RE: SB: floor stuff

["Gladish Family" <gladish@cnw.com>]

Thanks for the mixing suggestions, Bill.
In this case I've waited about as long as I can wait to get this floor in,
so I'm going to go ahead and see what I can do with lime and sand.
I tried a bunch of shaving and sifting with the clay but it lumps up like
you wouldn't believe. I bet that when it's dry enough to mix it'll make a
great floor clay. Two years from now...
I have way too big of a wood heater in the room in question, so drying isn't
that much of an issue.
I guess we'll just live with a harder floor than we really wanted.
Andy

> Did someone say that the clay won't work?  I missed where you are located
> and need to know that because if you are in the far north, your floor may
> not dry til next year.  But anyway, back to the clay.  We encountered the
> same thing upon working in Nova Scotia a few years back.  We had
> never seen
> clay so densely packed and in a wet state.  What we did was shave
> pieces of
> the bigger chunks we had with a shovel.  From there, we let them
> soak on the
> side.  When we began to mix, we found that we could add some clay and lots
> of water for starters.  Next we added some sand which made the
> clay mix much
> better.  From there I think we kept on alternating quantities of clay and
> sand until it was mixed.  Once we got the system going it worked
> quite fine.
>
> As for lime in the floor, I would think that it would all depend upon the
> quality of lime one was working with.  Most of the lime available in this
> country wouldn't make a floor strong enough to walk on without some amount
> of experimentation.  And then, I'm not so sure you would have anything
> better than you would get with a concrete slab.


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