walls

Broken concrete recycled into a wall on a residential street in Albuquerque: this wall was laid up with some mortar, but it could have been laid up dry. The material works really well for retaining walls, also. It's attractive, cheap, and easy to work with (for someone with a strong back).

This particular wall really wasn’t laid up that artfully – the joints aren’t staggered as well as they probably should have been, and it’s not so level – but still, I think it looks good. It’s certainly functional. And, there’s no shortage of broken-up concrete – it's readily available.

I had a big pile of broken-up concrete that sat for a l-o-n-g time before I found someone to lay it up into a low retaining wall. My neighbors weren't very happy about this part of the process!

Gigacrete is a new, eco-friendly cementitious building material that uses no Portland cement; rather, it consists of a proprietary nontoxic binder, and a filler utilizing waste ash from coal fired power generation stations, of all grades, not just the fly ash currently used as a ten percent filler in concrete. Other fillers include waste paper, cardboard and plastics, styrofoam packaging, sludge from paper mills, and agricultural waste fibers (leftover from food crops like rice, corn, wheat and other grains). Since most of these materials would just end up in a landfill (sacrilege!), they instead make a great alternative building material. All of the above materials become totally fireproof and can be made very lightweight, yet are as strong as traditional concrete, sometimes even more so. Gigacrete composites do not shrink or crack like concrete, they're fireproof and water/insect/vermin/mold/hurricane/earthquake resistant. Products include: PanelSystem, Stuccomax, StuccoMax-E (Environmental), Floor Overlay, PlasterMax, GigaCast and GigaPatch. The site is definitely worth a look-see.

From the site:
PanelSystem is the basis of a complete panelized building system with many residential, commercial, and industrial applications. Utilizing new manufacturing technology, the PanelSystem is vertically cast in a factory and delivered to job sites ready for rapid installation. The PanelSystem is engineered to be fireproof and water, insect, vermin, mold, hurricane, and earthquake resistant. While GigaCrete™ panels have minimum compressive strengths of 1,200 PSI, the panels are a fraction of the weight of most Portland-based concrete panels and require only hand labor to move and construct. The GigaCrete PanelSystem can be molded for structural walls, interior walls, floors, and roofing - providing a turnkey building system that significantly reduces the time and cost of construction.

GigacreteUSA

Voted one of the top 25 "Best of Green Design", by Popular Mechanics