Can we talk about how one wet mortar batch messed up my whole wall?

I was working a job in Cincinnati last spring, mixing lime mortar in the rain, and the whole batch came out too loose. It sagged behind the brick and I had to tear out 8 feet of wall by lunch. Do you guys mix in dry weather no matter what or do you just adjust your water ratio on the fly?

3 comments

3 Comments

allen.kai18d agoTop Commenter

...and the thing is, I've had that exact problem with lime mortar on a humid day in Ohio. I tried to fix it by adding more sand mid-batch and it just turned into a crumbly mess that wouldn't stick to anything. Ended up scraping the whole thing and starting over with a dry mix bucket by bucket.

joel_clark3718d ago

Yep @allen.kai, that's just how life goes sometimes - one wrong fix makes everything worse.

iris92718d ago

Cut the guy some slack, lime mortar in Ohio humidity is no joke. I tried a batch last July and watched it slump off the trowel in about three minutes flat. But yeah, throwing more sand in mid mix is a guaranteed way to turn the whole thing into dry dust.