If you ask people what is homesteading you will get as many different answers as the number of people you ask, but one thing you are likely to hear from most of them will have something to do with recycle and reuse. We certainly find that to be a big part of our lifestyle as we transition to increased self-sufficiency, so when my friend mentioned that he had seen an instructable to create your own paper pulp fire brick or log, I decided for the minimal cost of the materials, it was worth giving it a shot. This is not a difficult project but there is a small learning curve (that resulted in me wearing a lot of paper pulp).
What you will need:
- Two 5 gallon buckets
- A drill
- A 1/4″ drill bit
- An old saw blade
- A 2′ piece of 5/8″ all-thread rod
- 2 each of nuts, washers, and lock washers to fit the all thread rod
Before we go any further I want to mention that I do not believe the all thread rod and saw blade are a necessity, but more on that in a bit. I bought my two 5 gallon buckets a Lowe’s for less than $5 for both (I did not get a lid but I would recommend getting one. You will not need two lids).
Getting set-up.
The first thing you will need to do to create your paper pulp fire brick is to turn one of the buckets into a giant strainer. To do that you will need to drill a bunch of holes. I may or may not be a mild perfectionist with some slight OCD leanings so just randomly drilling holes does not sit well with me so I used a carpenter’s square to create a grid work around the bucket and drilled my holes at all the intersections. To create my grid work I turned the bucket upside down and rested the carpenter’s square on the lip of the bucket. This gave me a line to draw from the bottom edge of the bucket all the way to 2″ below the bottom edge of the lip. It also allowed me to create evenly spaced circumferential lines from 2″ from the bottom edge of the lip to the bottom of the bucket. Everywhere the vertical and horizontal, circumferential lines crossed I drilled a 1/4″ hole.
For the bottom of the bucket I created a pie cross section grid work. Near the center of the bottom of the bucket, drilling at every intersection would leave a weak spot so I only drilled at every other intersection for the innermost rings, then drilled at every intersection for the remaining rings.
With all the holes drilled, the work of creating the buckets is done. The strainer bucket will nest inside the second bucket.
Fill it with water and place your random paper products in the water to soak. You will need to allow the paper products to soak for approximately 24 hours.
The original recommended method of shredding the paper.
To finish creating your paper fire log you will need to shred the soggy paper. This is where the saw blade and all thread rod come into play (I will explain how to get around using this in a moment). I placed a nut, lock washer, and fender washer on the all thread rod, placed the saw blade on the rod, and then placed another washer, lock washer, and nut to hold the saw blade in place. This “blender” works well but it has some drawbacks:
- It could be dangerous (you have a saw blade spinning on the end of a rod from a drill)
- The blade could potentially come off
- The blade hits the sides of the bucket and gouges the plastic
- It can be awkward to control
- It can make a huge mess as it starts to create a whirlpool in the bucket slinging water and paper pulp over the sides. This is how I ended up wearing a LOT of paper pulp on my legs, boots, and even some on my face. While it is good for creating comedy for those around you, it is a bit of a pain to clean up.
I can not over-emphasize the danger factor of this method (which is the original method recommended according to my friend). It would be easy to lose control of the blade and end up badly hurt.
Alternative shredding method.
As a result of the safety factor I believe I have a solution. If you have a paper shredder you could simply shred the paper before putting it in the water bucket. You would then follow the same directions, allowing the paper to soak.
What to do with the soaked paper.
Now that the shredded paper has set in the water for 24 hrs (or you have soaked the paper and then shredded it) you simply need to drain the water off. Lift the strainer bucket out of the holding bucket and allow the water to drain out. Once the water draining slows, set the strainer bucket somewhere that it will be ok to make a mess and place the holding bucket full of water on top of the wet paper pulp. This will allow the pulp to compress. I left mine to compress for another 24 hrs and, to create a tighter compression, I placed a second full 5 gallon bucket of water on top of the first. This means that you have approximately 80 lbs of pressure compressing the pulp. Some of the pulp may squeeze out of the holes but pulp loss should be fairly minimal.
Now that the pulp is compressed.
Locate a good place to allow the brick to dry. A sunny location is best as it will allow the brick to dry better. Temperature and ambient humidity will affect the drying time of the bricks. Once they are dried they should be solid enough to easily move and stack in a dry location to be burned in your fireplace to supplement your wood burning.
A few tips I have learned.
