey with smatterings of colour here and there.
Here's a view including the tools I use to make it easier,
A big bucket, I bought one at a hardware store, mine is made of rubber and I have seen the builder here use it to cart rubble etc. out of apartment buildings.
A paint mixing rod
A drilling machine, I bought a 1000W drilling machine especially for this, as my other is a cordless and may work, but I think I will be damaging it.
The results, the 2 grey bricks were made before I added wood shavings, the ones beneath them in the photo have wood shavings in.
I bought this brick press off Amazon, what a disappointment! It seems to be made from cheese and I have already bent it.
I use a piece of off cut wood to stiffen up the part that does the pressing.
Junk but does the job for now.
What do you do with an old cutlery tray?
Use it to drain excess water from you paper!
I pack the soggy paper on here and let gravity pull some of the water out before I move on to the press, as this helps to ensure I get enough in for the brick to be stiff, when done.
The paint mixing rod in conjunction means I do not have to tear the paper into tiny pieces before turning it to pulp. The large container helps because it means you can add enough water so that the mixing rods creates enough of a vortex to suck the paper through and chop it up.
So, do you recycle anything? Are you having much success with it?
I would love to know what other people are up to!