Renovating an old farmhouse and living on the Pennines
Discussion
Another one enjoying reading your tales 
Also in a slightly similar situation in the NE Scotland with sheds, old steading, old wood and a few acres for horses... it really is a job for life! Or a lifestyle if you prefer the positive spin
Cars we have a subaru and a transporter kombi 4motion on allseason tyres as the family bus/ towcar which works for us just now. If its too deep we shouldn't be out anyway and unless it's the light fluffy snow you'll still be struggling.
Gloves, I've always had poor circulation and have been using these for a few years now and these have enough protection for barbed wire (just) and welding (just) and keep your hands warm and pretty dry (maybe not after barbed wire).. tbh I wear them all the time and they last quite well, can go through the washing machine
Skytec Pro Argon Insulated Work Safety Gloves https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00NWPKLH2/ref=cm_sw...
Also in a slightly similar situation in the NE Scotland with sheds, old steading, old wood and a few acres for horses... it really is a job for life! Or a lifestyle if you prefer the positive spin
Cars we have a subaru and a transporter kombi 4motion on allseason tyres as the family bus/ towcar which works for us just now. If its too deep we shouldn't be out anyway and unless it's the light fluffy snow you'll still be struggling.
Gloves, I've always had poor circulation and have been using these for a few years now and these have enough protection for barbed wire (just) and welding (just) and keep your hands warm and pretty dry (maybe not after barbed wire).. tbh I wear them all the time and they last quite well, can go through the washing machine
Skytec Pro Argon Insulated Work Safety Gloves https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00NWPKLH2/ref=cm_sw...
buchanan84 said:
Another one enjoying reading your tales
Also in a slightly similar situation in the NE Scotland with sheds, old steading, old wood and a few acres for horses... it really is a job for life! Or a lifestyle if you prefer the positive spin
Seems to be a lot of us doing it. We bought in NE Scotland in September, on the northern edge of the Cairngorms. We have a farmhouse, steadings and 5 acres of land which means lots of projects for us to do, both inside and out,Also in a slightly similar situation in the NE Scotland with sheds, old steading, old wood and a few acres for horses... it really is a job for life! Or a lifestyle if you prefer the positive spin
We have a Freelander 2 which will be on full winters this week after the snow of last week and also a 1968 Ford Cortina 1600e on summer rubber
. I have just ordered a tractor which I have to say I more than excited about.
S
skeeterm5 said:
Seems to be a lot of us doing it. We bought in NE Scotland in September, on the northern edge of the Cairngorms. We have a farmhouse, steadings and 5 acres of land which means lots of projects for us to do, both inside and out,
We have a Freelander 2 which will be on full winters this week after the snow of last week and also a 1968 Ford Cortina 1600e on summer rubber.
I have just ordered a tractor which I have to say I more than excited about.
S
I love this thread and what EV has put into it.We have a Freelander 2 which will be on full winters this week after the snow of last week and also a 1968 Ford Cortina 1600e on summer rubber
. I have just ordered a tractor which I have to say I more than excited about.
S
I am in the process of buying an old farmhouse a few miles south of Appleby.
I have a rather odd collection of vehicles:
A 2015 RAV4 Invincible diesel
A 2015 Petrol Polo
A 1985 Renault 4 GTL
A 1966 Land Rover 2.25 petrol 2A
I have added very little to this fantastic thread as I am not there yet and won't be until about April next year, but I will when I can !
Incidentally, imo the Renault is the best vehicle that I have ever driven in deep slow !!!
Evoluzione said:
In other stone wall banter, from around the Halifax area Northwards up to around Colne maybe there was a different way of creating a stone wall, it was known as Vaccary walling and consisted of large slabs stood upright next to one another like teeth or headstones. They're hundreds of years old and some still exist.
Interesting, I just looked this up on google and they are substantially bigger than I am used to seeing around Caithness at the top of Scotland. Vaccary walls almost look like headstones in a cemetery!
But around Caithness, you will see this type of wall all over the place but much neater and using thinner slabs.
beambeam1 said:
What are the things in the field - the little tower amnd the mounds?beambeam1 said:
Not sure about the mounds but the tower is typically a Dovecot or a Doocot (as I would typically say). Used for keeping pigeons back in the day, mostly so that their s
te could be collected from the hard floor via shovel and repurposed as fertiliser and gunpowder!
