Block and brick laying is competitive

Dear readers, we are writing these posts, because we want to write some D.I.Y. Brickwork, building retaining walls and mix your own cement, so that you can learn how to built something yourself, at least in theory. But in these blogs we are also trying to get you interested to become a tradesman. So, keep reading please. Anyhow, this blog is more advanced, since we are talking about how to lay as many blocks as you can in one day. 

You can also find this article at, http://oldman-lifeworks.blogspot.com, 

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, Bricklaying is competitive

These cement block in Australia are called Besser blocks, they come in various sizes what is shown here is the 200 size, (also called eight inches) they are heavy and you need to lift them with both hands to lay them, so, it is hard work and you need to know what is the bast way to lay them.   

Block and bricklaying needs to be competitive 

Welcome to our article,  Bricklaying is competitive

Building workers need to be competitive;

Today because of the way the economy has been set up, if you want to succeed you need to be competitive, therefore, we must try to do things better and faster than other people. Most people have this inborn need to excel in whatever they do; and those who don’t, will become losers. For these reasons, we must try harder to be successful in life.

This need applies also to the building industry, because the building industry needs to be competitive, to a higher degree than other industries, so, it is important that we can build better and cheaper houses, because that is the only way that the buyers can afford them, and when they are sold, the builders can build another one to sell again.

As we have said, we know that whatever work we do, we must do it well and quickly, so that we can beat our competitors. So, the trade people that work in buildings, they are looking for ways to improve their output; you see, a tradesman needs to perform well, if he is going to be employed from a builder or contractor, because he needs to earn his wage and a bit more for his employer. So, if you are a bricklayer you must be able of laying a certain number of bricks or blocks per day, before you can be employed gainfully, but this can vary greatly depending on the job that needs to be done.

Now, in our previous building articles we have talked about brickwork, we have started with, DIY brickwork,  then we have written  Building a brick base, and  House brick base continues, so, we have talked how to lay bricks in these three articles; anyhow, these three articles were written to show people, how to lay bricks and how to go about building this brick base. We have also pointed out how to lay more bricks by using bricklayers’ profiles and other things, but the aim was mostly for people that were not tradesmen. But what we are going to write here is for more advanced, it is for tradesmen. 

To build a Besser block wall is harder for the bricklayer, because the blocks are heavy to lift and you need to lift each block with both hands, so, if you are not well organized, it is hard to lay many blocks in one day, but there are ways that can help you lay more blocks.   

Written for the block layer tradesman

Now, we are writing it this sub-article for the block-layer tradesmen, because we want the block-layer tradesmen to challenge themselves, to see if what we are claiming here can be done more than just a few times; of course, to do that, we are going to show you how you can lay more Besser blocks in one day than you did before, but you need to follow some rules that we have found helpful ourselves. In this example we are going to make it easy and we are going to talk only about straight forward work, otherwise it is going to be very hard to achieve and also to explain or measure what we want to do.

You know, for the bricklayer to lay blocks is even harder than laying bricks, because the blocks are heavy, each block needs to be lifted with both hands and carefully placed softly on the mortar bed that the block layer has laid, so, it is hard to lay many blocks in one day, but there are ways to make it a bit easier and a block layer could lay up to 250 in one day, when the job is easy enough to do; so, let us see how that can be achieved.

Now it is necessary to explain to the public, what happens in the building industry and how many bricks or blocks a tradesman is supposed to lay in one day. In the building industry the best tradesman will exaggerate a bit their capacity of laying so many bricks or blocks per day, so, we go around boasting that we are able to lay 1000 common bricks, or over 500 face bricks, or 200 eight inches Besser blocks in a single day.

Here we need to say that perhaps we have done it once or twice ourselves, and we want to boast about it, as if we can do it every day; but really that is hard to achieve, anyhow, if you have been able of laying down that many bricks or block even one time in your life, you are a good tradesman. But the reality is that on average, when we work on houses or small building at the end of a job the figure can be half of what we are boasting about. Now that we have explained that let us see how we can do better. 

