Storing Hydrated Lime, Cement and Sand

[Onoff]

I'm looking to get some of these to store cement, hydrated lime and blasting sand:

25L UN Container With Lid

25 Litre UN containers manufactured according to the requirements of chapter 6.1 of the UN Recommendations on the Transport of Dangerous Goods. Buy direct from the UK manufacturer at the cheapest price.

buybuckets.co.uk

With the rubber seal and metal band clamp can I assume it'll keep the air/moisture out?

 

[not done it yet]

If it is longer term storage a thin plastic sheet (clingfilm type) could help.

I use plastic buckets with the usual plastic lids (where you flip up the rim of the lid to remove it). OK if not in sunlight. 500ml t0 25l. Unfortunately I can no longer easily source them for free.

 

[Gareth J]

For long term storage of hydrated lime, presuming you're going to add water to it anyway, fully wet it and leave a layer if water on the top. Unless you mean hydraulic lime.

 

[Onoff]

Unless you mean hydraulic lime.

This:

 

[rtcosic]

I have a few containers of that size with 'air tight' screw on lids. They came from the local swimming pool and had contained a pool chemical that had to be kept dry.
Know anyone at the local pool?

 

[Gareth J]

This:

View attachment 390746

Yea, if you want to stop that carbonising, fully wet it, make lime putty, than top off with a bit more water.

It won't be as nice as a bought lime putty , for fine plastering or whitewashing for example, but keeps just the same.

Clearly won't work for hydraulic (NHL) lime though

 

[Onoff]

Yea, if you want to stop that carbonising, fully wet it, make lime putty, than top off with a bit more water.

It won't be as nice as a bought lime putty , for fine plastering or whitewashing for example, but keeps just the same.

Clearly won't work for hydraulic (NHL) lime though

Do you reckon then, if I filled an airtight container and sealed it up, it'd still carbonise over time?

 

[Gareth J]

Do you reckon then, if I filled an airtight container and sealed it up, it'd still carbonise over time?

No, I reckon that, if you did that, it'd be just fine for as long as it takes for you to not remember what the white powder was, or what it was for. Just a guess though!

 

[Blue Chips]

Clearly won't work for hydraulic (NHL) lime though

I would agree. For historic plaster preservation/repair work, I still have about 30 gallons of preservation-grade lime putty made from slaked quicklime, not from hydrated lime. It's stored in closed plastic buckets with a layer of water on top of the lime putty. I mix it with sharp sand and animal hair to make lime putty plaster for repair work in our old house project. These buckets of lime putty were made up years ago, and the putty is still in perfect condition for use. I like working with it because I'm not very fast at plaster repair, and it gives me a long working time.

 

[Gareth J]

I would agree. For historic plaster preservation/repair work, I still have about 30 gallons of preservation-grade lime putty made from slaked quicklime, not from hydrated lime. It's stored in closed plastic buckets with a layer of water on top of the lime putty. I mix it with sharp sand and animal hair to make lime putty plaster for repair work in our old house project. These buckets of lime putty were made up years ago, and the putty is still in perfect condition for use. I like working with it because I'm not very fast at plaster repair, and it gives me a long working time.

"They" the lime druids, reckon that maturing it in this way is beneficial.

I am somewhat dubious about the difference between traditional, "proper", slaked, then hydrated lime over simply fully wetting fresh builders (or even cubicle) hydrated lime. As you might be able to tell by my wording. It seems to be only the sellers of the special products that say their expensive products are superior. Everyone else just saying it's hydrated lime. Calcium whatnotinate.

Have been playing with using cheap cubicle lime for everything from building outdoor walls (no cement), to pointing, to plastering indoors and whitewashing. Seems fine so far, although no good for fine plastering and not ideal for whitewashing as there are bits of sand in it.

There's a lot of woo involved with lime stuff I'm sure.

 

[arther dailey]

I have always been interested in the old cathederals and such that were built with flint and lime , no cracks and still perfect , how many of our modern stuff will be in that time span ? also try and wnder what it was actually like for the labourers/trades etc , would it be even possible to build similar today ?

 

[Onoff]

Going off topic but after a lot of experimenting, I put my flints in with:

- 3 soft
- 1 sharp (figured it'd add strength and maybe some interest with the fines in it)
- 1 opc
- 1 hydrated lime (for plasticity/self healing) *
- wetted with Everbuild Integral Waterproofer 202 *

*Old meets new on the plasticiser front, time will tell!

 

[Blue Chips]

There's a lot of woo involved with lime stuff I'm sure.

