Thanks for the great video! We have also build 8' walls that are poured horizontally on a frame that then tilts them up into place. We should have some information and a video on this coming out soon. We also have found that fiberglass stucco mesh offers great strength for the exterior layers. I would also like to offer one clarification on R-Value. There is one article out there that claims the 5-6 per inch but the information source for this is miss leading. There is an experimental commercial product that is similar to Aircrete that can achieve this r-value but it offers no structural integrity at all. Aircrete as we use it has an R-vaule of 1.8 to 2.3 per inch depending on the mix. this is still very good for the cost and lack of thermal bridging and air infiltration you get in a traditional wall. A normal 2 x 6 wall with R19 in it will actually perform around R-13 when the whole wall is factored in. I hope this information helps.
Dome Gaia out here promoting correct info, Awesome! The mistake happened so early into the aircrete hype it became super widespread it doesn't help that Google still provides this incorrect information preferentially
I was wondering about that super R value also. Is Aircrete that much different from Aerated Autoclaved Concrete (AAC)? A friend of mine moved from a high mass solar house near Oak Ridge, TN that had a wood stove for cloudy winter days to an “ideal” AAC house in Northeastern TN. The R value of AAC was low but the ads preached thermal mass. Thermal mass is fine in New Mexico but not so good when you have week long spells of cold cloudy weather. My friends now depend a lot on their wood burning stove and found that the AAC loses heat in accordance with its stated, low, r value.
AAC, R value.varies depending on if it is loaded bearing or non-loaded bearing .AAC.. Plus it tends to have a relatively high levelized cost in the US, since the supply is limited.... much like Hempcrete, ....
I was gifted a 16' diameter geodesic dome made from 3/4-inch conduit. I lined the inside with metal lath and ferrocemented the inside. Then I built a 18' dome over the smaller dome and metal lathed and ferrocemented the outside as I poured lifts of aircrete.
Enjoying your videos, thanks. I built a straw bale in 2000 and used the bales as the lath inside and out to apply three coats of clay-sand/lime/chopped straw plaster in different recipes as you have done. I worked great, no chicken wire etc. The result was gorgeous, non-toxic, cured hard and sound, no cracks etc. Final coat was sand/water/lime with lime wash over all for a stunning bright light reflective structure. I sold it in 2022 for 10 time what it cost to build. I had a gorgeous home that never needed cooling and very little heat in the VT winters. I love watching all the innovative notions people are putting into practice. Good on ya mate!
I'm looking at building a straw bale home Love to pick your brains on the things you learnt before and after building. And a bit more info on the rendor 🍻
here in New Zealand there is a type called Foamcrete, its 20mpa and has fiber glass strands about 1.5 inches long but can spay out if pulled from each side resembling 2 'W's persay. ive seen it used as block fill in high rise buildings, on the uppermost floors , which also has steel rods within. And it has been used to form garden pool structures and then a final over lay is sprayed on at great force about 2 inches thick which is then troweled and sculptured and either sealed with a paint or tiled over. yes its been around for about 20 years now , Very light and easy to work even vertically which is alll in the batching success so its not wet enough to slump off the walls.great video thanks for sharing.
My house is built with "Aircrete" (-like product, Ytong blocks). Such products are available in Europe for many decades and are now, at least in this part of Europe, number one material. The aircrete blocks material is ranging from pure cement to ones with high gypsum (and some other stuff) additives, that drastically increase R value. Unlike those DIY alternatives, those are "baked". Blocks are precisely polished to fantastic precision of 0.5mm, so they can be joined with super thin film of mortar or (approved) mounting foam. Typical wall thickness is 300mm (10 something inches), but Today often up to 0.5m. Even with 300mm you don't necessarily need any more insulation to suffice the code, but it is typically added. I have 300mm Ytong wall + 160mm EPS insulaiton and together with tripple pane windows the house performs about at about 2.5x of passive house limit. There's no point in doing aircrete DIY in Europe, but to those overseas, if they got all the way to building an aircrete foam machine, I'd recommend to also make also a very simple polishing machine and polish the blocks to precise shape - it will sure make the structure much more sound, will drastically reduce need for mortar (or mounting foam could be used) and make assembling super easy.