- When making my first brick I loaded the bucket with far to much paper. I left stacks of paper bunched together so when it came time to shred and blend the paper the blade would catch on clumps to heavy to shred. It caused the blade to be harder to control and I did not get a good shredding which is vital for bonding to the other pulp and for burn time. I had to remove a lot of the paper until I was able to get a good pulp mass. My first brick ended up being nearly 6″ thick. It is going to take a long time in our current weather for that brick to dry out. I was able to make 3 additional bricks at 2-1/2″ to 3″ thick. They are far more manageable and will be ready before the first brick.
- On the first 2 bricks I made I simply applied the water filled buckets to the mass to compress it. This caused some loss of pulp around the rim of the strainer bucket as it was pushed up the sides and the drain holes became clogged with pulp which inhibited drainage. This left my first two bricks with a high water content, which again, will take much longer to dry out. To help with this, on my next brick I found that working the pulp some with my hands and running my hands around the sides of the bucket resulted in less pulp loss, more water removed, and a lower water level in the brick. It kept pulp out of the drain holes and by working the pulp with my hands more water drained out. When I compressed the pulp I had no pulp loss around the rim of the bucket and minimal through the drain holes. It did mean getting a little dirty, but at that point I had gotten dirty every time so what was a little pulp on my arms.
- I will again emphasize that the spinning blade of pulp death can be very dangerous if not handled carefully. As a result I believe that pre-shredding the paper before soaking it will work just as well and will be far safer. I would recommend that you still get your hands in the water and pulp, even if pre-shredded, for the same reasons as above. As soon as we can afford a paper shredder I will be changing to this method.
All-in-all this is a great alternative to wasting paper. Depending on how many bricks you make throughout the year to set aside for the winter it could reduce your wood burning quite a bit and it is less wasteful than just throwing it away. If you are composting your shredded paper than you may not have enough for this project (we found that we have more than enough to fill the bucket and any paper that we need to dispose of while we are making a brick goes into the compost). This works out well to give us a good balance of paper recycling uses. I can’t wait for my first brick to dry, or cure if you will, enough to give it a try. Burn time claims from the original article my friend referenced were pretty high but if I get even half the amount of burn time out of the bricks that were claimed than I will be happy and consider this experiment a great success. Let me know if you have done this before or if you try it. I would love to hear about your experiences. Have a great day and God bless!
Edit: There is a follow up post that details the dry time and burn time I experienced with my first paper pulp fire brick. You can read it here: Paper Pulp Fire Brick Update: Is it worth it?
I’m planning to do this when we get a woodstove, but I wonder about the fumes. We burn our critical mail, and the stink is pretty bad sometimes. I love the smell of woodsmoke, but I wouldn’t want my place to smell of burning trash/plastic.
I would not burn the plastic. On the envelopes that have a little plastic window, I ripped the window off and disposed of it in my plastic trash bin. I only used paper. Hope that helps. 🙂
That would reduce the stink a good bit.
miss some saw dust into your paper when mixing up.
I just LOVE this idea! For whatever reason my elderly neighbor feels the need to give us all their newspapers…I’m totally making some of these! Pinning 🙂
Thanks for sharing at the Homestead Blog Hop this week! 🙂
Absolutely and thanks for hosting the Homestead Blog Hop. 🙂 So glad that you found it helpful.
Disclaimer: I am not an expert, and have yet to actually make a paper fire log or briquette. That being said, this method will work as demonstrated on YouTube, but it is by far one of the slowest methods available. Then there is the crazy sawblade on a drill trick…wouldn’t get within 3 feet of that! I first discovered the paper log idea on someone else’s blog, and thought the 3-bucket method looked great until I searched some more and found better ways, and thought of a few improvements myself. If you are serious about making enough to offset your heating bill, and don’t want to spend all your free time doing this, you have to mechanize it better. Starting with the paper: use a crosscut paper shredder. You don’t cut your foot off and it makes nice small pieces ready to be pressed. If you have a good home-office shredder like I do, it will easily shred even cereal boxes and light-gauge cardboard. In a few hours I shredded several large boxes full of paper pressed down snug for my first attempt. If after experimenting with paper logs I decide to commit, I will spend about $350 for a commercial paper shredder (look for a sale- I saw an $800 unit for $350) that you can drop 120 sheets of paper in a tray and walk away while it shreds, plus it will shred regular cardboard too. Next is to add to the water bucket and blend with a conventional paint or drywall putty mixer so you don’t wreck the bucket and kill yourself. Then, just buy one of the presses available on the internet for $50 that will press out several bricks at a time, and they will be drier than the bucket method and will be ready to burn sooner. I even found a model on Northern Tool & Equipment on sale for $70 that does 8 bricks at once! It should arrive on my doorstep in two days, I am so excited! My wife initially thought I was nuts to try to heat our house with waste paper, but she is getting on-board. If my experimenting proves successful as some others have demonstrated on YouTube, I will go industrial by buying the better shredder, and a small electric-powered cement mixer from Harbor Freight Tools to prepare my batter. Or, I may try some other presses. I spent 4 hours searching the web for an inexpensive briquette machine that would increase production and reduce effort. I did find a couple presses out there that create presto-log style briquettes from dry materials either using an electric motor or a manual-powered flywheel style press that might be worth the investment. No drying time! You can also purchase actual entry-level commercial briquette machines from China on Alibaba that a person can get for less than $5k. So lots of options out there, and I think nearly all of them beat the bucket-and-death-drill method. Not trying to be a wet blanket, but just thought I’d share the research I have been doing on paper-briquette making.