I'm not a plaster expert, and I've never done any experiments to compare lime putty plaster made with slaked quicklime vs. hydrated lime, but I've heard that there might be variations in the degree of hydration in hydrated lime and that it might contain other substances like clay, etc., so results might vary.

Whatever the case may be, I've taken the conservative approach over the years and stayed with the old-fashioned stuff (made from slaked quicklime), based on my reading and the advice of several experienced home restoration people. My current project house is a ~220-year old home that my wife and I bought about 16 years ago. One of the first things that I did was to re-plaster a section of one of the front parlors, just to see what would work best with the split-board lath used in the house, and to get an idea of how much lime putty plaster I would need for the whole house. Even though there was a lot of structural work to be done before most of the plaster repair work would take place, I wanted to get ahead of the curve and have a large quantity of pre-slaked lime putty on hand as the project progressed. Anyway, that first panel I did 15 or 16 years ago is very solid and completely free of cracks. I've re-plastered about a dozen other areas in the house since then, and all are holding up perfectly.

Here's my take on it: It's a major undertaking to repair or re-plaster the walls of an historic home, and expectations are very high. So if I spend a few extra dollars to use old-fashioned lime putty plaster, I figure that it's only a tiny fraction of the total project cost and effort, and perhaps one less thing to worry about. It's also nice to have lime putty on hand that does not set in water and stays soft for years, so that it's ready to use at a moment's notice.

 

[Gareth J]

I'm not a plaster expert, and I've never done any experiments to compare lime putty plaster made with slaked quicklime vs. hydrated lime, but I've heard that there might be variations in the degree of hydration in hydrated lime and that it might contain other substances like clay, etc., so results might vary.

Whatever the case may be, I've taken the conservative approach over the years and stayed with the old-fashioned stuff (made from slaked quicklime), based on my reading and the advice of several experienced home restoration people. My current project house is a ~220-year old home that my wife and I bought about 16 years ago. One of the first things that I did was to re-plaster a section of one of the front parlors, just to see what would work best with the split-board lath used in the house, and to get an idea of how much lime putty plaster I would need for the whole house. Even though there was a lot of structural work to be done before most of the plaster repair work would take place, I wanted to get ahead of the curve and have a large quantity of pre-slaked lime putty on hand as the project progressed. Anyway, that first panel I did 15 or 16 years ago is very solid and completely free of cracks. I've re-plastered about a dozen other areas in the house since then, and all are holding up perfectly.

Here's my take on it: It's a major undertaking to repair or re-plaster the walls of an historic home, and expectations are very high. So if I spend a few extra dollars to use old-fashioned lime putty plaster, I figure that it's only a tiny fraction of the total project cost and effort, and perhaps one less thing to worry about. It's also nice to have lime putty on hand that does not set in water and stays soft for years, so that it's ready to use at a moment's notice.

I'm also appreciating working with stuff that stays workable for ages, especially for pointing and wall building - I often get a small window of time to do a bit here or there and it's great to be able to mix a batch and not feel the urgency to use it all or that I have to mix a tiny amount. Most of the stuff I've demolished here has been made with "hot" lime. You can see "blooms" of not fully hydrated lime that would have been within it. Along with bits of coal here and there.

 

[Onoff]

Got a couple of these cleaned out tonight to at least store the blasting sand. Got darker blue ones too. Won't be revisiting my blasting experiments for a while:

 

[Prajna]

The first thing done on site in the old days was to dig and fill a lime pit. I think the romans used to say that slaked lime should mature for at least five years before use. The process for lime is like magic! You start with sea shells (calcium carbonate CaCO), burn them in a kiln to drive off the carbonate group and replace it with oxygen to give quick lime (calcium oxide CaO2), react the quick lime with water to swap the oxide for hydroxide to give slaked lime (calcium hydroxide CaOH), then you slap it on the wall and after a time the hydroxide group gets replaced with carbon dioxide from the air and you're back to your seashells (calcium carbonate CaCO) but now it's in the form of lime render. I might not be strictly accurate with the chemical formulae but it is along those lines and it is, to me anyway, a magical practice.

 

[8ob]

Going off topic but after a lot of experimenting, I put my flints in with:

- 3 soft
- 1 sharp (figured it'd add strength and maybe some interest with the fines in it)
- 1 opc
- 1 hydrated lime (for plasticity/self healing) *
- wetted with Everbuild Integral Waterproofer 202 *

*Old meets new on the plasticiser front, time will tell!