Foam crete, what is being called Aircrete here, IS NOT equivalent to Ytong AAC. There is a brand name Aircrete that is AAC but that is not foamcrete. AAC is an industrial precision material made to ASTM standards, not a DIY hack like foamcrete
@@dlorien7306 While there are differences for sure, like Ytong makes cavities using aluminum particles as opposed to foam, the end product is very similar and the goal is the same. I'm quite sure, no one in the US would bother to make DIY foamcrete, if they had a cheap procreate blocks available at the nearest home depo type store. There's a video on RUclips showing DIY type foamcrete process used in industrial scale somewhere in a small republic in Asia. The precise blocks are basically indistinguishable from Ytong products (which I'm sure was the point). In Europe, there are many porocrete/aircrete products, some of them much more different from Ytong, than those DIY foamcrete. I'm also quite sure Ytong AAC is not made to ASTM standards, it was based on old standards like DIN or CSN many decades ago, which were harmonized to EN and ISO. Most likely no changes to the product were needed to meet ASTM standards, just complete documentation for US market.
@@dlorien7306 @dlorien7306 While there are differences for sure, like Ytong makes cavities using aluminum particles as opposed to foam, the end product is very similar and the goal is the same. I'm quite sure, no one in the US would bother to make DIY foamcrete, if they had a cheap procreate blocks available at the nearest home depo type store. There's a video on RUclips showing DIY type foamcrete process used in industrial scale somewhere in a small republic in Asia. The precise blocks are basically indistinguishable from Ytong products (which I'm sure was the point). In Europe, there are many porocrete/aircrete products, some of them much more different from Ytong, than those DIY foamcrete. But of course, everyone is entitled to his own opinion, about proximity of the products 🙂
Ive sprayed shotcrete and supervised a large shotcreting crew for 18 years in the mining contractor industry . we use robots and also spray by hand . I never believed in the fibrecrete until we tried to demolish tunnel rings that were fibre crete . Its next to impossible I now totally believe in it the strength and durability is amazingly robust . As far as vertical construction with aircrete -you need to do less than 1 meter per hour with high strength concrete without stopping if you stop you need to greencut the surface to get a proper bond with the next pours . i would think air crete could be done similarly if you poured slower or used an accelerator Like meco 160 to harden the mixes faster so u could increase the vertical rate. If you build a house that lasts longer than the glue and sawdust ones we build in todays time your footprint get smaller as each year passes . GREAT VIDEO
In the UK we used Aircrete on building many new hospitals 30 years ago, after about 25 years they started to fail and now are being knocked down and replaced, so whilst it had advantages in build it does not have the expected lifespan
perhaps 30 years ago, I was working on a hotel, where they put rigid foam board insulation, then skinned it with a stucco finish. The walls were not painted before a child slamed his bike handle against the walls, and broke thru to the insulation. Then damage kept happening. So, what looked like it should last 50 years, did not last 2. Hard to believe how many times exterior walls get hit with something. Within two years, all foam board was removed up to 6', and replaced with solid durarock like stuff.
@@normbograham You are residents of a backward country :) Masons, sorcerers, horoscopes, etc. (The country's forces are dedicated to this! ) This problem was solved in the 70s in the USSR. It was enough to steal the monograph. England is stuck in the 50s in the 90s (!). Buildings are falling apart due to corrosion of the reinforcement in the slabs. Aerated concrete is a type of artificial shell rock. You might as well cut in the quarry :) (It’s hard down there, and fluffy at the top of the quarry) Styrofoam is poison
@@normbograham - In the 1950's, My Father worked in California on Tract Housing. After Occupancy - The Low Cost Housing Tenants often knocked holes in the Sheetrock. Many trips back for repairing the sheetrock. Next set of houses, they put 1/4" Plywood on the studs first, then the sheetrock: No More Calls back to fix busted sheetrock! Styrofoam can be bonded to Aspenite, Plywood, or other standard sheet materials with good strength, to give it greater durability. Same with Aircrete, though it might require mechanical attachment (Screws, or Bolts).
