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Old timer on a Des Moines job told me my mortar was too wet and I argued for 10 minutes before trying it
I was laying block on a garage in Des Moines last spring and mixing mortar the way my first boss taught me. Wet enough to slide off the trowel easy, that was my rule for 12 years. This guy named Dale, been laying 40 some years, watched me butter a block and said that mix would never hold in a freeze thaw. I pushed back hard because wet mortar spreads fast and I get paid by the block. He grabbed my trowel, mixed a batch stiffer than I liked, and made me lay 20 blocks with it. Next morning I came back and his wall was set up solid while mine still had blocks I could wiggle. Now I mix stiffer and my walls on the north side of houses stopped cracking through winter. Anybody else get called out by an old timer and hate it until you saw the proof?
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wyatt_chen862h ago
How wet was that original mix, like did it puddle on the board or just slump off the trowel slow? I ran into the same thing on a west facing foundation wall years back, wet mix felt faster but every block slid a hair when I set the next course. What helped me was buying a cheap $10 mortar board and watching how the mix holds a furrow when you drag the hoe through it, stiff mix keeps the ridge, wet mix just flattens back out. Freeze thaw is brutal on wet mortar because all that extra water has nowhere to go, it sits in the joint and pops it apart when it turns to ice. Dale did you a favor even if it cost you 10 minutes of arguing.
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