Its always a problem getting a good match for older lime based mortar, a lot of older properties originally used silt based sands dredged from riverbeds.

Bob

 

[not done it yet]

The first thing done on site in the old days was to dig and fill a lime pit. I think the romans used to say that slaked lime should mature for at least five years before use. The process for lime is like magic! You start with sea shells (calcium carbonate CaCO), burn them in a kiln to drive off the carbonate group and replace it with oxygen to give quick lime (calcium oxide CaO2), react the quick lime with water to swap the oxide for hydroxide to give slaked lime (calcium hydroxide CaOH), then you slap it on the wall and after a time the hydroxide group gets replaced with carbon dioxide from the air and you're back to your seashells (calcium carbonate CaCO) but now it's in the form of lime render. I might not be strictly accurate with the chemical formulae but it is along those lines and it is, to me anyway, a magical practice.

We didn’t. We started with highest purity chalk from the Chilterns and fed it, with coal, through a vertical kiln. The lump lime was then slaked in a large screw, where the operator added sufficient water to ensure the product was up to the standard required. I analysed it at regular intervals. If you knew anything at all about chemistry, you would not be trying to make it seem complicated or magical by involving oxygen or anything else. Calcium carbonate is calcined (simple removal of carbon dioxide) by heating to about 930-950 Celsius (IIRC). Nothing else.

No ‘swapping’ of anything during slaking. Again, it is simply the addition of a water molecule to the quicklime. The coal ash was, of course, an addition during the process. From memory the coal used had about 10% ash content.

I can’t remember if we actually supplied lump lime for agriculture at the time I was at the works, but it may have been possible or even still marketed as such. This was over 50 years ago and I only working at that works for about 3 years.

As an aside, exhaust gas from the dry process cement kiln was at about 1100 Celsius, as I recall, and partly/mostly calcined the incoming raw material feed at about 930 Celsius. Nearer 100% calcination in the 4th cyclone stage was achieved by fuel addition immediately after the kiln and before that bottom cyclone stage of the 4 stage preheater tower.

 

[Onoff]

Its always a problem getting a good match for older lime based mortar, a lot of older properties originally used silt based sands dredged from riverbeds.

Bob

I've the River Darent down the end of my valley. There's a particular spot where there's the most gorgeous yellow river sand, really amazing on a sunny day. The fact it's right under the huge M20 bridge I suppose it could be left over from that!

Easier to drive to Wickes!

 

[Blue Chips]

The first thing done on site in the old days was to dig and fill a lime pit. I think the romans used to say that slaked lime should mature for at least five years before use. The process for lime is like magic! You start with sea shells (calcium carbonate CaCO), burn them in a kiln to drive off the carbonate group and replace it with oxygen to give quick lime (calcium oxide CaO2), react the quick lime with water to swap the oxide for hydroxide to give slaked lime (calcium hydroxide CaOH), then you slap it on the wall and after a time the hydroxide group gets replaced with carbon dioxide from the air and you're back to your seashells (calcium carbonate CaCO) but now it's in the form of lime render. I might not be strictly accurate with the chemical formulae but it is along those lines and it is, to me anyway, a magical practice.

We didn’t. We started with highest purity chalk from the Chilterns and fed it, with coal, through a vertical kiln. The lump lime was then slaked in a large screw, where the operator added sufficient water to ensure the product was up to the standard required. I analysed it at regular intervals. If you knew anything at all about chemistry, you would not be trying to make it seem complicated or magical by involving oxygen or anything else. Calcium carbonate is calcined (simple removal of carbon dioxide) by heating to about 930-950 Celsius (IIRC). Nothing else.

No ‘swapping’ of anything during slaking. Again, it is simply the addition of a water molecule to the quicklime. The coal ash was, of course, an addition during the process. From memory the coal used had about 10% ash content.

I can’t remember if we actually supplied lump lime for agriculture at the time I was at the works, but it may have been possible or even still marketed as such. This was over 50 years ago and I only working at that works for about 3 years.

As an aside, exhaust gas from the dry process cement kiln was at about 1100 Celsius, as I recall, and partly/mostly calcined the incoming raw material feed at about 930 Celsius. Nearer 100% calcination in the 4th cyclone stage was achieved by fuel addition immediately after the kiln and before that bottom cyclone stage of the 4 stage preheater tower.

Here's an article about lime putty that I thought was interesting:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17527-3

Here in Maine, in the old days they used to raid the ancient shell middens for source material to burn in the lime ricks. Maine's principal sources now are from limestone quarries.