If you added in a lightweight fiber reinforcement like chopped fiberglass or basalt fiber, you might see enough increase in tensile strength to have moveable panels. Even some of the more natural fibers might be sufficient. Another possibility is your dustcrete studwork wall section built then stood up. One idea I've had in my mind since I learned about earthbag homes, rammed earth, and aircrete is using a metal sprayer to put a thin aluminum shell over it to weatherize it. Apparently this kind of process has been used over 100 years.
Wow! I have been following the same You Tube channels, and came to about the same place (minus making my own foam generator.) I am a fan of domes, but your drywall-type slabs sound like a very good idea for stick frame houses. Overall, this video was excellent in a number of ways! Also, I had no idea that grain bags were fireproof. That changed my thinking because fire safety is huge for me & I didn't want to incorporate anything in my aircrete that would melt (like AH's styrofoam mix) or offgas with intense heat. I subscribed immediately, because you are the kind of person I want to hear from. Thank you for sharing!
I think domes are the best option for this material because they are self-supporting. If you build flat walls you still have to build a roof out of conventional materials. Then the question of load becomes an issue. They make materials for covering concrete roofs (fabrics) that are designed to adhere to concrete. I agree with you to keep toxic products out of a home construction. I believe the foam balls will weaken the finished product as well. You only need the fabric below the equator of the dome as the pressure is outward. Once you are above that line the structure is self-supporting. You could also make u-shaped blocks on the lower layers and add rebar "rings" to provide tension strength.
Great video. Captures all the basics, including all the concerns. I'm particularly interested in the slab walls poured vertically and then stood up. Need to be able to produce interlocking panels without the cost metal framing. Also looking to include exterior design in the pour (board and batten) to further cut down on cost. Would be willing to invest in facility to manufacture panels in the US. While DIY is fun for small projects, the potential for quality control failures is a concern. If the remaining concerns can be resolved we will have an answer to affordable housing!
Ive experimented with a 50% shredded recycled styrofoam mixed into concrete with reduced heavy aggs also used fibreglass fibre for rebar replacement and had great success light - recycles guarbage stro foam strong fire resistant easy to put fasteners into or stucco or parge . 🎉 You can haul larger loads in a concrete truck as half the concrete is very light (foam and cement, water ) 🎉
I have been searching and searching everywhere for how to make sawdust and lime insulation. I can't afford regular insulation as I'm moving into a shed to live. I'm 70 and have a fractured vertebrae but have heard that you can do this with little effort. However, I don't know the ratios for each. Your video's are so inspiring. Thank you for your ingenious inventions on building with local materials. I can obtain $1.00 bags of sawdust but am not sure where to go from here. Do you have any ideas for me. Thank you very much. Intelligent people always come up with using local things for building.
Also if you want insulation I'd recommend styro aircrete (eps). As I can't remember everyone you mentioned that you had looked at I'll recommend the channel of "Stephen Williams"
Greetings! Great, sober analysis of aircrete as a building material! There are two things that I would like to see done with aircrete that I think would compliment the material very well. 1) Continuous flow with in-line agitation for large pours. This should be feasible with a hopper for the portland cement, a screw pump/agitator to move/mix it, and the foam inlet behind the screw to ensure you don't make a clogged cylinder in your screw pump. 2) tilt-up single form cast walls with cast-in fastening joints, mesh reinforcements, etc. Aircrete should lend itself very well to the tilt-up method, as a substantial logistical burden for tilt-up is the weight and then insulation of large pours of reinforced concrete; aircrete minimizes the weight so you may get away with smaller cranes or no crane at all to erect the casts, and your insulation is integral to the material itself, and the logistics of laying your mesh saves a lot of labor as the cast-in aircrete will give you the best chance of adhesion. Also the problem with adhesion and aircrete is the foaming agent acting as a separator as well. Most surfactants have long polymer lipophilic tails which are good at forming mono-layers when they're not bunched up in micelles. I'll have to think up some ways to modify the foaming mixes chemically to avoid this. Probably rheology modifiers like CMC or maybe just table salt can promote micelle formation and swelling, which should make for good adhesion to synthetic fabrics. If anyone knows why Drexel foam is commonly used instead of bulk Sodium Lauryl Sulfate for aircrete please let me know.
