LIME or PORTLAND, what should I use?? (Mike Haduck)

hi i'm mike haddick and today we're going to do a video on the differences between using lime mortar and portland cement now there's a lot of controversy about this where do you use it when do you use it why do you use it why shouldn't you use it so i'm going to try to explain it i'm going to take it from old school all the way into the new school now lime was developed way back before the pyramids and they used it all the way up until the 1900s after the 1900s they developed portland and they started using that for highways and sidewalks and swimming pools and bridges everything changed after portland they started to mix it together for certain projects i want to explain all that so i'm going to start from the very beginning we're going to go to an old barn that we are repointing and show you what lime mortar was like so here we go now this part of it is undone as you can see that's the part we're going to patch up and we get in on the inside of the barn and just like the old castles and everything you can see where they used to whitewash it and this is the lime mortar they got in here which falls apart i'm gonna explain that see it over here look at it see lime water is just lime and sand so you get it and you can crush it up it's no good where i live northeastern pennsylvania i'm going to talk about that a little more now let's talk about the lime a little more you could see in here where they used everything back in the day this is built in 1888 and it's all different stuff they use sand they got it anywhere bank run anywhere they can get it as long as it didn't have salt in it you're good and they added line to it and it falls apart it doesn't doesn't hold up line so in that old barn back in the 1880s they'd use lime why did they use lime it's the only thing they had but it fell apart now when you're building something like that just like they built conway castle you put your stone down you put your other stone down you put your mortar down you interlock everything all that lime mortar does is tighten it up if you're building an arch it lays against each other and it's tight but modern day i do not use lime mortar to fix that i use an s mortar which has portland in it 67 percent portland to lime it's like an in-between thing and then i get what i want from it i get stiffness i get hardness and that stone is granite so i don't ever have to worry about it we'll explain that as we go let's look at one of these old brick buildings and they usually started out with stone because then when the water came down it wouldn't damage the stone you just pack it up right here we got the old lime mortar we get up here into the brick we got the old lime mortar you see it doesn't hold up well it falls apart but when they built these buildings everything was interlocked one brick went this way one brick went this way the whole thing was interlocked and then they plastered the top with regular lime water see it and that don't last either so that's the way they did all these old brick buildings up until about 1900 and if you come down here and look anywhere the water hits whether you have lime water or you have portland it's going to destroy the brick you see it it's going to destroy not only the brick but it's going to all the lime is going to fall out first and then it's going to destroy the brick so here's what we established so far first of all they used lime almost exclusively up until around 1900 second thing we know is that it's very soft so if you're working on an old building like built before 1900 or the 1920s where they used nothing but lime and you're going to restore it you used lime in it because lime is very soft now before i do this little demonstration i did a video called s cops castle up in denmark which is up in scandinavia they're uh redoing it up there let's take a look at that and then i'll do a little demonstration that's inside our castle and they're actually patching up that brickwork you can see where they finish the top and they rub all the cement in and then when they get down to where the scaffold is right in there you can see where they haven't finished it yet see all the stuff let me show you what kind of bricks they used here's the kind of bricks they used right here to build all those castles so let me do a demonstration when they built these old buildings there was no block and no no rebar or nothing like that everything was bonded one brick against the other brick so to go in and tie in sometimes you'd see stuff like this every six course they tie that completely in so they could use it but they don't build stuff like that anymore now if you're gonna go and you're going to restore an old building with lime mortar like this see how soft it is you can get a screwdriver and get in there so if you wanted to restore the face of the building you could actually go in there and keep scraping that lime mortar away and you could pull that brick out and you could put another brick in its place that's what they were doing any bad bricks they're replacing that you can't do that with portland it's too hard that's one of the reasons they still use lime water for old buildings so that's one of the reasons why we're using lime order if we're restoring something that's going to be restored two or three generations down the line and two and three generations down the line again but if i was building a retaining wall in my area i wouldn't use it i use portland but it's not restoring an old building so now i'm still building my case let's go back to conway castle where they were using lime to restore that castle and then i'll do a little demonstration again so if you want to learn how to do something in a certain area you got to go talk to the local guys so that's what we're going to do now well i'm actually a stone mason from pennsylvania united states yeah so what are you doing you're just getting out all the bad stuff yeah all the old stuff and what are you gonna fill it in with white blind lime breathable light all right i'm with uh these guys from wales and they're uh they're taking us all out explain that how you're doing man we're taking the old lime out right every point in it with a new life and um yeah restore it to its original uh in this condition so it'll be stronger and uh hopefully in about thousand years time we'll still be here okay and tell me about the lime you use all right uh it's i totally climb it's mixed with uh two soft sand one sharp sand and a bucket of lime to the mixture it's gauged so we mix it up here dry then we wet it to suit and then we spray here with water so it sticks and then we let it go off