This is such a great idea! Thanks so much for sharing it with us. Pinning it now.
So glad you found it helpful. 🙂
Have you thought of using a metal lawn edger blade instead of the circular saw blade? Should do the job just as well but lots less likely to pierce the bucket. Used ones can often be obtained from landscaping companies for little to no cost.
That’s a good idea. I still think the safest route would be to pre-shred the paper but this would definitely be better than a saw blade. Thanks!
I read this a couple times looking for the answer to a question and maybe I missed it. But to be clear, when it’s time to dry them out, do we leave them in the bucket to fully dry or take them out to fully dry?
Thank you for this great idea!
Once they have compressed for about 24 hours, take them out of the bucket to dry. As they are still soggy and will break apart easily, I just dumped my bucket upside down right where I wanted them to dry so I didn’t have to move them. If you will need to move them while wet I would recommend putting them on something rigid to dry like a board or a piece of metal. Hope this helps! 🙂
So how long exactly do you let your smaller blocks dry for? And how long will they burn (about)? Just to get some idea… as you did not mention any of it. Thanks.
It took about 10-12 days for the smaller brick to dry out and I only got about 40 min of burn time out of it. Here is a link to a follow-up post I wrote once I was able to burn one of the dried fire bricks. It will answer your questions about both and may give you a little more insight into whether you want to proceed with the project or not. 🙂 http://www.lonestarfarmstead.com/diymyo-projects/paper-pulp-fire-brick-update-worth/ If you have any additional questions feel free to ask. I am more than happy to try to answer them.
Just a thought: there is a device that painters use with a 5 gal bucket. It is a long rod with a paint stirrer attached. It is used with an electric drill. This is fairly cheap (most under $10 ) Try Sears for the Sure – Line
I actually have one of those handy little devices (I use it for paint, stains, and laundry soap making lol) but it was not sufficient to break the paper apart. It might work if all of the paper were single pages but I had some paper packets and a part of a phone book in the bucket so they may have contributed to the failure of the paint stirrer to break up the paper sufficiently.
I have one of these for mixing plaster, It is a little bigger than the one for paint. I think I am going to try to sharpen the blades with a grinder and try to make some of your bricks using that.
Let me know how it goes. 🙂
We did this all the time when I was growing up. My mom had purchased this nifty little brick press for this purpose. It made bricks the size and (almost) shape of a small log. It was my job to make the bricks. So I was a kid and could manage the little press fairly easily. I don’t remember how long it would take to dry, but considering that we were in cold, wet northern Germany, it didn’t seem to take very long. We had enough to put a “brick” in the kitchen stove at night to keep the ambers going until the morning all through the winter…
I was just thinking about that the other day. A smaller brick like format might have a better burn rate. Great idea. 🙂
It worked really well for us. In fact, your article brought back so many memories, that I started researching presses for sale today…and found one through Kotula’s that we will order (sorry, I know that’s kinda like cheating for DIYers 😉 ).
I will put MY kids to work on it to continue the family “tradition” lol! We always seem to end up with a ton of shredded paper to recycle. Come to think of it, my younger son is part of his schools’ recycling brigade…hhmmm…that may be my new source for MORE paper if needed 🙂
Anyway, thank you for sharing your experience and methods and getting us kickstarted!
That’s great, and I don’t consider ordering a press cheating. 🙂 I’m just too cheap to buy one. I have considered making one out of a cheap bottle jack though as that would help speed up the process. Send me some pics of your first bricks. I’d love to see them and the press in action.
I am making my first batch of pulp from shredded paper and cardboard. It soaked for several days ( cardboard difficult to break down). Now that I’m pressing and handling the pulp, I smell an odor of formaldehyde. I’m afraid to burn this in my home and now think it’s best if these are only used outside/fire pit. Has anyone else experienced this?