The foaming agent is one of the keys to making a successful product. The longer the bubbles remain intact during the curing process the higher the quality with less shrinkage. SLS does not last long enough to make good products. Drexel is better. It is an agricultural foam used on spray rigs to mark the edge of where you spray. It has to remain intact so when the tractor comes around the operator can follow it for the next pass. I have contacted many producers and some claim up to 3 meters of pours at once. Even better is Alpha Olefin Sulfonate also a product used in common products. The bubbles are extremely tiny and resilient. I also like the mixtures containing Gypsum which cure in 15 minutes as apposed to hours for straight Portland.
I have not tried it, but it has popped up in some of the videos that I watched. Also I do not have experience with building homes, or anything of the sort. Just like learning about it all, and such. Eartships, tiny homes, and just anything that seems... unique.
I'm on a similar hunt for the "best" infill material for timberframe walls. Considerations for an ideal infill/wall material: 1. Insulative and thermal mass value 2. Strength and durability 3. Anti-Pest 4. Ease of installation (a one step, al in one process would be ideal) 5. Environmentally and human healthy- Low embodied energy, natural renewable material, non toxic. 6. Aesthetic value 7. Low cost. So far, old ways and new ways still haven't produced a "best" way. Thanks for having boots on the ground with your experiments.
This is the quest. I’m really liking the dustcrete. I plan to test a lime/clay binder, in leu of the portland/lime mix I’ve been using. I think it will be the closest to meeting these specs.
Great video! I've done some work with papercrete and a hempcrete-like substance using other vegitative substrates, but now that I've retired, I have time to delve into this exciting material. Thanks for your insights!
way back when, i was desperate, there was no aircrete, i developed styrocrete, made it into 3X3 blocks 4 inches thick and insulated our entire root cellar, that was 35 years ago and it still looks and smells like new in there.
Jamey Mantzel has used something like dustcrete. He used a Styrofoam grinder, to take styrofoam products into the cells, and then using the cells as a basis for styrocrete. It is pretty interesting. Used this stuff to make several domes on his homestead down in South America.
I used this by mulching styrofoam and mixing mortar to make a vegetable grow box. I made the outer form surface to mimic a stone by squirting trails of silicone as the joints, and roughed the plywood surface. It turned out quite authentic. I threw brown and black concrete dye on it and it reminded me of a railroad bridge stone.
Hey I really appreciate the analysis and multiple applications/uses. I had not personally stumbled upon many videos demonstrating floor slab assemblies. Keep crushing
Aircrete has been in practical use for many years. My first notice of it was its use as the primary wall surfaces of a warehouse-type building in which my workplace was housed in SHAPE, Belgium, a NATO installation, in the '80s. I'm uncertain of the superstructure design, although I assume it was steel beam supported, but the walls themselves were probably at least six meters high, and supported their own weight. They were very large blocks, probably each half a meter in height and approximate thickness, and quite long. They appeared to be bonded using some synthetic caulking-type material, although that could have been only an exterior sealant rather than the primary bonding. My only critique, which would apply for some uses and not others, was that it was easily scratched and dented, but that could be addressed when desirable with some over-coating. On the benefits side, it doesn't transmit impact forces efficiently, so it is resistant to cracking and shattering.
Those blocks are self-sustaining but you can't build a second floor on top of it. In many countries, in Estern Europe for example, you won't get building permit to build more then one floor without reinforced concrete encasing, columns. Another issue will be, if you want to apply insulated boards on the façade using drilled fixxings. It may crack or crumble. That being said, those blocks are brilliant for indoor partitions, separations walls etc.
@@SpiderF27 I saw one video of a couple who wasn't able to get consistent enough results and gave up on the material but if it is pre-cast by an experienced manufacturer I'm sure it's fine. No I wouldn't think you should use it under a more compressive load than maybe a small roof.
