My other sites; http://frankmenchise.com,http://diybrickwork.com,http://manneedsgod.co.uk
Anyhow, you can also see more at this addresses, DIY brickwork
and, http://diybrickwork.com, To see more, Mix your own cement
Now let us describe cement is like the glue that when mixed with sand, gravels and other aggregates makes these materials stick together. The word “cement” can be traced back to the Romans, who called this “opus caementicum” to describe masonry that resembles concrete. We dare say that the Romans used burned limestone which when you add water turns into hydrated lime and also they used something called pumice that was collected from some part on Vesuvius it was a sort of cement that when you added water would become harder than if you just used lime, this is more or less how I have been told. As you can see there are two main bonding materials that can be used to make concrete and mortar.
Dear readers, because we want to explain how to mix concrete, in several ways, we are going to split our original article in three blogs.
The reason why, we are writing this article how to mix your
own cement, it is because we want to pass our knowledge of how these things have been done in the past, and can still be done today and in the future. So, we are writing this article for
those people that are willing to do building work themselves; and for those
people that live in poor countries, where building skills and material are
scarce, therefore, they need some knowledge to try building themselves, as long
as they can buy Portland cement and/or lime to mix it with.
This article “mix your own cement” (concrete) is going to be
a long and detailed way of how to make concrete from scratch, using Portland
cement and other basic materials, we will also describe how to mix mortar for the
bricklayer and cement plaster, just by using the most basic building materials,
by mixing them with Portland cement and/or lime. We will describe how these
things can be done.
We must say that today building anything has become easier, because most things that we need are ready made for us to use, provided we are living in a city or large town in the western world and in many other parts of the world. So, let us suppose that today we need concrete; we can order it, and have it delivered whenever we want it.
But these things were not so in the past, in the past people that were building had to have their own skills how to mix their own concrete, how to mix their own mortar and other things, and sometimes they had even to find the building materials themselves, before they could start to build anything, they were not easy times and people in the know, kept their knowledge for themselves. But today it is different, the knowledge they had and kept to themselves has become insignificant compared to the things that we know and do; so, to keep any knowledge for yourself is not going to help you, but it can help other people if it becomes common knowledge, since they happen to be in a different part of the world, so, they would like to know.
Therefore, this article is being written, in the hope that
our articles can help those poor people that are not aware that they can build
a better place for themselves, if they learn to recognize the basic materials
they need to use for building a place for themselves. Most of the building
materials that we are talking about are available anywhere in the world,
because they occur in the natural state as they are part of this great planet
earth, so, what are those building materials you may ask? And how we mix them you may want to know, so,
here is a link from YouTube that shows you how to mix concrete;
How to Mix Concrete by Hand - YouTube
Then we will talk about those
building materials that occur anywhere in the world.
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What are
these building materials?
Anyhow, I know a lot how to mix concrete, since I have mixed
it by hand and with a mixer hundreds of times, so, let us see these building
materials and how to use them.
First, let us see what these materials are, then we will
take you through how to mix them. Today you can buy these building materials
ready to mix, and all you need to do is to add the right amount of water and
mix them, but here we want to start everything from scratch:
In building anything with cement, there are five main sort
of materials that we need to recognize, before we start mixing our batches of
whatever we want to mix, they are; bricklayers’ loam, plaster sand, river sand,
gravel, and Portland cement; with these materials you can build anything, some
of these materials sometimes are called with different names, but, let us
describe what these material are like:
Bricklayers’ loams is a very fine sand, some of these fine
sands could be a tiny bit sticky and when it is wet enough you can almost make
a small ball in your hand, but it will always collapse as there is not enough
sticky material in it, but if you add the right quantity of cement and water (and
perhaps something else if required) it is easy to lay bricks.
Plaster sand is very fine sand but not as fine as
bricklayer’s loams it does not stick together by itself, therefore, it will
stick together only when you add cement and water to it, this type of sand is
used to plaster the walls, and can be used to lay concrete blocks it is ideal
to use this sand provided it is very fine, in this part of the world we call
this Besser sand.
