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  • Home brew problems

    I have been using Heat Stop so far, and everything was ok. I decided to switch to a home brew mix with ratio of (3:1:1:1) 3 parts sand: 1 part portland cement: 1 part lime: 1 part fireclay.

    I mixed everything and did my first application today with the new mix. Something is wrong!! the mix is not holding together. It's crumbling and not sticking on the firebricks. I made the mix a bit more "liquidy" by adding more water. I just tested an area that dried off, and the mix basically crumbled in my hand.

    What am I doing wrong?

    Please help

  • #2
    If your bricks are dry when you lay them, they are perhaps sucking the water content out of the mortar. A dry brick behaves a bit like a sponge and will draw the water content out of the mortar too quickly. Cement and lime mortars need water present to be able them to chemically harden. Keeping your work dampened after you have built enables your mortar to harden slowly. Without water present during the hardening process the mortar will not harden correctly and crumble like you describe. Do a test with one of the bricks and totally immerse it under water, if the brick is dry, air bubbles rise to the surface until the brick is fully saturated. If the brick is really dry it will take some time before the water replaces the air voids. Using a fully saturated brick is not a good thing, because you need some sort of suction to bond the mortar to the brick. If you fully saturate your bricks, you can let them stand overnight to dry slightly, Otherwise you can dip them under water but not to full saturation and use shortly afterwards.

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    • #3
      What kind of lime did you use?
      Anton.

      My 36" - https://community.fornobravo.com/for...t-bg-build-log

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      • #4
        I used masonry Hydrated lime

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        • #5
          It's possible your mortar is too dry - I had my best luck with homebrew when I would mix it up "sloppy," then add dry mix until it would just start to hold ridges when I ran my trowel sideways through it in the bucket. The other test was when I could get some to stick on the trowel when I tipped it sideways at a little more than a 45 degree angle. I would then use dry bricks and wipe the faces to be mortared with my grout sponge to where I could see 1/8-1/4 inch of penetration of the water on the edge.
          Homebrew also can seem crumbly the day after, as I found it took a few days to really get hard. In the beginning I was unsure of my mix and took the left over mortar in my bucket and make a ball with it to see how hard it would get. After a few days it was hard as a rock so I knew I was mixing it correctly.
          My build thread
          https://community.fornobravo.com/for...h-corner-build

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          • #6
            I think you're correct. I added more water to the mix, soaked a couple of bricks and tested the theory. They're rock solid.
            I'm going to do another course today and see what happens.

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