"Remains of a windmill, used for powering saws for cutting stone, on the Castletown Flagstone Trail, Caithness, Scotland, UK."te could be collected from the hard floor via shovel and repurposed as fertiliser and gunpowder!https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-remains-of-a-win...
I wonder exactly how they were cutting stone by machine in the early 1800s? I'm a bit suspicious they were and if they did I doubt it was by blade (or other methods) as it is now. I wonder if it was by some kind of powered chisel that went up and down?
As you'll know the make up of stone is completely different all over the country and indeed the World, this is down to how it was created.
Unless it was very special (Stonehenge etc) you worked with what you had to hand. In the immediate area here a lot of it is soft to medium strength shale, this means it's in layers so it splits really easily. That is perhaps one reason why some Vaccary walls are slimmer than others - if you couldn't split the stone in length then you shoved what you had into the ground and called it a job done. It could have been down to what you were enclosing too, whether an animal or simply a boundary for ownership. A cow could snap off some thin slabs if it leant against them, not so much a sheep or a field of corn.
If I walk around my house it's been built using different stone dependent on which elevation you're looking at. This is solely due to saving money. They used the cheaper material (shale) to the rear and one gable so it looks better from the view you normally see it. I think also the weather was taken into consideration, the two elevations which get the worst of the weather being walled in what looks like Millstone grit to me.
As you'll know the make up of stone is completely different all over the country and indeed the World, this is down to how it was created.
Unless it was very special (Stonehenge etc) you worked with what you had to hand. In the immediate area here a lot of it is soft to medium strength shale, this means it's in layers so it splits really easily. That is perhaps one reason why some Vaccary walls are slimmer than others - if you couldn't split the stone in length then you shoved what you had into the ground and called it a job done. It could have been down to what you were enclosing too, whether an animal or simply a boundary for ownership. A cow could snap off some thin slabs if it leant against them, not so much a sheep or a field of corn.
If I walk around my house it's been built using different stone dependent on which elevation you're looking at. This is solely due to saving money. They used the cheaper material (shale) to the rear and one gable so it looks better from the view you normally see it. I think also the weather was taken into consideration, the two elevations which get the worst of the weather being walled in what looks like Millstone grit to me.
Evoluzione said:
Sadly a lot of it gets a couple of fence posts and some galv mesh put across it which is a shame
At least that's better than the lazy dosser of a farmer who owns the land surrounding my house and seems to have a large supply of those orange and white solid plastic freestanding safety barriers that you see around roadworks, he's uses them to fill any gaps in walls or hedgerows and some have been in place for several years now, what an utter eyesore.mike74 said:
At least that's better than the lazy dosser of a farmer who owns the land surrounding my house and seems to have a large supply of those orange and white solid plastic freestanding safety barriers that you see around roadworks, he's uses them to fill any gaps in walls or hedgerows and some have been in place for several years now, what an utter eyesore.
Have you mentioned the eyesore to the farmer?Magooagain said:
Have you mentioned the eyesore to the farmer?
I don't really see the point, he obviously doesn't have any pride or desire to look after his land or boundaries or livestock properly, loads of black plastic from silage bales blowing around his yard and surrounding fields, caught up in what hedgerows do remain.So called "guardians of the countryside" my arse.
Happy Christmas 
One for the Lime learners
As you will read I'm getting deeper into the World of lime, If you're really not into this I can understand you skipping this post, it's big and that's all it's about so you won't be missing anything else.
If you're thinking of doing or having lime pointing done then it's quite interesting, important even.
As you know I'm not Lord Lime from Lyme Regis, i'm having to review this material a bit as things may have moved on since I last used it some 15 - 20yrs ago when it had its first revival.
My posts here are to raise awareness, point out what to look out for, to pass on what i'm doing and discovering. It's a vast topic with lots of differing opinions, information and plenty of misinformation.