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Laying 250 Besser blocks in one day:

Now, let us explain how a block-layer can lay up to 250 eight inches blocks in one day. For a block layer to be able of laying 250 blocks in one day, everything and every movement should be planed, so that there is no waste of time and energies. So, how we can achieve that, is explained here under. 

Now, to lay 250 Besser blocks in one day, it must be a straight forward job, let us say the walls are long and you are on a level platform, let us assume that we are working on a concrete slab, so, the place is level and there is plenty of room to move around, the walls have been marked where they should be, so, all you have to do is to lay these eight inches’ blocks. Now to do this job efficiently it required teamwork, so, if you are the block layer, you need to instruct your labor how you want to set up your mortar board and the blocks that you must lay.

Ideally you want the mortar boards to be set off the ground, so, the labor should put a couple of blocks on the slab and set the mortar board on them, they need to be set at least two feet from the wall and about 6 to 8 feet apart, you see here you want to give more room to the labor for the blocks; then instruct you labor that when he brings the blocks he should set the blocks between the mortar boards standing up, so that you don’t have to handle the blocks many times; this is how the labor should set everything up. Now let us talk about how you proceed to lay those 250 blocks, in one day.

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Because, I could not find a good photo, I have been forced to use this photo of a plaster, filling his hawk with his steel float. Anyhow what is important here is that, the bricklayer uses the plaster hawk and the trowel to fill up his hawk and then places the mortar from the hawk on the blocks, so, he does not need to bent, so many times. Hereunder is a typical bricklayer trowel that should be used.  

Describing the block layer procedure

The block layer first of all lays one block in each corner; and then he stretches his bricklayer line between these two blocks and lays the first course of blocks as usual making sure that all blocks are straight and have an even vertical joint, if everything is done the correct way, because the blocks have been made to cover 400 mm each in the wall, but their true length is 390 mm, if you measure the wall it should be an even number divisible by 100 mm and minus 10 mm. So if a wall is 10 metre long and you follow this rule strictly, you will end up with a wall 9.990 meters long, of course this could easily be adjusted from the block layer by making a few joints bigger or smaller as required.

The reason why, we have written about these lengths above, is that we want to point out to people that want to lay blocks themselves, how to work with blocks, so, let us explain it in another way: when we work with blocks it is a lot easier for us to follow the gauge, because they have been made to cover an even number when laid, so, a 200 series block is 390 mm long 190 mm wide and 190 mm high, but when laid in the wall because we have to add the mortar joint it covers 400 mm in length and 200 mm high, so, this is the gauge that needs to be kept, of course sometimes the length in the building do not work with the length of the blocks and this may cause a few problems; but whatever problems there are, it is advisable that you don’t try too hard to adjust it by making the joints too big or too small; you can try to make the bed and vertical joint smaller if possible and it is still going to be a good job done, but if you try to make them bigger it becomes unsightly.  

Anyhow, now we need to write how a tradesman block layer can lay 250 blocks in one day, in order to lay that many blocks he must set everything the right way from the start, so, let us describe how that can be achieved. We have mentioned above a wall ten meters long, but it can be any length, but not short, and you can use the following method. After laying the first course of blocks you build the two corners, say four blocks high and you set your bricklayer line on these corners. Now make sure that your labor has brought the blocks and placed them between the mortar boards standing up us we have described above, this will save you the bricklayer to lift the blocks in that position before you place the mortar on them for the vertical joints.

Okay, everything is ready to go, tell the labor that he can wet the boards and fill them with fresh mortar; now pick up a plaster hawk and your bricklayer trowel, fill up the hawk from the mortar board and start laying the mortar on the block ribs on both sides, you see the blocks ribs are narrow and you cannot use a full trowel of mortar straight from the board, well you can but it is going to be hard to drop the right amount of mortar on the ribs, so, by using the hawk you can pick up a small amount of mortar from it and place is straight on the block ribs, by doing this you will be able to lay your mortar bed a lot faster without bending to many times, so, you can save time and energy, it is up to you if you lay the mortar bed for the entire course, or only part of it, it may depend on the length of the wall and other factor, and a good bricklayer knows what to do just by observing a few things; now that you have laid the mortar bed place some mortar for the vertical joint on the blocks that are already standing up, then leave your hawk and trowel on the mortar board; you see you have to leave these tools there because you need both hands free to lift up the blocks, here you have a choice, you can lift just one block carefully lay it on the mortar without squashing it  and tap it into position with your trowel and when necessary even a hammer, now you can lift one block at a time and tap it into position, or a few blocks and then tap them into position, it is up to you whichever way you prefer.