@@crawkn For a single storey building will be no problem. Now there are plenty of manufacturers, big enterprises all over Europe that make those blocks in all sizes. Ytong is one of them. You can build a house in no time with those blocks.
Put a stick under the 98 pound portland mix and cut the three exposed sides. Lift the stick and stand the bag up leaving you with half of the portland on each side. Slice the remaining side. Now there's two 49 pound loads.
I fully agree with your final statement in regard to the use of portland in ANY project and the LONGEVITY of the project usefulness. If the statement were not absolutely true - we would not be witnessing Roman architecture still standing to this day. The same can be said of Meso-American structures that stand COMPLETE in this day and age as well!
I've made thousands of aircrew bricks for equipment sheds. We live in an arid desert regen, so extremely hot days and cold at night. Curing aircrete in extreme heat is a huge challenge. However, it works well, is cost effective, and has awesome insulation properties.
In American scientific literature, engineers complained that the builders of the 50s and 60s were crazy and lived in the 19th century or did not work well. And now Americans remember “how good it was in the 60s.” Naturally, wild lameness. There is a super construction crisis in the country and the banking and construction lobby. They cannot make cubes from free concrete (the price is only for cement and air - waste). (1 plant per country) So that lonely homeless people build 150 m2 houses in 3 months. Soviet panel houses are divided in 1-3 days into a House (Foundation month or from ready-made elements = week.) And the first floor itself in 3 days. 7 days = 2 floors. The city mafia seems to steal 20,000 per homeless person per month. And this is the price of the apartment :) 5 floors without elevator. 60 apartments. 200 people with housing.
I enjoy your channel. Thanks for reporting on all of your experimentation. Also, thanks for supporting your local farmers in their fight against the new County Dude. Anyway, in my county I have codes to deal with (I envy your "lack" in that respect), but I'm thinking I might be able to use some kind of aircrete system for insulating a timber frame structure. I like your idea of making a SIP-like material. Thinking out loud, James Hardie makes a 4x8 fiber cement panel product for board and batten look siding. I wonder about fastening one of those cement panels to a dimensional lumber frame, then pouring aircrete or dustcrete into the panelized frame. Maybe drive some nails through the panel to add something for the aircrete to grab onto. If the aircrete bonded well to the siding panel, with the added rigidity of the lumber, that might make a nice SIP replacement. Finish off the inside with plaster applied directly to the aircrete panel. Again, just thinking out loud for now. Won't have time or space to experiment with it for a while. I know that you would balk at the cost and all the commercial products, but for me, it would be a way to avoid all the outgassing foam as well as being very fire resistant. And cheaper than SIPs, especially since they would not need an additional layer of siding. I think I might be talking myself into this...
I have been interested in aircrete for a while and plan to build a shed with it this year. Aircrete has been around for decades and is widely used in Asia. It is referred to as cellular concrete, or air entrained concrete. One method of manufacture involves curing it in an autoclave. One method I have seen is to make panels and connect them with spikes. When the wall is up cover both sides with chicken wire & stucco for strength.
Commercial airkrete (spelled with a k) does have an r value of 5 or more and is used as an insulation but it isn’t made with Portland cement so it doesn’t doesn’t have much strength. DIY aircrete spelled with a c is a lightweight concrete with some structural strength but the r value is only 2 per inch thick not 5 (with the density most commonly used on RUclips- 94 lbs cement, 6 gallons water and 43 gallons of foam) denser mixes will have more strength but less than 2 r value. Aircrete with little pieces of EPS foam added to the mix will have close to a 3 r value but strength is very compromised.
I've played with creating my own foam generator but have yet to actually make the foamcrete for the project I'm working on. I love your idea for a foamcrete composite sandwich material. I imagine applying a water based starch glue like wall paper paste to the cured foamcrete slab while still in the form. Then cover it in a paper product like newsprint. No plastic, you want it breathable. When dry, flip the planel and apply the glue and paper to the other side. Paper should be overlapped to avoid seams.
