Last weekend was a glorious time to be makin slurry on the southern
end of the Llano Estacado. Changed the oil in the ole Brigs and the
Landa. She fired on the second pull. Ran off three batches of
slurry. Well into the middle of the first 30 gallon batch I
discovered I had about 30 pounds of cement left. So I split it
between the three batches which would up to be a little over a
gallon (dry) of cement per batch.
Instead of makin my typical mushed batch that looked like instant
oatmeal, I just mushed the papers until they were mostly 1/4 or
smaller. THe first thing is this stuff is a LOT dryer than normal
PC. So dry the cement did not want to mix. So I added a little more
water until the cement would dissolve and mixed with my electric
drill with the drywall cage mud mixer.
The second batch I mushed up about 8 inches of paper, added 1/3 the
cement, mixed with the drill and drywall mud mixer, next 1/3, mix
and final 1/3 and mix again.
Same for the last batch.
Result- The first batch I mixed shrunk pretty typical. Second and
third batch shrunk minimally! I edged them one day after pouring to
dry. I got back to them today to stack them and I was supprised how
dry they were and how square they still were. Again the first batch
had the PC slope to them but the two batches where I had minimally
mushed them and used minimal cement were square.
Ok we are talking PC here so ALMOST. But much less than the finer
mushed ones.
And when I molded them, I did nto see the water pouring out the
bottom like it normally does or like it did on the first batch. Also
it took much less water and time. Less than 10 minutes per 30 gallon
batch. Minimizing the water to me is a big thing.Five minutes of my
pressure washer at full tilt boogie is only 20 gallons of water. And
the thing is the pressure washer does not run all the time. I am
guseeing in a 30 gallon batch of material I have less than 10
gallons of water in the minimally processed material.
Those of you who do the pressure washer slurry, try this and get
back to me. Tell me if you see the same thing. I am going to do some
more this weekend to test my test.
Now the blocks are not rock hard. I am not making crete anything. It
is just mushed paper with a cement binder. I am on the hunt for
bentonite to see if I can do this with clay instead of cement. I am
not planning on using these blocks as structure so I am not
concerned about how much weight they can carry. If you are doing
that, you dont even want to think about doing it this way. I am not
concerned about fire resistance as I am planning on a stucco
exterior and all the electric run in steel conduit.
Spring is springging, Have you slurried a bucket today?
A day without slurry is like, taxes
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