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Primitive Technology: Wood Ash Cement & Fired Brick Hut paccione .co.uk 2 Views • 4 months ago

Primitive Technology: Wood Ash Cement & Fired Brick Hut
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About This Video:
I built a hut from fired clay bricks and mortared them together with a cement made from wood ash left over from the firing process. When I developed wood ash cement years ago in a previous video, it was in response to the need of a cement made from material other than lime stone, which is absent in my location. Wood ash was suitable because it contains calcium oxide, the active cementitious material for making mortar. I made clay bricks and fired them in a kiln made previously. Then I collected the wood ash and made them into pellets storing them for later use. When it was time to make the mortar, I put the pellets in the kiln and fired them. Here it's important to note that the ash needs to be fired at a high temperature with oxygen, ordinary ash from a camp fire won't work as is because they don't get hot enough. It needs to be pelletized and fired again in a kiln before use. I mixed the fired ash pellets with sand (1:3 ratio by volume) and used it to mortar the bricks together. It's important to use a trowel (flat piece of wood here) instead of bare hands to handle the mortar due to lye burning the skin (I got mild lye burns on my fingers). The ash left over from firing the bricks was enough to mortar those same bricks together. The hut was 2x2 m and 2 m high at the gables. Wooden beams were placed onto the gables to form the roof and secured in place with mortar. Then I made barrel roof tiles and lay them onto these beams. The whole project took 6 and a half months to build. The hut sheds rain well and the mortar is water proof (won't dissolve in water), surviving many rainstorms even before the roof was up. The main take away from this video is to always look for a way to take a waste material (wood ash) and make it into a resource (cement).

About Primitive Technology:
Primitive technology is a hobby where you build things in the wild completely from scratch using no modern tools or materials. These are the strict rules: If you want a fire, use a fire stick - An axe, pick up a stone and shape it - A hut, build one from trees, mud, rocks etc. The challenge is seeing how far you can go without utilizing modern technology. I do not live in the wild, but enjoy building shelter, tools, and more, only utilizing natural materials. To find specific videos, visit my playlist tab for building videos focused on pyrotechnology, shelter, weapons, food & agriculture, tools & machines, and weaving & fiber.

#PrimitiveTechnology #WoodAshCement #FiredBrickHut

How to Make a Concrete Sidewalk - Do It Yourself paccione .co.uk 2 Views • 4 months ago

Bosch demo hammer: https://amzn.to/2zSqJuy still needs the shovel attachment: https://amzn.to/2z6CQnm
A well reviewed option for less than $200: https://amzn.to/3dD7pjC
Quikrete Concrete Expansion Joint: https://amzn.to/2A30IIX
Due to requests, I am now including links to products when possible. These links are provided for reference, no company or individual paid to be in this video. Depending on the vendor, a small commission might be paid and if so, would be used to support continuing this channel.
Amazon Prime free 30-day trial: https://amzn.to/2U9pttN

More Teresa and YNH: https://www.youtube.com/playli....st?list=PLjTMbsoHW2e

Installing a walkway can be a very labor intensive job, but if you do it yourself, you can save a lot of money over hiring contractor.

Before you get started, you’ll need the following materials.
-fiber reinforced concrete
-claw hammer
-line level: https://amzn.to/2AxwsFX or https://amzn.to/3gYpxGL
-wooden stakes
-expansion joints: we used https://amzn.to/2A30IIX
-wood forms
-trowel
-wheelbarrow
-Bosch electric shovel: https://amzn.to/2zSqJuy or manual equivalent
-concrete mixing tools
-broom
-tape measure

First, determine how long and how wide you want your walkway to be. After you’ve measured the width, drive a stake into the ground on both sides of where you’ll begin, these stakes will be your reference points for the remainder of the project.

Then, attach a screw to the lower third of the first stake. Use a line level to make sure you’ve got the proper angle of drainage away from the house.

The line level is basically a long piece of string strung through a small level. The string fits through two holes on top of the level, so you can slide the level along the string.

Take one end of the string, attach it to the screw you’ve installed on the first stake, drive a second stake at the end of your proposed walkway. Attach the other end of the string to this stake and check to make sure that you will have proper drainage. In other words, you don’t want the bubble to show “level”,you want there to be a slight slope away from the house. (Failure to make sure water will drain away from your house could later cause foundation problems)

Next, use a shovel or the Bosch electric shovel, to dig out the area of your walk.

Once this is done, sink a stake about ever two feet on both sides of the cut out ground where your walkway will go. Then take 3” X 4’ pieces of plywood and attach them at ground level to the stakes. You can use a cordless screwdriver to hold the plywood to the stakes. These pieces of wood are your concrete forms which will hold the cement in place when you’re ready to pour the walkway.

But first, put in your expansion joints. Expansion joints are installed about every three feet and are used to keep your concrete from cracking during expansion and contraction in hot and cold weather.

Using fiber reinforced concrete, which we used in this segment, is a good idea. The hundreds of thousands of tiny fibers give the concrete extra strength as is hardens, thereby eliminating the need for wire mesh or re-bar to support ordinary concrete.