Here in Brazil theres a movement (who say they´re green but they´re not) where they use sheets of polystyrene stood up and held by short sections of rebar coming out of the concrete slab. They then put up metal slab reinforcing either side, tie it all together, give the polystyrene a light coat of water cement mix, then a fairly thick stucco layer. Its a pretty fast construction technique by our standards and they build multiple story buildings with it. But is metal and polystyrene intensive which have doubled in price the last few years. I always figured that aircrete panels without metal frames like ac harry honey (whatever is his name is!) would make a good substitute for the polystyrene sheets. But from what you´re saying, you were unsuccessful in making an aircrete panel that would make it out of the form?? Or were you solely focused on the drywall concept?? Cheers.
Just subscribed to your channel. I think my goals are closely aligned to yours. I like persons who are not closed minded to one system but willing to shop around for ideas and combine concepts if necessary for their specific needs and projects. With that said, take a look at Tiny Giant Lifestyle. He is my favorite "explainer" of aircrete. I love his channel because he goes beyond simply sharing his passions and experiments with others but, against the backdrop of a very analytical mind and years of building experience, he walks his viewers through very logical and well presented reasons for his building decisions as they pertain to aircrete. In my opinion, he presents the most logical arguments as to why aircrete is perhaps the most practical alternative building option for our modern society. (p.s. I have zero affiliation with him - in fact, I don't even know the name of the gentleman, only his channel)
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Have you tried styroaircrete? It's basically shredded styrofoam mixed into aircrete. It seems to overcome a lot of problems typically associated with aircrete.
I love the idea of styrocrete and have made my own, but unfortunately it has been banned due to 2 hour fire resistance requirement, and toxic gases emitted in a fire. Interested to know if anyone has overcome this issue.
@@geoffreydebrito7934 just don't mix it too hard when the perlite is in, over mixing will crush it into a powder loosing the insulation benefits. It will also make the concrete a bit more water permeable than the styrofoam mixes. So make sure you get decent vapor barriers. The perlite mixes are not too far behind the Styrofoam in weight, but they are usually much stronger. For perimeter walls or multi nozzle concrete printers I usually lay down three layers. A conventional structural mix for the outside envelope, a perlite insulating mix for the core and a fine particle white sand mix with high latex for the interior layer. This gives the walls a nice shiny white finish that looks like it's painted. This white layer is impermeable, so it can act as a vapor barrier by itself.
One attraction of using Styrofoam is that it's an environmental disaster, and encapsulating it with mortar seems like a good solution. There's plenty of it that people want to freely be rid of; the mix results are consistent. I've made a grow box with it. Turned out very nice. I'm thinking that timbers may be a viable option. A 6"x6"x 8'or 12' stacked like a log cabin with spacers to create mortar joints, filled with touch n foam (painted)
Just discovered aircrete, like the light weight, good to see pure honesty, we went to u-tube university and are in the process of building a cabin at the age of 70 and 66. Are we crazy, yes.
My kind of crazy. I’m planning to fill some existing uninsulated walls on my old house. Trying to build a foamer out of a harborfrate wash gun. Low volume, cold joints, but inside a wall where the siding is replaced a foot at a time. (With foilcell for IR reflection)
You should consider buying 50 pound bags of milled fiber it comes in different lengths. It is fiberglass in almost a powder form, but it can come as long as a quarter of an inch down to a 60/4th of an inch when you mix this with your air Crete it acts like microscopic rebar. It adds an immense amount of strength. You just have to get the right ratio. And then, of course, I would go back to the hardware cloth galvanized for more reinforcement. There are also other Paula burners that can be added for more Elastomeric benefits, making this thinner, stronger and lighter
I have built structural panels 2 inches thick with no reinforcing materials that are still in use outdoors as table tops with no coating either 4 years old. Used gypsum and latex additives. It can be done.
Very well done Sir, great job at accurately explaining AC pros and cons. It's early days and smart people are busily playing with AC and coming up with innovations. I'm sure you will be one of those.
