Biochar Gypsum Plaster

A while back I spoke with my friend Uncle Mud about plasters. Somehow gypsum plaster came up. I enjoy using natural materials and know that the environmental impact is much lower when I take a shovel out to harvest my own materials from the land. Sometimes, a project really just needs to get done. So I began to test myself to discover what my building values were at the time. The curious monkey with a limited timeline won out.

I went out and bought some gypsum plaster (joint compound). The ingredients are still pretty natural, however I'm sure the processing has a higher impact. My other best option for this project was biochar lime plaster.  

Because I buy the sand from a local quarry and mix the plaster myself this cuts down on impact for lime plaster manufacture, but also requires a lot more time on my part. I am still unsure what the differences in impact are for processing of the hydrated lime versus the gypsum plaster are, but I haven't yet marked on my calendar some time to look into this ;)

The short story is, I feel I'm cheating a bit, compromising, but I'm also thankful to save some time and curious about the finished product. 

Biochar gypsum plaster instead of biochar lime plaster

If you have never worked with lime plaster before, then you should know it requires a little babying. The gypsum plaster really does not require babying, it is very user-friendly. 

I took my biochar and ground it in the blender until it was very fine, then mixed it with the gypsum plaster. It was easy and quick. After troweling it on I went back over to play with the texture and check out the thickness. 

In my first attempt I tried my friend's suggestion to add temepra paint for a beautiful color.  I added 2 cups to a small bucket. The color turned out a baby blue when dry. I decided it looked a little too artificial for me and went back over with one more time with just the plaster mixed with biochar.  Of course I love the tint that biochar gives. When damp the plaster is bluish, and it is speckled with larger black pieces if not ground too uniformly. 

Biochar is said to reduce humidity.  From my experience so far it does make a big impact.  Our house is in-ground. We have had to be careful of mold during certain seasons. So far, the rooms with biochar plaster on the walls have not had a problem with mold this year, though on a particularly rainy week we did find some mold in rooms that have previously been much less humid.  Now I want to plaster every wall with biochar.  Biochar can block certain waves and frequencies, though, so I am being selective to not block my wifi signal. 

On tinting with tempra:

I have seen some beautiful plaster tinted with tempra. From what I have read, a richer color may be reached by starting with a coat of plaster, then watering the plaster down to a paint consistency and adding the paint to this. The color then is painted on over, almost fresco style. I have yet to try this, and may soon do this with natural pigments. 

This is two coats over cinderblock. The lighting is a little strange in this picture, but the color of the plaster is uniform. I went for a bit of a scratched rugged texture, because I like my walls to make me feel like I am in a cave. The picture does not show a lot of detail, perhaps I will add a better one later. 

Lime plaster is much more durable, but definitely something I would recommend learning hands-on from someone who knows what they are doing. If you live in a warm, humid climate however lime plater becomes much easier. I found with my lime plaster that it is very important to keep it moist for a period of time, and ensure it is kept warm, with limited temperature changes to make sure it does not crack.  With the gypsum plaster, however, very cold temperatures will still cause cracking. 

This pre-made joint compound is a no brainer. Adding the biochar gives great benefits to air quality and humidity regulation, as well as adding a bit of carbon sequestering you can feel good about a small step to help with climate change. 

I like this mix. It was easy and I personally like the look. The biochar helped reduce humidity in the bathroom. When I want to work quickly I will use it again.  Still, I prefer the stone-like quality of lime plaster when I have the energy and time. 

Next time I may try a top coat of painted-on natural pigments mixed with plaster. 

Mosaic story floors

I started tiling last year when Sarah Haas came through and showed me what she leaned with Dan Phillips, other tilers, and then through trial and error of her own professional tiling efforts. She showed me how to tile with commercial thin-set mortar and grout with scrap tile. I decided that I wanted to complete the stairs with scrap tile and bottle caps. 

This year I started a new project involving bottle bottoms. I cut the bottom off of beer bottles with a tile saw and mortared them in.  To strengthen the bottoms (even though they are pretty flat) I filled them in with mortar as I set them. 

As always I had to try new things. I started with the thin-set mortar for tiles, but remembered how easily some of the tiles on the stairs had popped out pre grout. Instead, I grabbed a bag of premixed brick style mortar.  Once dry these tiles were not going anywhere. Thin-set mortar allows future changes if you may want to scrape everything up and try again, but after this much work with mosaic, I can't imagine wanting to redo the floor. 

I then mixed my own mortar for a bit, with local masonry sand from the quarry and a bag of portland cement. I found with this that sometimes there were still small pebbles that would make an uneven setting for the tiles and they would pop out. Next time I use this sand I will pre-screen.  Darrell, a contractor staying at moonCat right now, brought a bucket of fine sand scooped from a local property. Even though this contained a small amount of silt the mix held great, and this was my absolute favorite, until the cats found the bucket and made it into a litter box.

I did consider using an earthen plaster of clay, sand, starch, matrix material (such as straw, manure, etc.) and water. I decided against this because the house is in the ground. If by chance flooding occurred, I would need to redo the natural plaster and tile. With the amount of time I put into mosaic work, I think I will seek sustainability by using materials that will not need to be continually consumed, but will last for a long time (use of portland cement instead of natural plaster).

I did start with commercial grout, and decided to end with commercial grout, but recently spoke with a friend about mixing my own. My friend Michael (that I met at Earthships) recommended a fine sand mix very similar to the actual mortar I was making. He said mixing in the structural poly fibers used for cement may help prevent cracking. I may play with adding lime to the grout as well. At The Farm Ecovillage Training Center I had seen that the home Albert Bates was staying in had bottle caps laid in a lime plaster, but it did not hold well. Perhaps a mix of some portland and lime . . . and a little soaked sawdust?

