Home Brew or Heat Stop?

[thebigt]

Re: Home Brew or Heat Stop?

My two cents...homebrew mortar. Worked wonderfully well...easy to use for a beginner like myself. Now over two years and hundreds of fires later...everything is rock solid.

You mix by volume. In my garage I lined up a bag of Portland cement, a bag of lime, a bag of fire clay, and a bag of sand. A red Solo cup was placed in each bag. When I needed mortar I grabbed my bucket and walked down the line dumping one cup each of Portland, lime, and clay into the bucket. Then three cups of sand. Then a bit less than two cups of water. Mix well. Ridiculously cheap and worked perfectly.

Bill

That's exactly what I did, red solo cup included lol. I had never laid a brick before so I have no comparison butthe hombrew was super easy to work with. I just mixed it up in small batches using the same amoiunts that Bill mentioned.

[Aquaponicsguru]

I am using homebrew and went with the standard 1:1:1:3 ratio. I used fine/washed plaster sand from HD. I bought a cement mixer from CL for $125.00 (only used twice-looked brand new) for another project previous to my oven project. Was great for doing the stand. Anyway, I took a two gallon bucket and used that for the ratio container and mixed everything dry in the mixer and transferred the dry mix to 5 gallon buckets with lids. I think two batches will be enough to complete the project. I have three chains to go on the dome and the outside vent arches and just mixed the second batch. The HB is easy to work with and sets fast enough to set the brick and move the ID tool to hold the next brick. Once I get to the really steep chains, I may have to wait longer between bricks or have a supplementary holding stick that I have seen used.

[NCMan]

You can also use 4 or even 5 parts sand w/ the homebrew.

[fremen325]

I went the Heat Stop route for convenience. I had two 5 gallon buckets and would mix up what I needed in one and kept the other full of water to clean my my mixing tool.

[Wozza]

You can also use 4 or even 5 parts sand w/ the homebrew.

What's the advantage of more sand? Stickier? Faster setting or stronger?

[Tscarborough]

1:1:1:3 is not the standard or even correct. It is 1:1:1:5 to 6 parts sand. Less cracking and better workability.

[NCMan]

I agree. I built my oven using the 1:1:1:5 ratio and it was nice to work with and is holding up fine.

[Wozza]

I'll have the opportunity to try out different ratios on Saturday. Maybe I'll do 3 or 4 bricks with 1:1:1:3, then increase the sand ratio to 4, 5 and 6 and see how it pans out.

[Cubslover]

I found that a 1:1:1:4 ratio worked great. I used a 50/50 mix of mason sand and fine sand.

Also, grab a 5 gal pail with a good sealing lid and make a bucket of the dry mix. It saves time.

[Tscarborough]

Unless you use blasting sand, do not pre-mix; the small amount of moisture in bagged AP sand or bulk masonry sand is enough to fire off the cementious materials.

[Cubslover]

I never had that issue. I pre-mixed and had to take 3 weeks off at one point. It was still dry as the day I mixed it.

[Wozza]

I went the 1:1:1:3 and no problems. Well, a minor crack on day 3 of curing, but I've read enough to expect that in any case.

Notwithstanding that the good stuff is only meant to be used for very small gaps, the HUGE benefit of home brew is that it is a quarter the cost. At least down here. So when you get up to the 4th or 5th courses, then rather than trying to carefully judge exactly what you need to keep down waste, you can splash the stuff on and not worry about it. I mixed it a little on the stiff side, enough for maybe 7or 8 bricks and hardly had to use shims to keep the bricks at the right angle (although I always slipped a piece of brick into the gap just in case). As was said, set rock hard.

Having said that, I had gaps in the last few courses as I'd used a sand dome. So when that came out, I bought a 25kg bag of high temp mortar to fill those. Lots of fun crawling into the dome and chipping off the excess home brew on the inside, pointing the gaps and cleaning it all up. Now I know why they sent children up chimneys...