and we brush it and then press it again we cut the size in so it looks magnificent how long does it take for that to dry well depends on the moisture and the humidity yeah um sometimes two weeks the actual finish sometimes a little bit longer but we test it we push it okay see if there's any hollow sounds to see if it's taken on the stone and if it's like do we push it out and then yeah like i said a perfect finish every time europe for a heritage that's what you use huh yes yeah it's french they've been doing that for hundreds of years and it's the and that's it yeah so what did we learn from those guys first of all we found out that lime is very breathable but the second thing that old school lime takes a couple weeks to dry nobody in the modern world is going to wait two weeks for any kind of cement to dry so let me do a little demonstration with the way they built those castles and the way they did the old school stone work now when they did that old school stonework what they did is they put all the good face stones on the outside and then in the middle they filled it in with junk and lime and then they just packed it up but all the stonework they did was wide and if they were going to go high in the building it'd be wider on the bottom and then as they went up they'd step it in and they'd step it in that's the way they used lime in the old school stonework so here's another way they would build these old castles these old limestone buildings and these old cathedrals what they would do is they'd come up with their stone and then they tooth it out and then they toot it back in so when they go to put their limestone facade on they would just slide it in like that and then the next piece would go right on top and they'd keep going like that all the way up the other one to go in or the next piece to go in they tie it in like that i did a video called saint john's cathedral and i show pictures of where they had that so if you ever go to new york city st john's cathedral go in there and see how they build a cathedral because it's unfinished and you'll get a lot of good ideas about how to do stone work just from looking at that so basically what we learned is everything up until the late 1800s was basically built the same everything was interlocked brick whatever you did and you used lime mortar because that's all they had now let's talk about the way things changed i'm going to do a little demonstration on that okay we know that at one time it was all done by this everything was interlocked and then he started to change things when they started making blocks like this handmade blocks they also started to make wall ties so they put the wall ties between the block they come up with their brick and they'd cement the wall tie into the brick same thing with the stone they started doing that why it's faster it's cheaper it's less material that's what they started to do so when they started doing that they found out that this stuff doesn't work wall ties rot away and i'm going to show you so they stopped doing that they won't let you use wall ties that's against code anymore so what i do is i usually use like a door wall which will go between like let me see this it goes into the wall then this stuff will go on top of the brick to hold the brick in or they could drill into the side and do this they were doing that and then this will go up and down and that'll hold into the brick they have all different types they have drill bits that goes into the metal and they started using metal but what happened in 1906 they had that great earthquake in san francisco and everybody stopped using masonry anymore everybody's going to steal and glass and it's a natural transition from going to steal the glass now when they started doing this a lot of the old-timers still wanted to use lime mortar and it rots away so let's go to a a building where the whole side the facade fell down and then we'll go from there standing in front of a building where the whole facade of the brick actually fell off it was in the newspaper in the morning the reason it fell off is they used wall ties now this was about 15 years old i took out of a brick wall this is a brand new one so let's look at it so this whole facade fell off let's look at it all these wall ties like this they rot away anytime you use steel and you use cedar all rotted away any time you use steel or any kind of metal with lime mortar or brickwork it's going to rot away and fall off see here's one of these wall ties see how they rot away and they fall off it's only a matter of time that's a that's what a new one looks like but all these wall ties are no good anytime you mix cement or mortar it's all going to follow off sooner or later this this mortar to use this old lime mortar doesn't work in pennsylvania you got to add portland to it now the old timers if they wanted a building to last they'd always start out on the bottom with a hard stone like granite because granite does not absorb the water and then from the granite they go up on top with their brick work or they go up with their stall work and this was called like a damp course or a water table we'd call it because the water wouldn't come up true to stone and break everything apart but if you use lime water in the old days that's what they would do and i i had a whole series on rock facing and shaping stones where i explained the whole scenario about that so if you use lime in the mortar the water splashes against and it falls apart if you got granite you just pack it in if it gets into the brick all the joints will fall apart so i don't use it i don't use lime mortar if you're restoring an old building yeah but modern buildings no i don't do it so let's look at this let's look at what happens in our area when you use lime mortar and you don't have a water table what happens if you don't use a water table and real stone see it you could actually see the stone is deteriorating it's turning into sand it just deteriorates that's why they use a water table when it comes to stone brick is a hundred times worse look how much it wore away here and this stone up here is good where the weather's not getting to it but when the water splashes it'll go against the stone that's what happens we're looking at a modern building i just want to point this out when you don't have a damp course and you don't have granite or something and they probably use regular mortar or lime that's what happens all the line falls out of there because of our weather so i just want to point that out and talk about it here's an example what happens to brick when there's no water table this is a modern building you got to keep patching