I prefer to use natural or "waste" materials when possible. With this floor I used scrap tile from a mix of other contractors, the Habitat For Humanity Re-Store, and bottles and bottle caps that were being thrown away from local bars. I will admit that on one dark and frustrating night I decided to "Just finish it quickly!" by laying actual square tile bought from a store and did buy a couple of boxes of cheap tile.

I have come to realize that my tiling values include local material sourcing and waste/recycled materials as much as possible, but also there is a measure for my time and effort. I wanted to make the tree much larger with the bottle bottoms, but this is very time intensive.  I pushed myself for long days to complete the mosaic tile quickly and used all of my great TFH kinesiology pain releasing techniques to support days of statically bending over and mortaring in bottle caps and bottle bottoms. The tile portions go very quickly and are not quite so static. 

I can thank craigslist, local bars, and local flooring contractors for most of my tiling material! Thanks to Phoenix for all of her help placing bottle caps, and WWOOFer Chris Burke for hours of helping me to cut bottle bottoms.

I really enjoyed this project and have found it very rewarding. I am looking forward to more! As little girls at moonCat plot about who will own the house when I die I feel that my mosaic story floors can promote inspiration, creativity, culture beyond my lifetime. 

Farm Tour

This past Saturday we hosted a farm tour at moonCatlife. Jerome showed everyone around our beginning food forest and I took a turn showing building and retrofit projects. Phoenix showed everyone the kittens. I enjoyed making some new friends in the area. 

I have been hoping to project some movies in the barn and one of our visitors just so happened to have an old screen lying around. After connecting with a belly dancing instructor I am hoping to get some lessons going here along with yoga and meditation.                                   

We walked on our new paths that Darrell spent so much time mulching and looked at the new apple trees. The apple area also has a mix of herbs and some transplanted gooseberry bushes and wild grapes. I wanted to try a couple of hardier pecan and almond trees in this area as well so we planted them here.

The apples were planted next to a group of trees that grew over a large strawberry patch. There are mulberries, more wild grapes, rye, and some asparagus as well as other wild edibles of the area such as wood sorrel, lambs quarters, and milk weed (pods).  Clover and medic are growing throughout fixing nitrogen, drawing bees, and smelling wonderful.

This year Jerome has added a couple of pigs to our permaculture system and they are clearing the land for planting in our "pig tractor".  I added some swales for redirecting rain water.  We planted larger willows to boarder the farm that should have more stamina than smaller starts from the past. A path is in progress next to the willows now.

We enjoyed sharing knowledge and learning more tid bits about wild edibles and other natural ways of living from those who came.

 Here's to friends, nature, and innumerable possibilities.

diesel, alternative fuels: 77 mercedes benz

I like to travel, which means that when I drive I am using gasoline . . .unless I find an alternative. Many people know that the gasoline system in America is problematic. The internal combustion engine is inefficient, but it is what is highly available. I could go into rotary engines, electric trolly systems, and documentaries like Who Killed the Electric Car? but instead I will just say that I am starting my explorations with more sustainable/cheaper/overall smarter fuel sources by looking at diesels.

The story of Rudolf Diesel is fascinating, how he originally constructed the engine to run on peanut oil, experiments with engine efficiency, and his strange death. The two options for car transportation I had been looking at were EV (electric vehicle) conversion with the truck, and doing biodiesel or veggie with a car/van/bus. EV's are short range, while it seems that road-tripping on veggie oil is not uncommon (depending on your definition of common).

Back in April I ran across two possibilities: an old school bus and a 1977 Mercedes Benz Diesel. While the school bus was tempting for road-tripping and camping the car seemed to fit more readily into my every day at mooncatlife. I bought the car though it had a vacuum problem for $1500.

The vacuum problem meant that in order to shut off this car I had to pop the hood and press a tab that said "stop" that came with these older models for manual engine shut-off. After trying to do research,  and having a friend help me take a look at it I brought it in to a local diesel mechanic.

Steve Pelham in Clinton told me to stop through early on a Monday when he was less busy and he would check it out. I watched him clamp and plug vacuum lines to find out if there was a leak. A leak in the vacuum lines is a much better diagnosis than a vacuum pump that is going bad. A bad vacuum pump, it seems, could have caused damage and caused brake problems. . . .to sum things up Steve was helpful, quick, and friendly. I stopped back in to make sure the car was alright for longer trips later. I was also afraid that there was something wrong with the transmission. The car is slow to shift and it sounded like the rpms were going too high and it would shift in after I let off the gas . . . in a similar way to a manual transmission . . .anyway, Steve said it shifts like an old diesel and is working fine. Whew. I also found a forum online that made the comment that these old diesels sound like they are falling apart all of the time, but will run forever.  And of course that is what everyone is saying, "That thing will run forever".

I MacGuyver'ed a way to choke a vacuum hose from the inside of the car to shut the engine off. . .though some say I can plug the hose that runs to the locks and everything will work fine (minus locks) . . .but plugging it doesn't seem to work that way. I could invest somewhere around $500 to have a mechanic tear into it, check the lines and diaphragms in the doors, but that is not a priority to me right now because it is functional. The leak is not harming anything.

This has been my journey with making sure my cheap diesel is running well enough to consider biodiesel or Veggie conversion. It seems this car is ideal for alternative fuels (the reason I snatched it up in April though I didn't really do very much with it until now). It has been a really fun process. I will not claim to be a gearhead, but have always been a gearhead wannabe and I am enjoying what I am learning along the way. The extent of my previous experience pretty much extends to checking fluids, changing oil/filters, and changing disk brakes.  I love this retro car and am slowly learning the best way to apply steady, consistent pressure on the gas pedal for optimal transmission transitions.