permaculture

["John Schinnerer" <john@eco-living.net>]

Aloha,

Thanks for the compliments, Lawrence.

> Three questions:
> 1)Is it advisable to have a sprayer?

Not at all necessary for hand-built small-scale stuff like mine.  Could be
used, though, if one wanted, but it starts to get pretty industrial (and
messier, I'd guess).  Faster to do the plastering part, obviously, but
noisy and more expensive.  I liked hearing the wind and birds in the trees
as I was working... :-)

One can build the armature oneself and then have an FC contractor come in
and do the spraying.  I met some folks who did some catchment tanks this
way.  My armature would have been too wobbly for spraying, I'm pretty
sure.

> 2)Do you use a concrete mixer or a cement (mortar) mixer to make the
> concrete?

Odjob mixer (described in writeup).  It's a plaster mix, not a concrete mix.

3)Can you describe the aggregate used in the mix (i.e. what
 size stone)?

Portland cement, mortar sand and water, that's all (described in writeup)
- no aggregate, doesn't trowel worth a darn ;-).  A friend of mine made a
small goat shed (I'll get a pic of it up sometime) using #4 rock instead
of mortar sand - worked OK, but a rougher finish, probably needed more
cement per batch to keep it workable, I think his mix was more like 1:2.5
where mine was roughly 1:3.5 (by volume).



John Schinnerer, MA
-------------------------
- Eco-Living -
Cultural & Ecological Designing
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