@@radicalgastronomy I'm certain the 'powers' will do their best to suppress aircrete innovation. It's just to easy for the average Joe to replicate. Imagine all the insulation products etc that might be superseded if aircrete became mainstream. Here in Latin America that's not an issue so we might see some exciting developments from here. I agree with you though, a mass produced, cost effective aircrete system is achievable. I've got a few things in mind. I'll let you know how I get on. Best of luck with your project...I've subscribed👍
Have you looked at the Styrofoam AirCrete (Stephen Williams) I am wondering if you could use the Sawdust in place of Styrofoam, and get a substance that is wetter like his, and more readily available in your area.
@@radicalgastronomy Sir, i 2nd with Mr. Jarnod Jordan on Mr. Stephen Williams styrocrete. I watched many videos on Aircretes (aircrete Hairy, Honeydocarpenter, styrocrete etc. Your Dustacrete seem to be the simpliest and easiest to work with and create. Glad i found your channel and videos..
@@tanjirokatoichi7425 I have watch some of the styrocrete info, and agree that there is potential. Personally, I like to avoid materials that have the potential to “off-gas”. I find styrofoam to be kind of gross. The dustcrete is performing quite well, and avoids the use of petroleum based synthetic materials. Glad you like my info!
I will use aircrete as a layer of insulating mortar on the brick walls, on both sides, interior and exterior. I bought a foaming device and I will begin soon with some trials.
Have you looked into using poly fibre in the aircrete like shotcrete . No rebar or mesh required increases strength and resistance to cracking . Amazing strength increase in concrete
@8:09 being a penny-pinching miser myself, I support your position. 😊😂 I'm looking for cheap material for a few projects I need to get done with a coin-screaming budget, and i think aircrete would be perfect for one of them. On a side (but very important) note, please, please take time to tell your loved ones you love them EVERY chance you get. Tomorrow is not a given; you're never promised the next sunrise. ~ ~ ~ ~ "And don't let it break your heart. I know it feels hopeless sometimes. But they're never really gone as long as there's a memory in your mind." _Hold On To Memories_ Dave Draiman, Disturbed
Great video! I also was interested in a sheet rock type material. I made a 24” x 10” x 1.5” test shelf. I used a wood form lined with wax paper then garden weed block cloth (one long piece wrapped length wise, around the ends). I over filled slightly. Folded the weed cloth over the top, added top cover wax paper then a board and a weight to press the weed cloth to the air-crete. I also added a piece of rabbit wire in the middle. I think for this project I mixed the foam:cement at 7:1 by volume (1:4 water used; with Shampoo 4 oz/gal. & cement 15 lbs/gal.), using Suave Daily Clarifying Shampoo (I found thick & better and cheaper than any dish soap). You may be able to recycle used garden cloth. The shelf produced was very light and strong. I had it hold up 2 bowling balls&bags while supported at its ends. Ron (rondesc at aol.)
Aircrete has the insulating values, but needs the structural strength that would be provided by aluminum screen, or nylon mosquito screening. The simple design would be an inflated dome pressurized with inserted water and electrical tubing, boxes, bubble windows or light tubes. An air lock doorway entrance provides heat/ cold / security protection. Rocket mass heater and cooling pipes in floor using air would help control temperature. The exterior/ interior may have chicken wire / screening and be epoxy coated for waterproof. The base design includes drainage slope to the door.
We must share some genes. I have been building with all sorts of mixes of cement and sawdust for 30 years. I did a lot of architectural components like european style window and door frames, on a heavy scale. I always used sand in the mix and typically white cement so that no further coloring was needed. Great videos here. I would never use chopped Fiberglass on a finish coat of plaster, it's just a burden and especially in a lime plaster. But it makes perfect sense in the dust crete itself. If you use a good mixer, you can use soap and get aerated mortar which is highly freeze cracking resistant. My favorite tool is a water mister/sprayer when doing finish work, it gives superb control over your materials hydration. Pity that my work was mostly pre camera and youtube days. Where are your sponges? Great for color coats using lime or white cement and a pigment.
I appreciate the fact you pointed out that concrete is very energy intensive. And the fact we have to pick the lesser of evils. We will never go back to "neutral" lives... I think we all like AC, cheap items, and cheap energy too much. Building items will probably never be "sustainable" but we do need to pick the MOST LONG TERM EFFICIENT designs. Great video!
