That job on River Street in Savannah nearly cost me my trowel

We were repointing an 1850s townhouse and the brick was so soft it crumbled if you looked at it wrong, so I mixed a lime mortar I trusted from a supplier in Atlanta. Halfway through the second wall, the stuff started shrinking and pulling away from the joints, and I had to chip out 40 feet of work before it set. Anyone else run into a bad batch of lime that looked right but acted totally different once it hit the wall?

2 comments

2 Comments

margaretrivera29d ago

That's the classic sign of too much sand or an off lime ratio, did you check the bag for a moisture issue before mixing?

evan_dixon6727d ago

That 60-pound bag test you mentioned earlier is a good clue, but honestly I've seen that same crumbling happen with bags that tested totally dry on the outside. Did you happen to check the date code on the bag before you mixed it, @margaretrivera? I've gotten burned twice now with pallets that sat in a damp warehouse for months, and the lime was already half dead before the bag even opened. Also, what kind of sand are you using, because that washed river sand acts way different than the crushed stuff in terms of how much water it pulls from the mix. Tbh, I'd rather hear about your exact scoop method than guess at the ratio, since a level scoop versus a heaping one can swing the batch by a solid 10 percent.