Threw out 40 hours of work after switching to a mortar mixer

I spent three weekends hand-mixing mortar for a retaining wall in my backyard in Akron. After renting a $50 mixer from Home Depot, I realized my hand mixes were inconsistent and the whole wall was already cracking. I lost about $200 in materials and wasted those weekends. Anyone else had a similar wake-up call about gear they were too stubborn to rent?

2 comments

2 Comments

morgan.rose1mo ago

Mortar mixers don't fix bad batches, they just make them faster.

jade_jenkins1mo ago

I read something from a guy on a masonry forum who said he watched a crew run a bad mix through a self loading mixer for 20 minutes thinking it would somehow fix the slump. It just made it worse, turned the whole batch into this soupy mess that had no strength left in it. That's the thing with these machines, they're great for consistency but garbage at correcting mistakes. If the sand is wet or the cement is off, you're just going to end up with a lot more bad material to deal with. The only fix is starting over with fresh ingredients.