That fancy silica mix cost me a whole afternoon in Tulsa

Bought a premium mortar blend from a new supplier last month, figured it would speed up my wall work, but it kept slumping no matter how I mixed it. Took 3 tries to realize it needed way less water than the bag said, and I lost a full day redoing two courses. Any of you had a mix that lied about its ratios on the label?

2 comments

2 Comments

craig.john4d ago

Read a piece in a trade magazine a while back about how some of these new blends are using different particle sizes that soak up water weird. Said the bag instructions are more like a starting guess than a real rule. Sounds like you hit that exact problem, the stuff just grabs water different depending on the humidity that day. My crew has been burned by the same thing, we always mix a small test batch first now, even if it costs us an hour upfront. Saves us from the mess you went through. Sucks you lost a whole afternoon, but at least you know that supplier's stuff needs a lighter hand.

jasonf174d ago

Honestly, I see it the other way. If you start second-guessing the bag and doing test batches for every load, you're just adding steps that should already work. These suppliers have labs and data, if their mix can't handle a humid day, that's on them, not on you. Tbh, the real fix is telling that supplier their instructions are garbage and making them send a rep out to sort it. You paid for a product that works, not for a science project every time you mix a batch. An hour of testing is an hour you're not getting paid for, and if the blend is that finicky, it's just going to fail on site later anyway. Ngl, I'd rather burn the whole afternoon once and refuse the next delivery than build my whole routine around their guesswork. That's just enabling bad quality control.