It might seem strange that things may have actually moved on in the world of Lime in the last 15 - 20 yrs when this material is hundreds of years old! But the fact is we're rediscovering it after something like a 70 - 100 year break which we had from it when OPC (Ordinary Portland Cement) took over. Because of this nobody in the building trade was brought up with it and lots of knowledge has been lost or just misplaced.
Back then they were using it because it did the job and it did it well, it always had done for hundreds of years. The vast majority, if not all probably didn't know why, they didn't have the equipment we have available to us today to be able to analyse things to work out what is happening to the Nth degree. They will have known by using their senses and localised knowledge how to mix it, what with and apply it etc. Methods and uses varied up and down the country, but it appears they all used Quicklime.
If you do venture into this field you'll find one of the most divisive topics is whether or when to use an NHL (Naturally Hydraulic Lime) or Quicklime.
NHL is split into 3 grades over a spectrum of hardness which confusingly overlap each other. So you can have a (top end) 3.5 (medium strength) which is as hard as a (lower end) 5 (the toughest), but you will not know what you have, it'll just be labelled 2, 3.5 or 5 and it varies from one manufacturer to another and from one bag to the next too. Amusingly there is an NHL which will go off in less than a minute! You might wonder how the heck they get it out of the bucket and off the trowel, but the key is to not mix it neat. It sets very quick and hard and is for use on projects such as dam or sea walls etc.
NHL is easy to mix though, just add it to your chosen aggregates and some water, mix it up (or even buy a dry premixed bag). Maybe give it half an hour whilst you do a bit of prepping and off you go.
Quicklime on the other hand requires the addition of water to slake it. This is a chemical reaction and the mixture immediately boils and bubbles furiously so safety equipment is needed; goggles, leather gloves, all bare skin well covered. The ferocity is dependent on what temperature it was fired at. If it was really high (circa 120'c) then it'll pop and throw pieces out like bullets. Don't take this lightly, it will burn and very seriously if it gets in your eyes.
It then needs leaving for X amount of time before being used (X is dependent on what you are using it for). In it's pure form it's softer and less hardwearing than an NHL. You can mix it with sand before adding water, this does reduce the aggressiveness of the reaction which is started by the damp in the sand reacting with the lime.
This is known as 'Hotmixing' or 'Hotlime'.
So there you have the two main different limes (there is a third), then the lines can get really blurred as you can put natural additives into each to give them different properties! Don't get Hydraulic lime mixed up with Hydrated lime, the latter, the third I don't think has much use to us.
You also need to think about colour. I am no fan of bright and gaudy limes. Unless the wall had it before, or needs it (in your eyes) then think carefully, maybe do some samples. You can completely change or indeed ruin the look of a house or wall if you put the wrong colour on. Many amateurs do as they lack finesse because their eye is on other things. There can be nothing worse than spending 9 months of your spare time repointing the house just to stand back and ask 'What the fk have I done?' as it looks like something off of Hansel and Gretel or whatever.
All limes are some shade of white, the colour comes from what you mix it with, the sands, and other natural additives.
There are quite a few 'Professional' people out there preaching about lime, but you don't have to go too far before you realise they really don't know all that much and are just repeating other what other people spouted, often their mistakes too so be really careful what you read or hear. Apply some rational thinking.
I read recently that after wood is burned coal is produced, this is then put into the mortar mix as it holds moisture. Not only did the author not know the difference between coal, charcoal and ash (which are all mortar additives), but also that neither coal nor charcoal are porous or will hold moisture. He was preaching about learning and getting it wrong I think from one of, or THE biggest names out there, a certain Mr Copsey.
Now he claims we should be still building (modern walls) with lime and cannot understand actually how a modern wall works, he thinks its bonkers that water could be allowed into a cavity, drain through and out of the bottom. This indicates he has a misunderstanding of how some things work. If you know how a car door or a UPVC door/window handle water you'll know where i'm coming from.
The designers of these three things know full well they can't keep water out, so what they do is accept it'll get through part way then provide it a route back out at the bottom and outside.
I also found a pic of a building on his site which he claims they changed the colour of the stone when it was re-pointed because it dried out. It took me all of two minutes to find a pic of it pre-lime pointing to see it hadn't changed at all. See earlier comment on how pointing colour effects the whole look of a building.