Anyhow, what we have written above is how you can lay more blocks with less effort, in a day, it is worth to try, as we have tried it and it works. I hope that I have been able to explain this procedure clear enough for our readers, or any tradesman to follow.

That is all in this article. See you in our next article, D.I.Y. house repairs.

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Cement and lime use in building, part three

Dear readers, we are writing these posts, because we want to write some D.I.Y. Brickwork, building retaining walls and mix your own cement, so that you can learn how to built something yourself, at least in theory. But in these blogs we are also trying to get you interested to become a tradesman. So, keep reading please. This blog is about D.I.Y  Mix your own cement. There are different ways how to mix cement and mortar and the main one are explained hereunder. 

You can also find this article at, http://oldman-lifeworks.blogspot.com, 

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 

A large Lime factory, it seems to me that there are many types of lime factories, so, we better let the expert explain that. 

Hydrated lime or cement are the two main ingredient to mix mortar with. In this part three we will be talking more about lime, even if this is an old way of how things were done. 

Welcome to our article, Mix your own cement, part three 

Cement and lime use in building and other things

In this article we will be talking about, Quick-Lime and slacked or hydrated lime. Now what we are writing here is a type of mixing mortar is the old ways, but sometimes even the old ways can be the only way to solve the problem. 

Today when we are on a building site and we talk about lime, we see a bag of white powder that we buy at the hardware store, we know that we can use this powder to replace some cement when we make mortar, but we don’t know much more than that, But lime is a lot more than just a white powder in a bag, because lime is one of those materials that has been and is being used a lot in many ways, its’ largest use is in making mortar for the master builders, but it has other uses also. So, let us talk about lime and where it comes from, so that we can understand things about lime and its several uses, of course, here we are mainly interested about its use in the building industry for making mortar etc. But there is more to say about lime, but before we do that let us check out how the Wikipedia explains quick lime etc. Where you can find a lot of information about lime if you care to know, click on the links.

Slaked or Hydrated Lime

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From the Wikipedia:

   Calcium oxide (CaO), commonly known as quicklime or burnt lime, is a widely usedchemical compound. It is a white, caustic, alkaline crystalline solid at room temperature. The broadly used term "lime" connotes calcium-containing inorganic materials, which include carbonates, oxides and hydroxides of calcium, silicon, magnesium, aluminium, and iron predominate, such as limestone. By contrast, "quicklime" specifically applies to a single chemical compound.

Quicklime is relatively inexpensive. Both it and a chemical derivative (calcium hydroxide) are important commodity chemicals.

   Calcium oxide is usually made by the thermal decomposition of materials such aslimestone, that contain calcium carbonate (CaCO₃; mineral calcite) in a lime kiln. This is accomplished by heating the material to above 825 °C (1,517 °F),^[5] a process calledcalcination or lime-burning, to liberate a molecule of carbon dioxide (CO₂); leaving quicklime. The quicklime is not stable and, when cooled, will spontaneously react with CO₂ from the air until, after enough time, it will be completely converted back to calcium carbonate.

Annual worldwide production of quicklime is around 283 million metric tons. China is by far the world's largest producer, with a total of around 170 million metric tons per year. The United States is the next largest, with around 20 million metric tons per year.^[6]

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As we have said, lime has been used for a very long time its use could be prehistoric, nobody seems to know when it was first used in making mortar and plaster for buildings and for other things, it was/is used even to disinfect places, when there is no much else to use, and I know that there is a lot more to say about the use of lime even today; up to the time when I was young it was used even to whitewash the walls in spring once a year, after a long winter all the walls were darkened with smoke, because if you wanted to keep warm you needed to light a fire in the chimney, so, the smoke of the fire would find the way into the rooms instead of going all up the chimney, I am pretty sure that even today this is the cheapest way of cleaning rustic building, as, it is one of the cheapest ways to make everything clean. But let us tell you it’s use as a building material to make mortar.

