DIY Rock - August 29th Meeting

Calcium carbonate rock, sand, cement, water. Forgot the ratios as it was 3-4yrs ago, have it in a notebook somewhere. Takes a couple batches to get just the right consistency so it's not too dense or too weak. Salt can weaken cement so I didn't want that in the mix. Curing let's Ph come down as it will Leach and raise the Ph of the water quite a bit.

 

Pretty much used the garf recipe with a couple of modifications. Good stuff

 

Yes it will create voids but salt also can weaken concrete (mixed in to the slurry), which aragocrete essentialy is, and expansion and contraction of the salt vs rock can possibly cause micro fractures which can cause breaks when stacks of rocks are piled on top of say an arch or cave.

not sayin it's bad but knowing it can weaken it I chose no salt(don't want 2' of rock come tumbling down cause a base piece split etc ( many of the base pieces I made we're 18-24" across and 12"+ high with arches) Water runs thru mine fairly good without salt and it's strong. Probly slightly less porous and a bit denser due to lack of voids than salt rock tho. Still has lot of surface area for bacteria since it seems more ridged than what I saw posted.

There's lots of variations of recipes which can work, I was just commenting to show a different type/variation, wasn't suggesting the salt method was wrong

 

I think the ideas are what the demonstration is all about and now maybe with the different recipes we can incorporate both ways into the projects,,