So we weren't off to a good start, yet I think he knows some valuable stuff about lime, but it makes you wonder how much these people really do know when they spout rubbish like that. It's a bridge too far, stick with what you know. Newer buildings were designed with OPC in mind, they don't need lime. There is an Eco argument in favour of lime, but that's a whole different, large and very difficult subject.
I'm suspicious of him as not only is he anti-OPC, but also anti-NHL.
Nobody is infallible however so I sat through a 3hr YT video of one of his talks because i'm trying to work out whether I should use an NHL or a quicklime for pointing. He makes quite a good case for the use of Quicklime and I have discovered it was used on my house originally too and am willing to agree it was widely used on all buildings back in the day. I also got his book.
This is my house walls mortar:
From what i've learned and experienced so far you don't get lumps of lime (see the white bits?) ln an NHL mix.
This is an interesting one:
It's from the old mill building i've just vacated in Batley. I was off for me fish n chips for the last time when I spotted it so got some pics. I must have walked past it a hundred times and never noticed. Buildings like this are some of the best places to go and look at how this was done. It's over well over 100yrs old and because it's industrial no-one has spent or wasted any money on it. Well It didn't need anything doing to it, it's stood the test of time quite well.
My eyes are getting old so I couldn't see the beautiful (! oh God i've got it bad) detail until I got home and put it on a bigger screen. I did pull some of the big black bits out though and drew on the wall with them they are so soft. I'm pretty sure the white bits are lime.
So is it coal or charcoal? Well neither, look at the pitting in it, I think it's slag left over from firing or burning. Here is where a wider experience and looking at everything in detail helps again. Concrete or clinker building blocks are (or were) made from a mix of power station waste and OPC. Modern concrete blocks actually have crushed glass in them. Trust me they really do, if you see one that's been washed and/or left out in the weather for a while you'll see it in there. See what they are doing is using waste material to bulk up the blocks and mortar because it's free and to no ill effect, only a positive effect. It's not a new thing either!
So what about the black slag in the lime mortar? Well it's a free bulking agent, but it also gives compressive strength to the mix.
When you're walling up with OPC you can only do X amount of courses per day before it becomes unstable because the mix hasn't gone off. It's even worse with quicklime as it takes a while to stiffen. So not only do the black bits make the mix more durable to the weather, they also give it compressive strength and they're for free so result in less expensive materials being used.
If you think about the height of a mill wall, the weight it has to carry, the size of stones used to build it and the softness of lime then it makes perfect sense. These guys weren't daft, they had hundreds of years of experience to draw on and it wasn't from Karen off of Facebook.
I think it'll have ash in it too because of the grey colour.
If you look at some mill walls that don't have these in you'll see the joints at the bottom are tighter than those at the top because of the weight over time.
I think I posted a pic earlier of my house wall close up, you could see the mason had put small pieces of blue slate in the beds of the quoins, this was for exactly the same reason - to keep them level so they could carry on walling.
I'll show you houses with Quoins which are coming apart quite drastically due to slipping on OPC because they weren't dowelled and have not stuck together. We'll deal with stickyness soon.
It seems (if you believe the spiel) that NHLs are now considered by some experts incorrect for the use of pointing with softer stones and bricks and that they damage walls like OPC does.
Whilst I think it's true they didn't use it for walling pointing back in the day, i'm not sure I believe it's totally incorrect now. The inference is it's too hard and gets harder over time like cement whereas Quicklime doesn't.
I posted a pic of a wall earlier i'd repointed about 15yrs ago in NHL, i'm hoping to go back sometime soon to examine it a bit closer. When I took the pic a few months ago I hadn't learned all of this so didn't look carefully enough, it certainly looked fine to me though, even when zooming in closer on that pic so I'm fairly certain it hasn't been damaged nor has the pointing cracked or shrunk as people are saying it does.
Might be an interesting discussion If they see me; 'Hello do you remember me? I'm just checking your wall is ok'
'What?'
Stickiness is an interesting property. You may think a sand and cement mix is sticky, but it actually isn't in comparison to a quicklime mortar mix. If you handled them side by side on a trowel you would notice a fair difference. Does this matter? It certainly does.
