|
Rethink Your Life! Finance, health, lifestyle, environment, philosophy |
The Work of Art and The Art of Work Kiko Denzer on Art |
|
|
|
Cob: GYPSUM ADOBE CONSTRUCTION TECHNOLOGY]Lance Collins collinsl at bigpond.net.auWed Apr 23 02:19:30 CDT 2003
Hi All, I had a happy time over Easter adding a layer of poured earth to a wall I'm building and making blocks for use when I get higher up and it's too hard lifting the wet mix. The weather was perfect, about 18 deg C, cloudless blue sky and no wind. Mudders heaven. My mix was 20 litres of soil, 18 litres of hardwood sawdust with 8 litres of water yielding 20 litres of wet mix. Very easy to mix and lay. It's strong too, a block I made three weeks ago was unmarked by dropping it one metre onto hard ground. Problem is the weather is cooling off and it will take longer than three weeks setting time from now on. So, let's add some gypsum to the mix and see what happens. I tried 20 litres of soil, 18 litres of sawdust, 4 litres of gypsum, a litre of lime and 11 litres of water yielding 25 litres of mix. I placed it in the same type of forms I was using for the plain mix and waited for it to set. I waited and waited and waited. 24 hours later there was absolutely no difference in the softness of the plain mix and the gypsum mix. I would have obtained blocks hard enough to stack in two days if I'd used cement instead of gypsum. Also in small quantities gypsum can be more expensive than cement. At a hardware barn 40Kg of cement was $10.40 (in the builders section) and 25Kg of gypsum was $10 in the gardening section. So what am I missing here? What do the Turks and the Cast Earth company know that I don't? At 11:15 9/04/03 +0900, you wrote: Here is some interesting information about a soil-gypsum-lime mixture that sounds in essence like what the cast earth company uses. See the information and URL which was originally sent by CousinDoug. Regards, Darel ----------------------------------------Start -------------------------------------------------- http://atlas.cc.itu.edu.tr/~isikb/Tech1.htm <http://atlas.cc.itu.edu.tr/%7Eisikb/Tech1.htm> This link is from a site in Turkey. I've been stompin round lookin for the secret of this "CastStone" developed by a former rammed earth dude. The best i've found is that The mix is a basic "rammed earth" mix with a set time additive. The most common being lime which extends the set time to 20 minutes. I have made some small samples which hold up very well eg. 1/2" x 1 1/2" x 6" piece which I(200#) can jump on with no degradation save the edges. This is an accepted technology which is used around the world extensively. -------------- next part -------------- <html> Hi All,<br><br> I had a happy time over Easter adding a layer of poured earth to a wall I'm building and making blocks for use when I get higher up and it's too hard lifting the wet mix. The weather was perfect, about 18 deg C, cloudless blue sky and no wind. Mudders heaven.<br><br> My mix was 20 litres of soil, 18 litres of hardwood sawdust with 8 litres of water yielding 20 litres of wet mix. Very easy to mix and lay. It's strong too, a block I made three weeks ago was unmarked by dropping it one metre onto hard ground. Problem is the weather is cooling off and it will take longer than three weeks setting time from now on.<br><br> So, let's add some gypsum to the mix and see what happens.<br><br> I tried 20 litres of soil, 18 litres of sawdust, 4 litres of gypsum, a litre of lime and 11 litres of water yielding 25 litres of mix. I placed it in the same type of forms I was using for the plain mix and waited for it to set. I waited and waited and waited. 24 hours later there was absolutely no difference in the softness of the plain mix and the gypsum mix.<br><br> I would have obtained blocks hard enough to stack in two days if I'd used cement instead of gypsum. Also in small quantities gypsum can be more expensive than cement. At a hardware barn 40Kg of cement was $10.40 (in the builders section) and 25Kg of gypsum was $10 in the gardening section. <br><br> So what am I missing here? What do the Turks and the Cast Earth company know that I don't?<br><br> <br> At 11:15 9/04/03 +0900, you wrote:<br><br> Here is some interesting information about a soil-gypsum-lime mixture that sounds in essence like what the cast earth company uses. See the information and URL which was originally sent by CousinDoug.<br><br> Regards,<br> Darel<br><br> ----------------------------------------Start --------------------------------------------------<br> <font color="#0000FF"><u><a href="http://atlas.cc.itu.edu.tr/~isikb/Tech1.htm" eudora="autourl">http://atlas.cc.itu.edu.tr/~isikb/Tech1.htm</a></u></font> <<a href="http://atlas.cc.itu.edu.tr/~isikb/Tech1.htm" eudora="autourl"><font color="#0000FF"><u>http://atlas.cc.itu.edu.tr/%7Eisikb/Tech1.htm</a></u></font>><br> This link is from a site in Turkey.<br><br> <br> I've been stompin round lookin for the secret of this "CastStone"<br> developed by a former rammed earth dude. The best i've found is that<br> The mix is a basic "rammed earth" mix with a set time additive. The<br> most common being lime which extends the set time to 20 minutes. I<br> have made some small samples which hold up very well eg. 1/2" x 1<br> 1/2" x 6" piece which I(200#) can jump on with no degradation save<br> the edges. This is an accepted technology which is used around the<br> world extensively.<br> <br> </html>
|