Cement in the Basement, Continued

November 1, 2015

With a full week ahead of us, Liz and I decided to dig in and spend a bit of time today working on the basement again. With Bob’s guidance and a practice run under our belt, we felt confident we could tackle a round ourselves.

The North wall seemed like it would be an easy patch, with not many large spaces to address.

The South wall was a lot more challenging, as we’d be working to cover it in full.

Liz, prepping the surfaces with a bit of water and a brush.

The cement work, continued.

The North wall done (mostly).

And a spot of the South wall complete.

We learned a lot this round. First off, we ended up using less water (1 gallon per bag), and added in the cement in batches. Our first attempt was a little off, as we ended up leaving a lot of clumps inside the mixer.

Our second attempt was better, but we ended up creating too thick a mixture. We found that after about 5-10 minutes, the concrete would harden up and lose about 1/3 of its moisture. So while it seemed good at the start, 10 minutes it we had to add more water to try to break things up more.

Our third attempt was much better. We returned to 1.25 gallons of water and added in a third of the bag at a time. The mixture near the end was much easier to work with, and we now feel like we’ve got a good system down for future mixes!

On going outside, we were surprised to find the day to be really warm and comfortable. We ended up sitting on the porch with some beers, and rested up after a productive few hours in the basement.