Bricklayers have always battled with it so additives are put in to make the mix more workable, washing up liquid was used at one time, but more professional liquids are widely available. Initially it's so the mix stays on the trowel and on the ends of the bricks while you're handling them without sliding off. The other evidence that modern mortars lack stickiness is that bricks need keying to make them stick to it. These are in the form of frogs and holes in the bricks or even by wetting the brick. A bond is created by the weight of the wall forcing the two together hydraulically. If you simply put a top course of plain featureless bricks onto a wall you'll be able to knock them off by hand at any time in the future. SBR and PVAs are used to bond renders to walls as they can and do come loose otherwise.
This means that S&C is often not fully bonded, apart from the obvious visual cracks it also has less visible minor fissures and micro cracks because it's very brittle.
Bricklayers are human, not every single brick has a 100% waterproof jacket of mortar around it. How many S&C rendered walls do we see with cracks in them and it hanging off? Pointing falling off walls?
This is why we use OPC with cavity walls, water is known to go through. So just let it and then drain it out at the bottom.
What i'm saying here is cavity walls and modern masonry were either intended or just do work well with OPC, they don't need lime to function.
If you mix S&C and indeed an NHL in a bucket and let it stand the mix will start to let the water go, it'll sit on top in puddles. The mix is unable to retain all the water put in to activate it and make it useable. You have to keep knocking it up as you're using it.
Not so with Quicklime mortar. It holds water like a sponge when its added and it sticks like st. The setting process is totally different.
Hotlime mix can be used in Winter. Some say it warms the wall and stops it freezing, this is a load of old cobblers and should rightly be ridiculed. It's because of the way it dries (carbonates) and retains or uses moisture.
It appears to have some elasticity to it, if it cracks early on you can press or bash it back together. I've read about people being caught out and it showing freeze damage. Then going back some time later to find it's repaired itself.
It's certainly an important point to think about for me up here where it's a bit exposed. Having worked through many of our Winters it's fair to say that you don't stop dead at X date, then start work again come Spring. You do your best to carry on and find something else to do if and when it is completely unworkable. Back in the day it was the same, they didn't stop in Winter because of the lime as we have been led to believe.
I have just tested NHL for frost damage. I put some on and a few weeks later we were treated to some -4 conditions. Because of the still high water content it has indeed spalled and is flaking off.
See this is the important thing; this damage is caused by how much moisture is actually in the wall (all components therein), the actual moisture content of it. Whilst we're putting water into quicklimes to activate them they're dealing with this water in a completely different way.
Having said that I did know and work with a lovely chap called 'Ronnie the roofer' in Wortley, Leeds. He used to look and dress like Rod Stuart and did do the opposite to what most do - he'd pack up in Nov and bugger off with his family to Spain for something like 4 - 6 months every year. I was very envious of this.
We've been advised to not use lime in Winter, that was because we've been using NHLs since the lime revival began. It's as if an attempt was made to ween us off our cement by substituting it with something which was close. A halfway house if you will, but not the real deal. People are fearful of the dangers of Quicklime and you do have to be very careful with it. Not just when using it, but also storing it (away from water). Treat it like the Mogwai.
So yes i'm very cynical, yet on paper and in theory I've been converted. Hot mix lime mortar does seem to be what was used back then and I believe it's what should be re-used again on those same walls, so i'll be having a go with it.
Hopefully you're still with us and this has been of some use. It's been a bit of a lengthy post, but in actual fact this is just a brief overview with most of the salient points covered.
If you're intending to do anything with lime it's supremely important you consider whether to use an NHL or a Quicklime. Your supplier is highly likely to not know the differences to advise or may even want to palm you off with an NHL as they have it and it's safe and easy.
One for the Lime learners
As you will read I'm getting deeper into the World of lime, If you're really not into this I can understand you skipping this post, it's big and that's all it's about so you won't be missing anything else.
If you're thinking of doing or having lime pointing done then it's quite interesting, important even.
As you know I'm not Lord Lime from Lyme Regis, i'm having to review this material a bit as things may have moved on since I last used it some 15 - 20yrs ago when it had its first revival.
