I would like to buy some lime putty. Parts of the outside of my house have been rendered in concrete. Am considering knocking out the concrete and replacing it with lime putty as the concrete doesnt look very good, and also i am afraid of interstitial condensation.
Does anybody have a brand that they recommend?
Also could you give a list of tools (non electric, no good with those), that i might need?
If there an artisan that you could recommend in 03120 (arfeuilles, allier) area that would be really fab. I’d love the get the outside of my house done properly.
You mean lime mortar, you can buy sacks of natural hydraulique chaux (lime) from any builders merchant, mix 1 part chaux with 2 parts yellow coarse sand with water - a cement mixer helps!
Getting the consistency right is the important thing, but trowel it into the gaps where you have knocked the cement out. When nearly set, use a wire brush to get the finish you like.
Thank you very much. I am thinking that this might become something of an exciting hobby for me. But i have also contacted the maisons paysanne de france to see if they can recommend someone in case it all gets just too much for me.
Anyway your reponse is exactly what i needed. The previous owner was a cement aficionado and i am having signs of damp in the house and i think i need to knock off all that concrete myself ASAP and let the house dry out. About 5 years ago my companion paid 6000 euros to get one french drain in, and frankly i dont think it made the slightest difference. I was thinking of getting another one in along wall when i came across a guy called Peter Ward on Youtube and everything he says really sounds good, also i have done much other research via other sources, and his information really seems to be the right stuff. Am off to Castorama tonight to get chisel type things and get started knocking out that concrete.
i just purchased a 740 euro woods dehumidier, its been running a few days now and frankly i am not so impressed. No Miracles have happened. I have set it over the kitchen kit and it just drips away. Despite the horrendous cost of the thing it DID NOT come with an attachable hose which is a real pain. Despite bugger all experience in this domain, i do not recommend Woods, expensive, nice large tank of 10 litrers, which is incidentally why i bought it.
Of course now that i realise the actual source of my prob, the humidier is of course not the ultimate solution, but there you go, learning is all uphill i guess.
I was thinking of buying directly from England, i trust those guys more, and obviously we share the same language and stuff. Been here forever, but building language just makes me tune out completely. When Plumbers speak to me i find the same phenomenon, its so boring i tune out, also i have a distinct feeling (during prevous experiences) that plumbers as a group take advantage of ignorance to blow any kind of smoke up one’s ass. Anyway maybe i am paranoid but thats the way i feel it.!!
Do be careful handling lime. Do not add water to it, add it to the water.
I know what you mean about suppliers here. I am used to buying pre-slaked lime as a putty, much safer to work with but hard to find here.
Cement was (still is ) popular because it sets quickly, compared to lime. Jobs can be finished and billed earlier. Sadly, we now see the results of slapping cement based render over stone in the '70s and '80s. It seems that a lot more cement was used too, possibly 2:1 with sand.
We are embarking on having the cement render removed then repointing in a lime mortar to a “pierre aparrent” finish. That follows the shape of major stones but smaller ones are rendered over.
If you do decide to source lime putty in England there is a great source in Sussex, relatively close to Newhaven. They are online and have a lot of useful information available. They also run courses if you want get a better background…
There’s no point (no pun intended) buying chaux from the UK, the St Astier NHL stuff from most builders merchants is good quality, you just need to keep your ratios exact - eg use 1 full level bucket of lime to 2 full level buckets of sand. Whereabouts in 03 are you? I’m in South 23 so not that far away and will soon (june) be helping a pal of mine point his house, you would be welcome to come and see how its done.
Pointing with the sort of mix that Mark suggests is a very straightforward business and I can see no point in importing a product from the U.K. My neighbour has a large house and she repointed it all herself one year completing about one square metre a day for three months. A few times she has come to find me to confirm that when she says she did it she does not mean that she paid someone to do it. Some of her friend’s do not believe her!
Nothing complicated about pointing, just time consuming, but very satisfying. I power washed our place, don’t be over enthusiastic with that, clean the stone but don’t wash out to much earth from the joints between the stones.
I would second Martins important ‘safety remark’ be careful what you do, re water, getting it ‘the wrong way round’ is very dodgey! I had a nice colour result, using ‘Sable de Loire’ and Chaux Hydraulic, from a local supplier. And no Cement!
Is that reply to me or to Helen? I know exactly how straightforward pointing is, my home is pierre apparente inside and out and guess who did all that.
The only thing that I do differently to what Mark wrote is I brush mine off earlier using a soft brush.
So i started off with hammer and chisel and some of the cement just dropped right off. However, this house has been “restored” twice and the second “cement restoration” was around 2006 some of the cement is not coming off at all!! Its all been done higgeldy piggeldly style on the one particular wall that i have set my heart on doing. Its the dodgiest wall, by which i mean the cement is falling off in places so i figure that this will be the easiest one to fix. So i found my ex’s drill thing and i am just going to drill it off gently, and if that’s not possible well then i will get if off one way or another.
Behind the pieces that fell off, there was, lo and behold, the infamous dampness. So i will do my best to knock it off, clear out the cement grouting and let it dry.
There are some good youtube videos showing guys mixing lime mortar. Looks all kind of fun. Think i will go for the re-pointing, as rendering just is not my preference.
The other 3 walls of my house are a nightmare that i will not be touching at all, they all have recent thick looking layers of cement and it really looks like too much to deal with, in spite of the humidity issues.
Looking forward to my one wall project!!!
Thanks for all the info, its been extremely informative.
I shall no doubt be back with more questions at a later date!!
I normally use the St Astier chaux naturel and sometimes do use a colour. In the picture I used No 29, it’s a coloured lime, rather than a colour to add to the mix. I used 1 large trowelfull as part of the lime ratio.
It does depend on the sand, I get mine direct from the quarry - sable riviere,/fluviale . Sometimes it can be very yellow so a colour isn’t needed, but ours tends to be paler so a bit of colour makes it “less white”…
Good luck getting the old cement out, an SDS drill fitted with a chisel is good, but heavy to use after a while.
Some of her friend’s do not believe her!
