Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Shovels
for the hemp.
A
broom
for tidying the mixing area.
A
bulk bag
or two.
An
old trowel
to scrape the mixer.
When mixing in a bell mixer, you need first to mark your buckets with fill levels for quick
and accurate measuring of the required amounts of hemp, binder and water (see box be-
low). As we keep reminding you, the required amounts vary depending on which binder
you are using, so it's important to check with the supplier, and to mark fresh buckets for
each job - don't just assume that old buckets are marked correctly: check them for your-
self, unless you
know
that exactly the same materials are being used.
To mix hempcrete properly in a bell mixer, it needs to be slightly wetter than for a pan mix-
er. Inform your binder supplier that you are using a bell mixer and tell them its capacity,
and they will give you the exact ratios/amounts of ingredients required.
the proportions are 4:1:1 (hemp:binder:water). But for a bell mixer the proportion of water
needs to be slightly higher. When we adjust this for the size of the mixer we are using, for
each mix we need:
50 litres of hemp + 12.5kg of 'HLC Binder' + 13 litres of water
Work out what your quantities equate to in terms of the particular buckets you have by us-
ing the measuring jug, and on the inside of buckets labelled clearly 'hemp', 'binder' and
'water', make a line in permanent marker.
In the case of our Hemp-LimeConstruct Example Mix we are using 15-litre buckets, so our
50 litres of hemp fits nicely into four buckets marked at 12.5 litres.
Tips for measuring using buckets
First, measure the amounts using a plastic measuring jug and experiment with convert-
ing those values into equal amounts within a bucket - for example, rather than saying
'a bucket and a half' of binder in each mix, split the amount equally between two buck-
ets, mark the level on each as the 'binder line' and say you need two of these.
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