Cardboard house offers solution to emergency housing after a disaster

A TINY house made from cardboard and timber offcuts could be the solution to providing more timely and cost-effective housing to regions like the Northern Rivers following a disaster.

A prototype of the structure was displayed at Southern Cross University to demonstrate ways to use waste cardboard and under-utilised timber materials sourced from the local area.

Southern Cross University’s Professor Andrew Rose said it offered a quick and affordable crisis housing option that also had potential benefits for the building industry.

“We’re still trying to recover from the 2022 floods as a community. One of the biggest issues at that time was a lack of potential housing and shelter,” Professor Rose said.

“Not only is this bio-based housing product ideal as something that relates to the circular economy, but it also provides low-cost, high-quality shelter for people who have been adversely affected by disasters.”

Project partners include the University of Queensland and the NSW Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, as well as eight industry partners – Hurford’s, Big River, Forestry Corporation, Weathertex, Australian Panels, Visy, Jowat and Ausco Modular.

University of Queensland’s Associate Professor Joe Gattas said the project presented a new class of structural composite product: timber-cardboard sandwich panels.

“In the current design system, the structural components consist of cardboard, which is fully recycled or sourced as a waste product, bonded to plywood skins,” Associate Professor Gattas said.

The prototype had its first test in an outdoor environment at the university, where it was open to viewing by the community, industry representatives, and flood recovery stakeholders.

Their main question was about the durability of cardboard as the main structural composite.

“The current configuration outperforms standard foam core structurally insulated panels by about 30 per cent for the same panel density,” Associate Professor Gattas said.

Andrew Hurford from timber company Hurford’s said the project presented an exciting opportunity to add value to products usually woodchipped to make paper.

“Everything has a use. It’s about finding the highest and best use for materials. Everything ends up going somewhere into a value chain, but if you spend 20 years growing a product, you need to get the best value for that product that you can.”

Associate Professor Gattas said rather than have multiple homes in storage in preparation for a disaster, they were working with industries to have materials already in production, so they could quickly roll out the housing as needed.

The project was supported by seed funding from the NSW Decarbonisation Hub’s Land and Primary Industries Network.