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From quick lime to hydrated lime  

From quick lime to slacked lime the old ways

Here we are talking about the late forties and early fifties, when I was young learning what was happening around me, so, hereunder we will be writing about what I saw and learned at that time about lime products and its uses. 

In the town where I come from in southern Italy; in the early fifties when there was a new building to be build or alterations to existing buildings to be done, one of the first things we would see was that the master builder would get ready a good supply of slacked lime, because this was one of the most important building materials he needed to do the job. In those times bagged hydrated lime and cement was very expensive, and bagged cement has a short life shelving span, as it reacts when humidity infiltrate the bags, therefore, most people or builders that needed to build used lime wherever they could; they would buy quick lime and get it process immediately on delivery themselves or with the help of the people that delivered it, of course, one needs to know how to do that, because it is dangerous while you are doing it. Now, let us see how it was done, and then we will tell you where else the lime was used.

Anyhow, the master builder before delivery had to build a square wall like a box, and in this large box he would process the quick-lime, because the quick lime cannot be held the way it is for any length of time, because it reacts to humidity and violently to water, so, it is necessary that it is turned into slacked lime as soon as possible after delivery.

 Okay, the cart or the lorry is on the way, so, the master builder gets his worker to start filling the pit with water, and when the quick lime arrives they start carefully throwing this burned lime stones into the pit in very small quantities, as soon as the quick lime comes in contact with the water it reacts and the water starts boiling, everybody is banned to approach the pit accept the people that must work there, and they ware some protective gear, because it is dangerous to handle quick-lime and around the pit, this process goes on until all the quick lime is thus treated, once they have done that it is left to cool down for a few days; after it has cooled down it is a lot less dangerous, but still you need to be careful near the lime pit. You see, the lime pit is now filled up with slacked lime, which looks like curd when you make cheese, but it is still dangerous and it can easily kill you if you fall in it, its contend must be handled with caution, but anyhow the slacked lime is now ready to be used, this is how the builders used to get ready the lime to make mortar. Now to use this lime to make mortar is different from using bagged hydrated lime or cement; so, hereunder we are going to tell you how to make mortar with slacked lime.

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How to make mortar with slacked lime 

This is how I know it was done in the old time, perhaps for thousands of years, anyhow, let me describe the procedure. Let us suppose that you have the slacked lime in the pit or in a container; you have brickies loam or fine sand, so, let us start:

Start by making a hip of your sand on a platform; now that you have done that, make a well in the center and place your slacked lime in it. The quantities in here may vary a lot more than when we use cement or hydrated bagged lime, because the slacked lime can be as liquid as thickened cream to as compact as feta cheese, so, you have to learn as you go about the quantities, but if you have mixed mortar before, you soon work it out yourself, or if there is any tradesman that is going to use the mortar he can tell you just by looking at the mortar being done, whether you need more lime or more sand and water etc.

Okay, now that you have the lime in the middle of the sand, with a Larry start pushing this devise up and down through the lime by adding a bit of water as needed and slowly mixing some sand with the lime; you need to do this until you have mixed the whole lot evenly. This is hard work but that is how it was done when there were no mixer and no bagged hydrated lime around.

Here we need to note that this mixing of slacked lime to mix mortar is completely different from mixing other mixture, because the slacked lime is already wet, and it is like a paste.

Now, let me talk about, lime use in farming.

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Lime use in farming  

You know, there are lots of place where we can use lime, I only know some of them, so, let me say a few things about how we were using lime in our small family farm at the time when I was young, just the way I remember it:

We would use it like the builders use it when we had to repair or replace a few stone that were falling apart in the old stone building, so, instead of using clay like the first time, we would mix a small quantity of mortar using lime and sand; then, we used lime to whitewash the farm house, the stables, the pig stay, the chicken coop and sheds or other buildings near the farm house once a year in spring.

