Hi Alexis, This is a developing question. If you need 4000 bricks to make a structure are you prepared to 1.make them 2. have acres to let them dry (weeks in Montana a week in Arizona/New Mexico) 3. keep them ready (dry) for use 4. have a way to keep them rain free till use? As Clair mentioned this is labor intensive. Pour the brick in the mold, wait an hour, pull the mold off, wait a day, turn the bricks, wait a couple of days, turn the bricks again, when dry enough stack the bricks somewhere out of the weather. Some in the arid regions of the US don't have to worry about the weather, but in Montana (Big Sky Country) you do. I tried to get 3 or 4 batches of bricks dry enough to handle in the middle of a nice hot summer and it took weeks. I even built a little greenhouse out of plastic pipe and visqueen (like a quonset hut). It did get warm in there but the humidity was also high. I opened the ends to allow the humidity out and the temp went way down. This is basically avoided in the T-Lock small form method. With the T-Lock system you need handle the slurry only once. When you make a pour an hour or so is needed for them to set (right out of the mixer no drainage needed). While that batch is setting you can make the next batch (takes me about 45 minutes (fill the mixer with water, weigh the paper, drive around and pulp it, add the cement, drive around and mix it). You can let it sit in the mixer for an hour and much of the water will come to the surface and you can skim it off with a 5 gal bucket. You may be able to get as much as 15 gallons out this way but it is not necessary. Then move the forms to a new location and pour the batch in them. I might add that you can add a batch right on top of the previous pour an hour later, but you should limit this to two levels per day. You may be able to go three rounds if your brick mold is 3" or 4" deep, but mine were 6" and I didn't feel comfortable going more than 2 green layers a day. You mentioned the water. The water is going to wet the previous pour and basically prep it for the next contact and better adhesion. If you are using bone dry bricks and you use a thin film of slurry for the mortar, the bottom and top brick may starve the thin film of water. Many have used this method so I won't knock it because even I started this way. I like reducing the "messing around" and the waiting for the bricks to be ready. You also mentioned shrinkage. The bricks will shrink away from the molds no matter what you do. I had extra slurry to add to the shrinking bricks as they dried (within a half an hour much of the water will drain from the brick laying on the ground) to fill them back up to the top of the mold. More time, less uniformity etc. The bricks will dry in a trapezoidal pattern NOT square. I had trouble with this. When you put them in the wall some stick out some don't and it is a mess. Others will tell you that this is great because the finish stucco has something to stick to. Well it sure is hard to even out and make it look professional. You need to look at Bob's porch addition. It is done the way one would expect a building inspector to make his own - very well. Have a look through his pictures here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/papercreters/photos/album/1000048770/pic/1737922790/view?picmode=&mode=tn&order=ordinal&start=1&count=20&dir=asc Cheers, Ron --- On Wed, 3/31/10, Greg House <ghunicycle@yahoo.com> wrote:
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