Shavingcrete

[freebeard]

Concerning the compressive strength of aircrete; you'll need reinforcing. How about basalt?

Basalt fiber is made from a single material, crushed basalt from a carefully chosen quarry source. Basalt of high acidity over forty six percent silica content and low iron content is considered desirable for fiber production.

BASALT FIBER meaning, definition & explanation
The Audiopedia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KORpVO7-LJ0

[Xist]

Wait, what now?

https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Gatheri...asalt+monolith

Mix basalt fibers into aircrete and not basalt rebar?

Both?

It seems like most aircrete videos on YouTube are by people who do not have any idea what they are doing. One guy has a Green Dragon and other equipment and it seems like all that he does is create garbage, including his videos.

The guy who made the $30 plans seems to be able to make it work, but I feel like he is keeping secrets to himself.

[freebeard]

Magic: the Gathering survived MT Gox?

They say that bad money drives good money out of circulation. Maybe it's the same with Youtube videos. ???

Rebar might not be appropriate for aircrete. (Maybe as a belt around the perimeter?) The mesh is middle ground between the loose fibers and rebar. Did you notice the braided mesh that would be deformable to conform to 3D shapes?

In the 1960s I saw a bowling alley in Klamath Falls, OR, which had the entire ceiling sprayed with asbestos. Possibly the last time the public was exposed to it in building construction. I saw a video of a building in Mongolia that had a spray-on ceiling that looked the same, made from basalt wool.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=basaltwool

Almost everything about this volcanic province is impressive. The Columbia River Flood Basalt Province forms a plateau of 164,000 square kilometers between the Cascade Range and the Rocky Mountains. In all, more than 300 individual large (average volume 580 cubic km!) lava flows cover parts of the states of Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. At some locations, the lava is more than 3,500 m thick. The total volume of the volcanic province is 175,000 cubic km. Eruptions filled the Pasco Basin in the east and then sent flows westward into the Columbia River Gorge. About 85% of the province is made of the Grande Ronde Basalt with a volume of 149,000 cubic km (enough lava to bury all of the continental United States under 12 m of lava!) that erupted over a period of less than one million years. Flows eventually reached the Pacific Ocean, about 300 to 600 km from their fissure vents. The Pomona flow traveled from west-central Idaho to the Pacific (600 km), making it the longest known lava flow on Earth (the major- and trace-element compositions of the flow do not change over its entire length).

http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/book/export/html/486

It's not like we're going to run out of the stuff.

[oil pan 4]

You could use zarcronium bearing fiberglass or polyester fibers for reinforcement. Works real good with concrete.
I don't know if basalt can take CaHO exposure.

[Xist]

A guy on YouTube mixed Aircrete and basalt fibers, but he never showed how any of his experiments turns out, although he shows a number of failures. Maybe the rest are, too.

This is the only time that I have seen him test anything, aside from crumbling stuff with his hand:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0sU3qXwvyw

Searching for basalt and Aircrete shows hundreds of results that only contain one term. You had one job, Google!

However, I did find this:
"It is possible to add other products to the LITEBUILT® Foam Mix to obtain lightweight composite concrete. Notably the use of various fibers increases the strength of the product and prevents cracking in adverse conditions." http://www.litebuilt.com/general.html

I can only wonder what they charge for their sauce.

"A 10% LITEBUILT® Foam content in the concrete mix renders it stronger than dense weight concrete."

"Another competitive product is the use of expanded Polystyrene beads in the concrete mix. This process has several drawbacks when compared with LITEBUILT® Aerated Lightweight Concrete. Firstly, the Polystyrene beads have to be chemically treated to loose their volatile electrostatic properties. This makes the process expensive. Secondly, Polystyrene tends to gasify in high heat, releasing toxic fumes. A number of Fire Authorities around the world have already expressed concern about the product and some countries have banned the product outright for construction use."

[Xist]

It looks like someone had my idea four and a half years ago! From: FAQs | Natural Building Blog
John on June 14, 2013 at 11:28 AM said:

Interesting subject this foamed concrete. Seems like we DIY’ers can’t just go down to home depot & buy a can of foaming agent aside from buying a bottle of dish soap from Safeway. Looks like a foam generator is needed in addition to the foaming agent to make this stuff. However,found one post on U Tube where the guy mixed a 2 part liquid in a bottle, transferred it to a bucket & mixed with drill paddle to make foam & put it in mixer by hand. Maybe I’ll try squirting a can of shaving cream into to mixer & see what happens.
Reply ↓
Luong Si Tuan on January 23, 2016 at 3:48 PM said:
Dear John
Foaming agent give you foam which does not break when you mix it inside concrete mortar and keep the volume of Clc constant during the curing
Shaving foam will collapse when you mix in concrete.