We could use it to disinfect stagnant water ponds that showed signs of vermin, or the water were too dirty, so, we would dilute some lime in water and then pour it in the water ponds, and next day the ponds would be clean, as the lime would kill the vermin and would make the water clear because all the dirt would sink to the bottom of the pond; we used this water to water the plants when the soil was becoming too dry for the garden plants to grow.

In the farms of those days lime was also used to spray vines and trees, there is one thing that always comes to my mind; it is when we were spraying the grape vines with a copper sulfate and lime, we would have two containers one with diluted copper sulfate and one with diluted lime, some people used to spray first with copper sulfate and then with lime, so that they would help each other to kill the mildew, but my grandma had worked a way how to avoid this double spraying and it worked thus;

In those times it was not like today and even the vine spraying pump was a devise that you would put on your back, and with a handle that you moved up and down you would spray your vines and trees as well; this devise could hold about three gallons of liquid, so, every now and then you needed to fill it up; as I have said we had two containers one holding diluted copper sulfate and one with diluted lime; (of course you had to know how much diluted you had to do your mixtures but that does not mutter here this time) anyhow, when the pump was/is empty you would go to these containers to fill it up: here is my grandma way to avoid to spray twice, when filling the pump, first of all you had to make sure that the mixture were well stirred, then you would put the copper sulfate in the pump and at the last minute you would add the lime, and immediately start to spray. This was my grandma way and it worked because the mixture would not have time to settle down and become stale. 

Anyhow, I think that this article is too long, and I have said enough about how to mix your own cement or mortar, about lime and lime use in farming, so, see you next time with our D.I.Y. articles, bricklaying is competitive.

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Learn how to mix cement, part two

Dear readers, we are writing these posts, because we want to write some D.I.Y. Brickwork, building retaining walls and mix your own cement, so that you can learn how to built something yourself, at least in theory. But in these blogs we are also trying to get you interested to become a tradesman. So, keep reading please. This blog is about D.I.Y  Mix your own cement. There are different ways how to mix cement and the main one are explained hereunder. 

You can also find this article at, http://oldman-lifeworks.blogspot.com, 

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 

One typical concrete mixer, powered by an electric motor. These type of mixers are very helpful on site, you can mix almost anything with them, provided you have the right material and know how. 

Learn the art of mixing cement, part two

Learn to recognize and use the building materials when we mix cement; 

In our previous post, we have written what are the building materials, and we have explained how to mix concrete by hand, this procedure can be applied to mix mortar and plaster etc. We have also explained how you can recognize the raw building materials.

Having done that, now let us imagine that you need concrete, you live in the middle of nowhere and you have only a few tools, but you now a faraway place where you can go and buy Portland cement; you are not going to buy anything else at that place, because it is too far, it will be costly to bring it in, so, the rest of the concrete materials you are going to find near the river banks. I know it is like going back in time a hundred years ago, but there are parts of the world that are still that far back. Therefore, learning how to recognize the basic building materials for making concrete, and then mixing concrete by hand can still be useful today. So, we are writing these articles, hoping we can help any do it yourself small owner builders.

Now, we have to add that what we are writing here is how we have done these things, and we know they work, however, it is only our view and they work well in all minor jobs, but if you have large important jobs, you must consult the local experts.

Now let us see how we mix concrete with a mixer. 

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A builder wheelbarrow, is a must have on any building sites. Also shovels and buckets is a must have and other things as well.   
      

Mixing concrete with a mixer

Okay, let us make this clear, there may be several ways how to mix you concrete; you can mix it on the ground, as we have described above, you can mix concrete in a wheelbarrow, if you have a wheelbarrow with a good tray, or you can mix it with a mixer which is helpful to have. But what are the different procedures when you mix, in order to achieve the best result with the least amount of time and work:

The greatest difference for mixing concrete and also other cement materials is mainly this: when you mix by hand you can achieve the best result by mixing the materials with the cement before you add water, as this helps to make a more even mixture quicker: But when you use the mixer you don’t need to do that, in fact, you can have better and quicker result, by following this procedure hereunder:

Start the mixer and put in the mixer some water, approximately the proper amount to mix the whole batch, you know how much water to use once you have made a few batches.