Mix your concrete in a wheelbarrow. Then pour the walkway into the forms. Use a trowel to smooth it out and make sure you have a nice even finish.

TIP: Before the concrete dries, use a broom to give the surface texture. Simply take a broom and lightly sweep across the concrete from side to side. This will put small grooves into the concrete surface as it dries and will reduce the chance of your walkway being slippery when wet.

After the concrete has thoroughly dried (usually five days) remove the outer forms and stakes and you’ve got a beautiful walkway.

WHAT WE USED

The material used to install the backyard sidewalk was Quikrete Fiber Reinforced Concrete.

Quikrete’s fiber reinforced concrete contains hundreds of thousands of tiny fibers which finish smooth, eliminating the need for wire mesh or heavy re-bar in many slab-on-grade applications like walkways, patios steps etc. Specially developed to minimize cracking, chipping and flaking.

Fiber reinforced concrete also dramatically reduces cracking caused by drying shrinkage.

Quikrete Expansion Joint Strips, https://amzn.to/2A30IIX protect concrete slabs from potential damage caused by expansion and contraction. Made from cane fiber, the five foot long strips are weather resistant, absorb very little water, and do not become brittle in cold weather.

Amazon Tool Deals: https://amzn.to/3eUkYLB

MORE FROM YOUR NEW HOUSE
Featured videos:
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https://www.youtube.com/playli....st?list=PLjTMbsoHW2e

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https://www.youtube.com/playli....st?list=PLjTMbsoHW2e

35 CEMENT IDEAS THAT ARE SO EASY paccione .co.uk 1 Views • 4 months ago

Primitive Technology: Wood Ash Cement paccione .co.uk 2 Views • 4 months ago

Primitive Technology: Wood Ash Cement - Creating wood ash cement from scratch
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Partial credit for this idea goes to James Keane who I discussed this with on my wordpress site (see conversation): https://primitivetechnology.wordpress.com/2018/03/06/lime/#comment-9736
I developed an experimental cement from made only from re-fired wood ash as its cementitious material. It was mixed with crushed terracotta as an aggregate and formed into a cube. The cement set hard after 3 days and did not dissolve in water after this period.
Process: First I burnt bark and leaves in a kiln at high temperatures to produce well burnt, mostly white wood ash. The ash was then mixed into water and stirred well. The excess water was poured off and the resulting paste was made into pellets and allowed to dry. A pellet was then re-heated in the forge until it glowed about orange hot. This was then taken out, cooled and dropped in a pot of water. The pellet dissolved and boiled due to a chemical reaction with the water. The paste was stirred and crushed terracotta (old tiles from previous projects) was added and mixed to form a mouldable mortar. This was formed into a cube and allowed to set for three days (in the video, a cube made exactly the same way 3 days previously was used due to time constraints). The resultant cube was strong and made a slight ringing sound when tapped with a finger nail. It was placed in water for 24 hours to simulate a very heavy rain event and did not dissolve or release residues into the water.
My current theory: The main component of wood ash consists of calcium in some form (e.g. calcium carbonate, calcium oxide). This can be up to 45% from my research. Calcium is in higher concentration in the bark and leaves of a tree. When the ash is mixed with water, the soluble component of wood ash (10% pot ash) dissolves into the water. But seeing that it does nothing for the cementing process, it is drained off leaving the insoluble calcium (and other components) in the paste. Doing this probably raises the relative percentage of calcium in the paste to about 50% or more. Most of the other 50 % consists of silica and alumina which are pozzolans, materials that chemically react with calcium hydroxide to increase the durability of the cement product. The paste was then made into a pellet and fired again to high temperature to convert all the calcium compounds to calcium oxide. It also reduces any charcoal in the pellet to ash if it hadn’t already been burnt the first time. This step seemed important as un-fired ash pellets only partially hardened and would fall apart in water, though retaining a weak undissolved 5mm thick crust. I can only surmise that re-firing the ash just gave a greater conversion of the calcium components to calcium oxide. The pellet is slaked in water converting the calcium oxide to calcium hydroxide. This cement was mixed with crushed terracotta which may also help in some way that I’m not aware of as I only did this one experiment and did not test other aggregates yet (e.g. sand, gravel etc.). Terracotta is porous and might hold together better than other materials. The mixture is allowed to set in air where carbon dioxide reacts with calcium hydroxide to form calcium carbonate cementing the aggregate together. After this, the cement will not dissolve in water.
Use: I think this material might have a potential use as a mortar holding rocks or bricks together in wet environments where limestone or snail shells are unavailable for making cement. Wood ash is a pretty ubiquitous material to most natural environments inhabited by people using biomass fuels. Wood ash cement turns a waste product into a valuable building material. From my research, wood ash is already being used as a partial replacement for cement in the building industry without decreases in strength of the final product. But I’ve only just started experimenting with it and don’t know its full capabilities and limitations. Calcium content of wood ash differs depending on the species of tree, the part of the tree burnt and the soil it’s grown on. Cautious experimentation is still required before committing to a hut built from this material.

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