Does anybody know of any substitutes for surface bonding cement (SBC) to be used in a dry-stack concrete block wall. The substitute can be either a home-grown recipe like Ed Kliman used in his "Gimme Shelter" project or a competitors product. Right now Quikcrete Quikwall No. 1230 is all I have to compare too, and it's mucho expensive (like $12 a bag, 50 pounds, on sale).
If I could save a good amount on cost, I'd be willing to mix it myself if I knew and could get all the ingredients.
Rough guess here Tony but how about 3 to 1 plaster sand to Plastic Cement, acrylic additive for strength, and a handful of Fibermesh per mixer load -- usual mix is 1 bag Fibermesh per cubic yard.
Fibermesh is available at the concrete plant in bags of one pound each for around $7.00 here.
Don't forget about the nylon material from the fabric store - the Gimme Shelter guy really liked that.
http://www.texasmusicforge.com/gimmeshelter.html
Gimme Shelter - Page 1.
I don't know if he used it on his dry stack or just on the ferrocement.
I googled it and came up with
http://mha-net.org/msb/docs/surfbond.PDF
here is an html version
[url]http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:6Qd2RAQmG6oJ:mha-net.org/msb/docs/surfbond.PDF+Homemade+surface+bonding+cement&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us[url]
On page 17 they give a homemade recipe. You will have to figure the costs. I've thought it would be interesting to build with AAC blocks.
AAC (aerated autoclaved concrete, IIRC) has always sounded pretty interesting.
Thanks for the .pdf
How far does a bag of the surface bonding cement go? One does use significant amounts of mortar.
It's probably still expensive.
All good questions. Wish I had some answers. I may yet investigate AAC as there is a plant not too far from my house. But I'm having trouble getting straight answers form the building department regarding simple questions. AAC construction would probably necessitate getting an engineer involved. $$$
Here is a good AAC link
http://www.safecrete.com/aac/faq.cfm
After I posted the correction I read about the modify button. This link should also work now. John
Quote
http://www.safecrete.com/aac/faq.cfm
link hasn't worked for me yesterday or today ??
I'm not entirely sure why, but I kept getting redirected to a google "HTML" search when I just tried to use their address.
However, search "safecrete" http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=safecrete&btnG=Search and then click on the link. *that* works... :-?
Let's try that again
http://www.safecrete.com/aac/faq.cfm
My bad. I clicked on the FTP icon yesterday, and the script put ftp:// in front of the correct link. I believe the link above will work. John
Well, back on the surface bonding cement. I read the articles and sourced the materials for some homemade SBC. It would have been pretty economical until I got the price estimates on the calcium stearate (which waterproofs the cement); $3.11 per pound from one source and $4.50 from the other source. That put the whole project within a couple of dollars per bag of store bought Quikrete SBC.
So, long story short I bought it on-sale at the store. Still, it was fun while it lasted; had the stearate been priced reasonably I could've made the stuff myself for about 1/4 to 1/3 the store bought price.
Thanks for all your help.
How much is a bag of the Quikrete SBC and what is the anticipated coverage?
Thanks
Lowes has it for $16.98 a bag, Sutherlands special ordered it for $14.50 a bag, but they had a 17% off sale on Saturday which brought it down to about $12.00 a bag. Put on 1/8" thick it (is suppossed to) cover 50 sq ft per bag.