Now before we proceed to mix, let us talk about the water amount. On building sites, it is near impossible to tell you how much water you need exactly, due to the fact that the materials you are using contains an unknown quantity of water, therefore, the quantity of water varies, you see, the wetter the materials are, the less water you need and vice versa if they are dry.  

Now, let us assume that because you are new at doing this job, you are using a dry small bucket to measure the quantities of the building materials; in this case you have gravel and river sand in separate heaps, you know that this concrete is going to be mixed 6 to 1, but overall this batch you are going to mix 8 small buckets of gravel four of river sand and two of Portland cement:

Now the quantities above is how the best and strongest cement can be achieved, with a minimum of Portland cement used; very likely these quantities are written in the specifications, if you have any specification written, and the ready mix people use those amounts and have a perfect concrete, because the concrete mixer will mix it well and as dry as possible. But by experience on building sites, we use a bit more river sand and a bit less gravel, as this makes it easier to work with overall.

Now let us go back to mix our concrete:  

So, after you have poured the water into the mixer, you put one single bucket of gravel and while the mixer turns put the two small bucket of cement into the mixer, the cement in the mixer will immediately mix in the water and the first bucket of gravel will make sure that it does not stick to the mixer, because it will cut though any lumps easily, now you add four buckets of river sand, and this again will mix very quickly and become like a thick cream, all you have to do next is to add the other seven bucket of gravel, once you have done that you only need to wait a little bit for the mixer to mix it properly and your concrete is ready. Now all you must do is to tip your concrete in a wheelbarrow and take it to the place you need to concrete.

This is the quickest and best way to mix concrete in a mixer, as I have done it for thousands of times, but I need to say that on building sites, where there is plenty of cement to mix and the workers have to try not to injury themselves, by lifting hundreds of bucket full of material all day long, they use to measure the materials by the shovelful, but you have to be an expert at doing that to get everything measured right. I hope this description of how to mix concrete is clear enough.

Before we leave this concrete discussions we want to add more information; you see, concrete in itself is very strong in compression, but is lacks strength under tension, so, to make concrete very strong and last a very long time you need to use steel in the concrete; here is a link that will help to understand some of these issues.

 How to Make Concrete Even Stronger: 6 Steps (with Pictures)

 

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Mixing mortar, plaster, or cement topping.  

Now that we have described how to mix concrete by hand and by using a mixer, the same ways can be used to mix mortar and/or hard plaster or cement topping etc. So now, we do not need to explain step by step how to mix them, but we will describe only the different amount of things that are used; but try to remember that when you mix by hand, it is a lot easier to mix the dry materials first and then add water, but when you use the mixer it usually is better and quicker to start with the water first.

To mix mortar for the bricklayer;

Just by using brickies loam and Portland cement, this mixture by volume is most likely 4 part brickies loam to one part Portland cement, but it could vary from (3 to 1) to (6 to 1) the aim here is to give the bricklayers what is easy to work with, and at the same time you don’t want to make the mortar a lot stronger than the bricks when it dries, and you don’t want to make it too weak for the job you are doing, so, it makes sense to see what the bricklayer reckons is good enough for the job; sometimes when making mortar you can replace part of the Portland cement with hydrated lime, plus other things to make the mortar easy to work with.

Mortar for cement blocks

The mortar for cement block is usually three parts fine plaster sand and one-part cement, it is a bit different from the brickie’s loam, as it is thicker and stronger and very close to the block’s colors when dry.   

To mix cement plaster to plaster walls;

This mixture is usually 3 part plaster sand and 1 part Portland cement, in some countries where lime is easier to have than cement it can be made by using a mixture of lime and cement for the interior, we believe that there are a lot of old places that they have used lime only, the cement mixture is used wherever it is too wet.

Cement topping;

This mixture is usually 3 parts river sand to 1 part Portland cement; it can be used straight on the cement if it is still green, but when the cement is dry you need to make sure it is clean and rough for the cement to bond, you may have to use tools to indent the existing concrete, then you have to wet the cement and also you may need to use some cement bounding agent and/or paint to concrete with this cement glue called Weldbond or  Bondcrete or whatever and place the topping cement according to the instruction supplied, if these concrete glues are not available, you have to wet the concrete that you have to lay the topping on, then make some slur of water and cement and somehow work it in with a brush as if you paint the concrete, and before this starts drying lay your topping on it. 