here's why you use the water table because if you don't have a water table all the cement joints will be falling out and you got to keep fixing them let me go over the old school way of doing a brick wall first thing they dug down about three feet they came up with their stone there's no footers there's no rebar as a matter of fact rebar rots away and if it's too thick it's going to expand and bust it anyway there's no block work behind it it's solid brick one on one side then they go this way with the other one and they come up with their brick and then they step it out a little bit then they put their terra cotta tile on top so the water comes over it and down and splashes against the water table so don't get into the joints of the brick also by keeping the water away from the top of the wall it keeps you from getting upper vested so scenes from that video was the video i did over in scandinavia it's called brick walls old school versus new school and i show you the difference between the way they used to build it and the way they built it today totally different that wall's been there 800 years they don't build anything today that's going to last 800 years so now we're going to go one more we're going to go a little farther at one time they used to build make all the bricks the same they were all solid and then they decided well now we're gonna start putting holes in the bricks and then they start making all different kind of bricks i just uh i could just go over and over all the different shapes and styles some are like glass and some are like like soft material when they started using holes the only reason they used holes and bricks is it's cheaper to make and it costs less to ship because there's less weight it doesn't do anything as far as being stronger and hold it together absolutely nothing but the next step in the process was they realized by using just plain old lime this stuff isn't going to hold up not only is it going to hold up but the water is going to get into the joints it's going to splash in here in the winter time it's going to freeze up and the lime's going to fall right out just like i showed you i could show you hundreds and hundreds of examples like that so now what are they going to do well i know what to do we're going to start putting portland into the lime and make it harder and that's going to help to keep the water out and that's what they started doing they started adding it now i was born in the early 50s and i remember this transition going on the old timers were saying put more portland in it put more portland in it so some genius down the road came out with this mason mix type m type s type o i'm going to explain that i did a video it was called what cement should i use part two i'll take you to scenes to that and show you exactly what happened now let me just give you a little rundown on how they figured this all out i don't know who did this but they took the word mason work and they took the word m and this is a hundred percent portland if you get type s that's 67 percent portland and 33 line if you take the word n that's 50 portland 50 lime if you take the word o it's 33 portland 50 lime and if you take the word k it's 100 lime or what they now call mortar so that's what they did i don't know why they did it's just confusing the old-timers would just take their lime and mix it with their portland to what they needed but now they're trying to standardize everything and that's why everything got so confusing so now if you go to a box store and you buy mortar it's going to have a designation like this one is type s that means it has 33 percent lime and 67 percent portland in it or you could just go back up buy a bag of portland and a bag of lime and mix it to what you want when i was young there was no type s or type n or anything like that the guys brought their own sand they brought their own lime or mortar and their own portland and they mixed it to what they wanted to do the job now a rule of thumb is the cement itself should be softer than the material used in other words if it's a real soft brick the cement should be softer that means you use more sand and and less portland now if you're dealing with granite it's not going to make much of a difference because because portland isn't harder than granite but the rule of thumb is to keep it softer than the material you're working with because it could cause cracks a lot of people complain about breathing in the water uh but i'll get into that a little later but now let's go talk to the guy who knows what he's really talking about i went down to the washington national cathedral and this cathedral i think it was finished in 1989 it's been they started it i think in 1900 took him 89 years to finish it let's see what he says and what the old-timers said since he worked at the cathedral okay so you want to know about our cement and mortar and all that yeah well this cathedral you know even though it's you know we call ourselves a 14th century gothic cathedral this cathedral was built in the 20th century and from day one from 1907 when the first stone was laid as you know i mean portland cement was around so this cathedral was built using you know modern portland cement as we know it and and it is interesting though to see the building over the years different parts of the building as the building evolved the early early parts of the building they used a very very rich cement rich mortar mix super hard i found a spec from 1915 when they were building the east end of the cathedral and the mortar mix in 1915 was two parts sand one part white portland cement and one part lime so that is one super hard mortar mix and over the years you can see as you know too hard of a mortar will create problems and and they've had problems over the years somewhere around the 1950s 60s they softened up the mix to more of a like a type n masonry cement but it's still hard still a very hard mix and with our restoration work now with all the earthquake repair and restoration work that we use um you know we're using a lot of the the bag mixes the restoration mortars um that that you know i think are better now i mean the thinking as you know has gone full circle from super hard i used to work with the old stone masons and masons oh yeah put some more cement in there make it harder harder is better so we have i'd like to think this cathedral is almost like a museum of mortar uh you know throughout the 20th century uh but it is yeah a modern portland cement based mortar mix in this building and what would the mix be that you use now oh the normal mix now is you know like a like a six one and one uh five one and one and