My posts here are to raise awareness, point out what to look out for, to pass on what i'm doing and discovering. It's a vast topic with lots of differing opinions, information and plenty of misinformation.
It might seem strange that things may have actually moved on in the world of Lime in the last 15 - 20 yrs when this material is hundreds of years old! But the fact is we're rediscovering it after something like a 70 - 100 year break which we had from it when OPC (Ordinary Portland Cement) took over. Because of this nobody in the building trade was brought up with it and lots of knowledge has been lost or just misplaced.
Back then they were using it because it did the job and it did it well, it always had done for hundreds of years. The vast majority, if not all probably didn't know why, they didn't have the equipment we have available to us today to be able to analyse things to work out what is happening to the Nth degree. They will have known by using their senses and localised knowledge how to mix it, what with and apply it etc. Methods and uses varied up and down the country, but it appears they all used Quicklime.
If you do venture into this field you'll find one of the most divisive topics is whether or when to use an NHL (Naturally Hydraulic Lime) or Quicklime.
NHL is split into 3 grades over a spectrum of hardness which confusingly overlap each other. So you can have a (top end) 3.5 (medium strength) which is as hard as a (lower end) 5 (the toughest), but you will not know what you have, it'll just be labelled 2, 3.5 or 5 and it varies from one manufacturer to another and from one bag to the next too. Amusingly there is an NHL which will go off in less than a minute! You might wonder how the heck they get it out of the bucket and off the trowel, but the key is to not mix it neat. It sets very quick and hard and is for use on projects such as dam or sea walls etc.
NHL is easy to mix though, just add it to your chosen aggregates and some water, mix it up (or even buy a dry premixed bag). Maybe give it half an hour whilst you do a bit of prepping and off you go.
Quicklime on the other hand requires the addition of water to slake it. This is a chemical reaction and the mixture immediately boils and bubbles furiously so safety equipment is needed; goggles, leather gloves, all bare skin well covered. The ferocity is dependent on what temperature it was fired at. If it was really high (circa 120'c) then it'll pop and throw pieces out like bullets. Don't take this lightly, it will burn and very seriously if it gets in your eyes.
It then needs leaving for X amount of time before being used (X is dependent on what you are using it for). In it's pure form it's softer and less hardwearing than an NHL. You can mix it with sand before adding water, this does reduce the aggressiveness of the reaction which is started by the damp in the sand reacting with the lime.
This is known as 'Hotmixing' or 'Hotlime'.
So there you have the two main different limes (there is a third), then the lines can get really blurred as you can put natural additives into each to give them different properties! Don't get Hydraulic lime mixed up with Hydrated lime, the latter, the third I don't think has much use to us.
You also need to think about colour. I am no fan of bright and gaudy limes. Unless the wall had it before, or needs it (in your eyes) then think carefully, maybe do some samples. You can completely change or indeed ruin the look of a house or wall if you put the wrong colour on. Many amateurs do as they lack finesse because their eye is on other things. There can be nothing worse than spending 9 months of your spare time repointing the house just to stand back and ask 'What the f
k have I done?' as it looks like something off of Hansel and Gretel or whatever.All limes are some shade of white, the colour comes from what you mix it with, the sands, and other natural additives.
There are quite a few 'Professional' people out there preaching about lime, but you don't have to go too far before you realise they really don't know all that much and are just repeating other what other people spouted, often their mistakes too so be really careful what you read or hear. Apply some rational thinking.
I read recently that after wood is burned coal is produced, this is then put into the mortar mix as it holds moisture. Not only did the author not know the difference between coal, charcoal and ash (which are all mortar additives), but also that neither coal nor charcoal are porous or will hold moisture. He was preaching about learning and getting it wrong I think from one of, or THE biggest names out there, a certain Mr Copsey.
Now he claims we should be still building (modern walls) with lime and cannot understand actually how a modern wall works, he thinks its bonkers that water could be allowed into a cavity, drain through and out of the bottom. This indicates he has a misunderstanding of how some things work. If you know how a car door or a UPVC door/window handle water you'll know where i'm coming from.