These three mixtures plus the concrete are the main things that are required when we build with cement, of course, for those people that do not know how the different materials look like, is still hard to understand the hole procedure, but if they read a few times what we have said, they should have a fair idea of what we are talking about. Anyhow, I have described several things already, but I think that I need to describe how to mix mortar with lime only, as it was done in the old days and here I am not talking just hydrated lime that you can buy at the hardware store, but I am talking about quick-lime as it comes from the kiln and how we made slacked lime. 

So, see you in our next blog, lime use in building, part three. 

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Mix you own cement, part one

Dear readers, we are writing these posts, because we want to write some D.I.Y. Brickwork, building retaining walls and mix your own cement, so that you can learn how to built something yourself, at least in theory. But in these blogs we are also trying to get you interested to become a tradesman. So, keep reading please. This blog is about D.I.Y  Mix your own cement.    

You are here, http://oldman-lifeworks.blogspot.com, 

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.

Most times if you need only a small amount of cement it can be mixed in a wheelbarrow.  

Welcome to our blog, Mix your own cement, part one 

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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Besser block retaining walls, part four

Dear readers, we are writing these posts, because we want to write some D.I.Y. Brickwork and building retaining walls and other things, so that you can learn something about how to built something yourself, at least in theory. But in these blogs we are also trying to get you interested to become a tradesman. So, keep reading please. This blog is about D.I.Y  Besser Block Retaining Walls.    

You are here, http://oldman-lifeworks.blogspot.com, 

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, DIY Retaining walls 

When the block of land is steep, it requires a lot of work to be done, if you want a small portion of your land flat, so that you can stand and enjoy whatever is there to enjoy and do whatever you want to do in the open air.  See the photo here under, they have built a Besser block retaining wall with an indent in it, mainly to give extra strength to the block wall and also to put this concrete slab and use this indent with whatever they want to do next. Note that above this block wall there is another sleeper retaining wall, these sorts of things are very costly, and we must plan it out before we starts, anyhow, under below we are going to write about a Besser block retaining walls, first just a normal strong retaining wall and after that we are going to build a leaning Besser block wall, similar to the hybrid rock wall.    

Building a Besser block retaining wall

Besser blocks retaining walls require a reinforced concrete foundation with steel starter bars placed exactly in the centre of the hollow part of the block, when you look at the wall from the front or back, and if possible a bit close to the side where the pressure of the soil is going to be, but that can be asking too much from the concrete man and the steel fixers. So, a profile must be in place before you can even concrete the foundations, or fix the steel in the foundation, because all measurements need be known and easily measured while working on it.

This is a very demanding job and it is not a do it yourself job unless you are a tradesman. So, the name that I have given this article DIY retaining wall would not apply in this case, you see I apologise because I was forced to use DIY just to overcome the problem of the title that happens when we start a new article and find that the name we have chosen has already been taken.

Anyhow, when you start laying the first Besser block in most cases, it is helpful if you can start the first course with an open block, this block looks like a square C, and you lay it with the open side facing away from the bank that it is going to hold back when everything is done, the corners are built with normal blocks and most of the walls are built with blocks that look like an H, so, it is easier to fill up with concrete, once the wall has been built. Now while the block layer is laying the blocks, he will have to lay horizontal steel bars between the courses of blocks as specified, if there is a plan and specifications, or use common sense, or copy from the specifications of a similar job he has done, the vertical steel bar will be inserted from the top before or while pouring concrete into the blocks.

Now the reason why we need to use an open C shaped block for the first course, it is because it is necessary that before we fill up the blocks we remove the mortar that has fallen down at the bottom of the blocks while we were laying them, you see, we want a solid base and we want the concrete to bind around the starter steel bars that we have laid in the foundation and this is the best way to make the retaining wall as strong as we can. Once that is done, we can fix a plank against the openings and we are ready to pour the concrete in the wall. 

