Eco friendly guest house made out of cardboard
Cardboard feared neither fire nor water nor vermin
It was a bold and he did it: build a cardboard house on an island swept by storms. Far from the conventional wisdom, this cardboard B & B built as an extension to a stone house is not a cube, does not fear either the fire ( the box is too dense to burn), or water and the polyethylene covering the cardboard makes it completely waterproof. Further it lets alone the vermin who hate cellulose, and icing on the cake, it is twice cheaper as conventional concrete.
The construction costs between 900 and 1000 euros per m2. “The cardboard has more than three times the performances of glass wool with a high mechanical strength ensuring seismic risk and providing optimum acoustic quality!”
These arguments have convinced and even passionated Nicole and Alain Lenoble. As a professional artist, Nicole also uses cardboard for years for furniture and decorative objects design that adorn the two cottages in an original way.
Cardboard is like concrete
It only tooks three weeks of preparation to the workshop and luckily two weeks of good weather for the house installation. The construction consisted initially in assembling 20 centimeters thick panels, composed of an assembly of wavy cardboard’ sheets, from recycling paper glued with corn starch. Alain precised us that these panels are themselves recyclable 7 times after use.
Then the panels were embedded in a wood frame, like a big Meccano, becoming structural elements … Walls, ceilings and floors are made of cardboard “continues the proud owner, “the building site has generated only a total of three garbage bags of waste! and one more asset of the cardboard is that it contains no volatile organic compound.”
“We are very concerned about leaving our island as preserved as possible for our children”
In love with Belle-Ile and ecologists in the soul, the couple Lenoble matured the extension project of their home since 2010, through the Agenda 21 implementation of Locmaria and with the invaluable support of the House Nature of Belle Ile (Centre Permanent Initiative Environnementale).
“We are very concerned about leaving our island as preserved as possible for our children and are looking for a quality of life in harmony with our environment with sincere human relations, away from consumerism system.”
A chance encounter introduced us to Alain Marboeuf, managing director of Tera Nova that develops this new concept of building houses using IPAC® (Alveolar Cellulose Insulation Bearer). We trusted him without any guaranteed results.
Today, we’re excited of that choice and hope that this construction method will receive the green building accreditation it deserves. Meanwhile, the cardboard house serves as a laboratory to experts and measures regulatory approval and Nicole and Alain Lenoble, expect to get the EU Ecolabel for their guest room which door stay wide open for all the curious who are interested in visiting it!
As Alain Marboeuf says “before looking for photovoltaic panels or wind turbines which manufacture uses a lot of embodied energy, think insulate homes.”
Why not give a second breath to materials such as cardboard which applications continue to grow for 150 years!