River sand, or washed river sand is a type of sand coarser and
thicker than plaster sand, as the name suggests it comes from the river, in
this parts of the world because Brisbane river is salty water it is washed and
sieved, but it is possible to find deposit of this sand in some rivers that can
be used straight away, sometimes this
sand can be used by itself to lay a top layer on a fresh laid concrete, but its
use is mainly used to mix it with gravels to make concrete.
Gravel or gravels are small stones again these small stones
can be found in or near the rivers; in most places if there is proper supplier,
gravels are graded so one can order them as they are required, and this is what
we need to make good concrete. But if you happen to be in the middle of nowhere,
they don’t need to be graded properly to use for concrete and one could use a
mix of different size provided you know what you are doing. But one must be
careful that this ungraded building material is free from silt and organic
stuff.
Today of course building people rely more from the
specialized suppliers, and they order through these suppliers what they need. You
can even buy bags of ready mixed materials that you can use just by adding
water. These materials are good to use, if you have a small job to do, but they
become expensive to use if you have a large job.
What we have described above are the main materials required
to build most cement things, of course, you must know how to use them, and that
is what we are going to write next.
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Mixing your
own concrete from scratch
Because I am an old tradesman, I have been asked a few times
the following from some friends.
We want to mix some concrete ourselves; can you please
explain us how to do that? We don’t have a mixer and we want to learn how to do
that using the tools that we have; we have a couple of shovels and buckets a
wooden float and some other small tools. We are a couple of strong blokes and
we do not mind doing hard-physical work, it will be a pleasure to do some
useful exercise, so, tell us how to mix concrete?
Okay, since you do not mind working hard, I will be glad to
tell you how to mix your concrete by hand. Now, let us assume that you have the
material on site, and that you are ready to mix your concrete. To mix concrete
by hand, you need a flat platform where you can mix your concrete, this
platform does not need to be made on purpose, all it is needed is a hard
surface, perhaps a slab of existing concrete can be helpful or anything at all,
as long as this surface is not loose, because you don’t want to mix the soil
with your concrete.
To make is easy, we must assume that the bloke that sold you
the building material, has sold and delivered some concrete blend. Now what is
concrete blend, you are wondering; so, let us explain, concrete blend is gravel
and river sand mixed together approximately two part of gravel and one part
river sand, so, you don’t have to mix them anymore, it is ready to use.
To make normal concrete you need to mix by volume six
containers of concrete blend to one container of Portland cement, depending on
the quality of the concrete blend this may vary, so what we do next; we know
that we need a lot of concrete, so, you measure say twelve bucket of concrete
blend and put that on our platform, then you measure two bucket of cement to
mix with the blend. These are the quantities to keep in mind, (6 to 1) this is
a small batch of concrete, and you can make it bigger or smaller, if you keep
that 6 to 1 ratio. Sometimes this ratio may vary.
Now before you mix your cement with your blend; make sure
that everything is ready, because once you start this process you must continue
until you finish. Since everything is ready you can spread the cement on the
concrete blend, after doing that you take your shovels fill them up and start
turning your mixture around, by pushing the shovel under and turning it over,
you need to turn your mixture a couple of time; say first from A to B and then
from B to A, so, everything is in the same place, after doing that and you are
satisfied that your mixture is mixed even, you can make a well in the middle of
it, and add a bucket of water, if the water is absorbed quickly, then you know
that you must add more water, if a fair bit of water remains in the center then
you can start folding the outside mixture in the middle, you can add some water
as required, but don’t get carried away with adding too much water, because you
need to add water bit by bit, you see this is one of those things that you
learn as you do it and not before.
You have done all that and now you have a heap of this
mixture half mixed; here again you take your shovel and turn your mixture from
A to B while sprinkling some water on it, you may need to do this a few times
sprinkling water and turning your concrete mixture from B to A and from A to B,
you need to do this until you have an even mixture that it is well mixed. Now
you have your concrete ready to place wherever you need to place it.
This is how mixing concrete was done in the old days, it was
a hard job and it was not as accurate as it is today with the ready mixed
concrete truck that can deliver concrete to your job whenever you need it, and
all you have to do is to lay your concrete slab, or whatever you need to do.
Anyhow, the description above, can be used if you are in the middle of nowhere,
and you need concrete.
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