Here we must say that for this retaining wall we have not mentioned any drainage yet, so, what happen to the water that seeps behind the wall needs to be worked out, you see, sometimes when we build walls this strong, there could be a reason that we do not want any water past the wall, it can be part of a base of a house being built, so, we have not even left any weep holes in the wall, because there is going to be a drainage pipe laid behind the wall surrounded by gravel. The wall might also be treated with special paints to waterproof it.

This is one type of blocks retaining wall, and I am going to write about another type, where we lean the retaining walls towards the bank for future back fill that it is going to hold up, this is a large job that we did years ago in a yard of a new large home in Redhill a Brisbane suburb. We are going to write it here, to show you another type of retaining wall and the many ways that can be built.

 

Redhill backyard problem solved.

Years ago we worked on this part brick house in Redhill, we say part brick house because the top floor of the house and the interior was made of timber, so, it was a brick veneer, the base was solid bricks and blocks, it was a large house, on a large block of land had two street frontage. It was on a hill and the difference between the front and the back yard was a lot, but the two street frontages was good, because the house was being built on the higher part of the block of land, where it was nearly flat there and almost level with the road, so, there were no problem building the house; but the back yard was very steep, in some places could have been up to 45 degrees.

So, when we finished the brickwork on the house we were asked from the owner, if we could build some retaining walls, because the backyard was useless as it was. So, after discussing the financial part how he would pay us; we discussed how we could fix the back-yard building block retaining walls. So, it was agreed that we had to lay these block retaining walls leaning a few degrees towards the bank. We had to build concrete stairs on one side, so that the house could also be entered from the back street, so, working together with the owner we did the following.

Because you cannot build a very high wall on the road boundary, first a section of about 4 feet wide (1.2 m) was dug and a foundation was poured, with starter steel bars as needed and the main wall was set about a meter from the road where the first retaining wall was to be build, this was the main foundation for a start, some of the small foundations and other adjustment we had to work out as the work progressed.

The decision was that we had to build the wall leaning towards the bank for extra strength; you see, when building retaining walls the weight of the retaining wall with the weight of the foundation must be more than the weight that the backfill can move, if possible that you can build a very strong monolithic wall and foundation together this is the best solution, in this case it was not possible, because the job was too big, beside that you need to have a very wide and heavy foundation and a very strong bond between the foundation and the wall, since this bond between the foundation and the wall is the weakest point unless it is concrete and poured together, but we were using blocks to build the wall, therefore, it had this weakness at the bottom of the wall, therefore, by leaning the wall towards the bank, the weight of the wall becomes  the first point or resistance.

Now, how much we must lean the wall was left to us block layers, because for sure there will be problems, and there were several problems to overcome; the first problem is that if you have to return the corners it cannot be done, but we had corners on the boundaries of the joining block of land, so, we had to think how to overcome this drawback, for this it was decided that we would not build the corners as usual, we should treat them as separate, but we would place a corner steel rod every course, instead of every second course, as in the wall itself.

There was also the possibly that while we were building the wall, if we lean it too much it could fall on the inside, while we were building it, so, we had to strike a balance. Knowing that this first wall was going to be no more than 3 meters high, we worked out that if we lean the wall 5 centimetre per meter, the top of the wall was going to be about 15 centimetre back from the perpendicular, the blocks were 19 centimetre wide and it would be okay, as once the wall was built it could stay up on its own without falling inside, but while we were building we should be very careful not to apply any extra weight on the leaning wall, just for fear that this could happen we added a couple of block piers behind the wall, this would not only make the wall safe for us while we were building it, but it also would make the whole wall stronger. 

Anyhow, we built this block wall placed the reinforcing rods in place, we also built some concrete steps on one side of it, so, that if you happened to be on the back road you could walk to the house, the ready mix truck came and the wall was filled with concrete and that was the first stage finished. We had to wait for this wall to become strong before we could back-fill it, and then we could build another retaining wall halfway the backyard to finish the job.

Dear readers, be warned that this type of work can only done from very experienced block layers, as it breaks all the rules in the building trade, but we did it and it worked. 

This is the last part of this article about retaining walls. So next blog we will be talking about, Mix you own cement, for sure you can learn something useful in this article. 

See you soon.