The designers of these three things know full well they can't keep water out, so what they do is accept it'll get through part way then provide it a route back out at the bottom and outside.
I also found a pic of a building on his site which he claims they changed the colour of the stone when it was re-pointed because it dried out. It took me all of two minutes to find a pic of it pre-lime pointing to see it hadn't changed at all. See earlier comment on how pointing colour effects the whole look of a building.
So we weren't off to a good start, yet I think he knows some valuable stuff about lime, but it makes you wonder how much these people really do know when they spout rubbish like that. It's a bridge too far, stick with what you know. Newer buildings were designed with OPC in mind, they don't need lime. There is an Eco argument in favour of lime, but that's a whole different, large and very difficult subject.
I'm suspicious of him as not only is he anti-OPC, but also anti-NHL.
Nobody is infallible however so I sat through a 3hr YT video of one of his talks because i'm trying to work out whether I should use an NHL or a quicklime for pointing. He makes quite a good case for the use of Quicklime and I have discovered it was used on my house originally too and am willing to agree it was widely used on all buildings back in the day. I also got his book.
This is my house walls mortar:
From what i've learned and experienced so far you don't get lumps of lime (see the white bits?) ln an NHL mix.
This is an interesting one:
It's from the old mill building i've just vacated in Batley. I was off for me fish n chips for the last time when I spotted it so got some pics. I must have walked past it a hundred times and never noticed. Buildings like this are some of the best places to go and look at how this was done. It's over well over 100yrs old and because it's industrial no-one has spent or wasted any money on it. Well It didn't need anything doing to it, it's stood the test of time quite well.
My eyes are getting old so I couldn't see the beautiful (! oh God i've got it bad) detail until I got home and put it on a bigger screen. I did pull some of the big black bits out though and drew on the wall with them they are so soft. I'm pretty sure the white bits are lime.
So is it coal or charcoal? Well neither, look at the pitting in it, I think it's slag left over from firing or burning. Here is where a wider experience and looking at everything in detail helps again. Concrete or clinker building blocks are (or were) made from a mix of power station waste and OPC. Modern concrete blocks actually have crushed glass in them. Trust me they really do, if you see one that's been washed and/or left out in the weather for a while you'll see it in there. See what they are doing is using waste material to bulk up the blocks and mortar because it's free and to no ill effect, only a positive effect. It's not a new thing either!
So what about the black slag in the lime mortar? Well it's a free bulking agent, but it also gives compressive strength to the mix.
When you're walling up with OPC you can only do X amount of courses per day before it becomes unstable because the mix hasn't gone off. It's even worse with quicklime as it takes a while to stiffen. So not only do the black bits make the mix more durable to the weather, they also give it compressive strength and they're for free so result in less expensive materials being used.
If you think about the height of a mill wall, the weight it has to carry, the size of stones used to build it and the softness of lime then it makes perfect sense. These guys weren't daft, they had hundreds of years of experience to draw on and it wasn't from Karen off of Facebook.
I think it'll have ash in it too because of the grey colour.
If you look at some mill walls that don't have these in you'll see the joints at the bottom are tighter than those at the top because of the weight over time.
I think I posted a pic earlier of my house wall close up, you could see the mason had put small pieces of blue slate in the beds of the quoins, this was for exactly the same reason - to keep them level so they could carry on walling.
I'll show you houses with Quoins which are coming apart quite drastically due to slipping on OPC because they weren't dowelled and have not stuck together. We'll deal with stickyness soon.
It seems (if you believe the spiel) that NHLs are now considered by some experts incorrect for the use of pointing with softer stones and bricks and that they damage walls like OPC does.
Whilst I think it's true they didn't use it for walling pointing back in the day, i'm not sure I believe it's totally incorrect now. The inference is it's too hard and gets harder over time like cement whereas Quicklime doesn't.
I posted a pic of a wall earlier i'd repointed about 15yrs ago in NHL, i'm hoping to go back sometime soon to examine it a bit closer. When I took the pic a few months ago I hadn't learned all of this so didn't look carefully enough, it certainly looked fine to me though, even when zooming in closer on that pic so I'm fairly certain it hasn't been damaged nor has the pointing cracked or shrunk as people are saying it does.