The second person was a salesman from Lightconcrete.net

Al Gore used this on his mansion: Home | Airkrete - All Green Light Weight Cement Insulation!

This would interest me if they just listed a price! https://www.richway.com/construction...s/cfp6-1c.html

It looks like this guy made stuff for playgrounds out of something like Aircrete and basalt fibers, but the website he mentions is down: foamed cement

The Google results for this look good, but every page asks for a password: http://www.litebuiltconcrete.com

They just sell soap: https://www.goodcell.net/rates

[freebeard]

Have your samples cured yet?

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

I don't know if basalt can take CaHO exposure.

Calcium Hydroxide? Lime plaster? I haven't found anything specific, but:

High chemical resistance to water, salts, alkali and acids

Unlike metals CBF is corrosion resistant. Unlike fiberglass CBF is not affected by acids. CBF possess high corrosion and chemical durability properties in corrosive media like salts, acid and alkali solutions.

Application Benefits

Mostly they talk about Sodium Hydroxide or Hydrocloric Acid.

[Xist]

After several hours, it still had the texture of whipped cream, but when I checked the next morning, the outside felt solid.

Weirdly, the leftover half was still soup.

I left them at Mom's house. I did not know what might happen as I drove them and the house in Page is cold, but if they need four weeks to cure, they do not need me poking them, and would only take longer at my house.

From what I can tell, Aircrete is soapy mudbricks. There is a type of autoclaved aircrete, with a video on YouTube claiming that their non-autoclaved aircrete was better in every way.

Of course, it could have been worse in many ways they omitted.

I don't want to wait twenty-eight days! Perhaps the homemade aircrete projects that I have seen on YouTube would have been successful had they just waited.

From Wikipedia: "Fired bricks are one of the longest-lasting and strongest building materials, sometimes referred to as artificial stone."

So, a kiln would make bricks stronger? Would a school district likely have one?

[freebeard]

Would a school district likely have one?

Back in the 1950s they would. Today it's probably all laptops.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocl...rated_concrete

^^Aluminum flakes make hydrogen bubbles.

[Xist]

I have asked The King of Random (and The Boy Wonder) a couple of times to build a kiln to fire his clay bricks. Yesterday they tried barbecuing homemade pottery:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHvfdddSjgk

From what I have read, the bricks need to maintain over 1,000°, and glow red. The Boy Wonder went from warming the pots by a fire to covering them in briquettes. He used a shop vacuum as a bellows and added a quarter bag of briquettes at a time. People commented:

1. He needed to maintain the temperature evenly.
2. He should have "scored and slipped."
3. He needed to use refractory bricks to keep the heat in.

I never took ceramics. You scratch the clay before adding another piece. Slipping is reducing clay to a watery mess and you put that on the scored clay before you add more. TBW said you needed to make the clay evenly thick, but did not seem to do a very good job with his fingers. I thought a tortilla press would have worked. This page recommends a rolling pin [and explains scoring and slipping].

From what I have read, uneven thickness contributes to cracking, but that page shows a sculpture, not a tile, so it is completely uneven. It sounds like TBW needed to add briquettes gradually and keep the air supply steady.

When The King of Random made a clay brick, people asked about using his backyard foundry to fire the clay. People said it would not work, but

this guy

made his own kiln. It looks like an upside-down backyard foundry.

I ordered this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I wanted to make sure that I had the correct ratio of water to cement. It seems the foam ratio determines the characteristics, not the success rate, so I will worry about that later.

I bought a loaf pan from the dollar store and another can of shaving cream. I had not realized that I did not use the entire can last time, so I made sure to shake it and try again. I used a quick-release clamp to hold down the button. I also had the can sit in hot water, because last time the can was cold and seemed to have

When firing without a kiln, it may help to pre-dry you clay pieces in a kitchen oven set to 190 degrees F. With a kitchen oven, the pots are dried by "baking" below the boiling temperature of water for several hours. I set the oven to 190 F. This is NOT firing the pots, but it dries them so they can be fired in an outdoor bonfire or pit firing with less breakage caused by steam explosions.

https://www.goshen.edu/art/DeptPgs/rework.html

Our oven does not work, but I have a toaster oven, although listening to it tick every second, and then dinging and turning off after fifteen minutes was annoying. Several hours?

Uh...

I would not have tried to run this while I slept. I only got 45 minutes. I doubt the toaster oven maintains much heat, but I left it alone until morning.

I found it curious I only saw this mentioned once, but the guy on Youtube that does not seem to know what he is doing, and does not seem to have successfully made anything mentioned keeping the surface damp as it cures, like you are supposed to with concrete.

I am not sure how often you are supposed to do that.

The top feels dry, but dented when I tapped it.