stuff like that you know but but it's definitely a lot softer than it was back in the day right and we use also like i say the bag mixes the edison mixes and the yawn mortar mixes too the restoration mortars and things like that and we'll mix up our own but we definitely mix them up softer than the old-timers did so this is the same type of limestone they used to build that cathedral comes from indiana and if you go on the internet and you look under the indiana limestone handbook you're going to see what cement they recommend they recommend six part sand to one part lime to one part portland so all these people are telling you you shouldn't put portland in with your lime i don't know what to tell you because i if i didn't do that everything i'd build would fall apart especially when i'm doing something flat on the ground now let's go look at a patio we did with nothing but portland and sand anything in my area with that lace flat i use portland and sand now let's look at this sidewalk my dad did 60 some years ago it's nothing but portland and sand there's not one joint fell out of here if we did this with mortar it would have fallen apart about 10 years after he done it you only use portland on the ground where i live now the question is when do you not use line in my area where my weather is if it's laying flat just like that patio it's sand and portland to santa one portland now let's just look at our weather this is what our weather is like it freezes it thaws it freezes and it thaws it absolutely kills any kind of masonry work you do especially laying flat on the ground if i'm doing a retaining wall it's all portland i did this early american stone job and it was hard stone and we used all portland i get a lot of flack on that but they don't live in my area and i'm the guy that got to go fix it i did a video called what cement should i use part two and on that video i showed you what i used in each situation whether it was brick work or stone work or laying a flat on a patio i showed you what i use that's what i use in this area now if i was just using lime in this area and i was stacking bricks like this going a couple stories high i would actually think that's dangerous let's go look at a brick job that i just redid and refinished let's look what it looked like before that now this is one of the reasons brickwork is disappearing in pennsylvania the water comes over the side it gets into the brick it all falls apart this is all falling apart so can't really do much about it you look down in here it gets wet the brick blisters you can see down in here and here it all fell apart the water gets in there everything falls apart so just so you know i didn't build that that was built maybe late 60s maybe the early 70s but the biggest reason that fell apart was because it's got cheap brick with holes in it you get cheap brick with holes in it the water gets in there it freezes into winter and then it busts everything apart and you get those days where it's frozen then it thaws out and it's frozen and thaws out some will say no that's because you put portland in there they might have put some portland in there but i've seen a lot of jobs with portland and there's nothing wrong with the brick and you walk around that whole house there's nothing wrong with that brick just where the water hit it so that's a big factor is the water even the iron railing rotted away so the problem is cheap brick nobody's brickwork is disappearing anymore nobody uses line where i live now i know there's some experts out there god blessed them who tell me that if you use lime mortar you're not going to have no trouble with the brick falling off i could show you hundreds examples of that not being true especially in my area so before i go let me show you a few other examples they put this lime mortar in there it doesn't hold up and the bricks fall apart because of the snow down here they just keep patching it that's all but you could see all this lime mortar and everything falls apart whether you have lime water or you have portland it's gonna destroy the brick you see it it's gonna destroy not only the brick but it's gonna all the lime is gonna fall out first and then it's gonna destroy the brick the same thing with stone work you see it all falls apart all this lime all falls apart on the bottom if you watch that volo castle some say well if you use too hard of a cement to face it a brick will fall off well on that video which i showed you eskoff castle the face of the brick was falling off anyway why is it because it's man-made material if you get into a god-made material like they were using at conway castle you're going to have a heck of a lot less problems so then they come out and they come out with all these different types of cement m s and k they should put on the bag exactly what it is how much portland's in it how much lime is in it how much sand is in it but they don't do that and they put this oh it's a smst or whatever it is and that confuses everybody so let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter first of all do i ever use lime mortar and nothing but lime mortar no way i've been doing this for over 50 years my dad agrees with me he's been doing it over 70 years if we use lime mortar everything's going to fall apart our rule of thumb laying flat it's portland if it's up and down personally i use s mortar which is 67 percent portland 33 line i don't know one mason in our area that doesn't use at least end water which is 50 percent portland and 50 percent lime that's the way it is around here or whether it's different than all these other places now if i was going to do a brick work i'd make sure i got a good solid glassy type brick that doesn't absorb water and then i wouldn't worry about what kind of cement i'm using now if i was working in escoff castle or volo castle where everything's interlocked and these castles are 100 years old that's a different story because like i showed you in my examples but do i ever use lime mortar no i know in some plaster projects and and some old school buildings where they've done it before yeah but i don't use it and i won't use it and i'm not going to use it and uh i hope these videos help thanks for watching i'm mike haddock i'll see you next video you

Channel: Mike Haduck Masonry

Views: 21,421

Rating: 4.9602976 out of 5

Keywords: lime, mortar, lime and portland cement, what cement should i use for brick, what cement should i use for stone, portland cement use, lime mortar use, mike haduck masonry, mike haduck, lime cement, lime mortar

Id: LjaMlSY7EmM

Length: 30min 38sec (1838 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 04 2021