Might be an interesting discussion If they see me; 'Hello do you remember me? I'm just checking your wall is ok'
'What?'
Stickiness is an interesting property. You may think a sand and cement mix is sticky, but it actually isn't in comparison to a quicklime mortar mix. If you handled them side by side on a trowel you would notice a fair difference. Does this matter? It certainly does.
Bricklayers have always battled with it so additives are put in to make the mix more workable, washing up liquid was used at one time, but more professional liquids are widely available. Initially it's so the mix stays on the trowel and on the ends of the bricks while you're handling them without sliding off. The other evidence that modern mortars lack stickiness is that bricks need keying to make them stick to it. These are in the form of frogs and holes in the bricks or even by wetting the brick. A bond is created by the weight of the wall forcing the two together hydraulically. If you simply put a top course of plain featureless bricks onto a wall you'll be able to knock them off by hand at any time in the future. SBR and PVAs are used to bond renders to walls as they can and do come loose otherwise.
This means that S&C is often not fully bonded, apart from the obvious visual cracks it also has less visible minor fissures and micro cracks because it's very brittle.
Bricklayers are human, not every single brick has a 100% waterproof jacket of mortar around it. How many S&C rendered walls do we see with cracks in them and it hanging off? Pointing falling off walls?
This is why we use OPC with cavity walls, water is known to go through. So just let it and then drain it out at the bottom.
What i'm saying here is cavity walls and modern masonry were either intended or just do work well with OPC, they don't need lime to function.
If you mix S&C and indeed an NHL in a bucket and let it stand the mix will start to let the water go, it'll sit on top in puddles. The mix is unable to retain all the water put in to activate it and make it useable. You have to keep knocking it up as you're using it.
Not so with Quicklime mortar. It holds water like a sponge when its added and it sticks like s
t. The setting process is totally different.Hotlime mix can be used in Winter. Some say it warms the wall and stops it freezing, this is a load of old cobblers and should rightly be ridiculed. It's because of the way it dries (carbonates) and retains or uses moisture.
It appears to have some elasticity to it, if it cracks early on you can press or bash it back together. I've read about people being caught out and it showing freeze damage. Then going back some time later to find it's repaired itself.
It's certainly an important point to think about for me up here where it's a bit exposed. Having worked through many of our Winters it's fair to say that you don't stop dead at X date, then start work again come Spring. You do your best to carry on and find something else to do if and when it is completely unworkable. Back in the day it was the same, they didn't stop in Winter because of the lime as we have been led to believe.
I have just tested NHL for frost damage. I put some on and a few weeks later we were treated to some -4 conditions. Because of the still high water content it has indeed spalled and is flaking off.
See this is the important thing; this damage is caused by how much moisture is actually in the wall (all components therein), the actual moisture content of it. Whilst we're putting water into quicklimes to activate them they're dealing with this water in a completely different way.
Having said that I did know and work with a lovely chap called 'Ronnie the roofer' in Wortley, Leeds. He used to look and dress like Rod Stuart and did do the opposite to what most do - he'd pack up in Nov and bugger off with his family to Spain for something like 4 - 6 months every year. I was very envious of this.
We've been advised to not use lime in Winter, that was because we've been using NHLs since the lime revival began. It's as if an attempt was made to ween us off our cement by substituting it with something which was close. A halfway house if you will, but not the real deal. People are fearful of the dangers of Quicklime and you do have to be very careful with it. Not just when using it, but also storing it (away from water). Treat it like the Mogwai.
So yes i'm very cynical, yet on paper and in theory I've been converted. Hot mix lime mortar does seem to be what was used back then and I believe it's what should be re-used again on those same walls, so i'll be having a go with it.
Hopefully you're still with us and this has been of some use. It's been a bit of a lengthy post, but in actual fact this is just a brief overview with most of the salient points covered.
If you're intending to do anything with lime it's supremely important you consider whether to use an NHL or a Quicklime. Your supplier is highly likely to not know the differences to advise or may even want to palm you off with an NHL as they have it and it's safe and easy.
Edited by Evoluzione on Saturday 25th December 11:42
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