Thanks for your helpful insight. to get the fabric to bond to the aircrete you could try soaking it in Bonding Agent before lining your form with it. You might have to look at what you are using as a form, maybe use shiny polycarbonate or similar. I also wondered about chopped fibre strand, but you dont want to waste it by having all through the mix but just mix it in a few gallons enough to cover the base of the form about an inch or so, then after it starts to set pour in the rest, and later top off with another inch of the chopped strand added batch. this should give you a sandwich of aircrete where the base and top is tough. I am assuming you would make big panels and cut up as needed
Perhaps a sprinkling of fiberglass in the form, then on top of the pour. I bet if one did that and added some concrete reinforcing wire in the panel it would work.
Thank you for the video. Some really good trade off analysis there and consideration given to alternatives. Ignoring for a moment the material source and looking at it more from a long term goal perspective: truck bed liner both as a reinforcement itself and as a bonding agent with a stiff backer in a manner similar to drywall is intriguing. I really like the SIF concept for if a panel is sturdy enough to survive handling, shipping, and more, then it is likely a lot less fragile once installed as well. Paper is pretty high density... When paper is rolled up tightly, it is stiff. When paper is pulled tight and bonded to the gypsum, the taut paper is a key part of its overall sturdiness. That coupled with the fact that trying to bend drywall: one side of the paper is under tension regardless of which direction you're bending, the key here is having that tension on both sides. A high strength material bonded to the aircrete with a bonding agent itself that exhibits high strength properties could be key. Have you seen how truck bed liner has been used to reinforce cinderblock walls or allows something else survive catastrophic impact? Where it might fall down is cost per square foot? Not sure. That seems like something that is solved with economies of scale and labor savings. Rolling out or spraying a bed liner is pretty quick. If the physics and bonding hold up, then other substitutions may be worth experimenting.
I would love to see you find a successful way of making an aircrete wall. The R value per inch is amazing. Can you imagine a 6 inch thick wall and or floor!
Aircrete is well developed in Russia, but because of the complicated technology, many people have switched to polystyrene concrete. It's a very convenient material. You can make panels. To strengthen these concretes add polypropylene fiber. Good luck!
Very good video. I live out on a small homestead. I built a metal shop about 6000 square foot and I also have a home here already. I'm interested in building some out buildings with this method. I've got a few questions if you've got time and are comfortable discussing them. I don't know why but I had the impression that people also use brown up Styrofoam waste to create air pockets. I also am curious about the addition of fiber into the Portland mix . When the engineered plans came for my metal building I was kind of disappointed with how lax they where with concrete thickness and strength requirements. I went to a far higher strength concrete but I also had them add fiber to it for more strength. The fiber just came out of a bag and didn't add much cost at all. It was mixed in the trucks before they poured the concrete. My location has one thing, very dry and hard ground. My current idea is to use my small tractor with backhoe to make forms in the dirt itself. To tamp it down with sand and to then make panels and let them cure for a few weeks before anything happens. I would like them to be structurally sound and insulating. Inside I plan on sewing plastic materials and making a dome roof inside a rectangular building. The walls would be these pre formed pieces and the roof would be a first pressurized dome, using chicken wire, rebar and whatever else may add structure I would spray the outside first with thin layers, next would be a layer inside to lock the shape in. From there I would use bonding agent or whatever is necessary to make a roof strong enough for the high winds and such in my area. I would like to be as environmentally considerate with materials as possible but not to the point of loosing strength, adding excessive cost or time to the build. My hope is for 8 foot walls, with a 20x30 outside footprint. For the floors I've seen a few dirtcrete jobs that I would like to do with a lot of compression and then a good coating over the top. The eventual goal for me is to have this as an efficiency. I have years of hvac experience professionally and I've developed a small geothermal / underground storage tank cooling system from small pumps lines and a converted inverter style window 12000 btu window ac, that I currently use in my bedroom in my home. 1 ton is typically good for 500 square feet in a typical home in my area so I'm sure with highly insulated walls and roof the 600 square feet plus added air space of the dome will be well within reasonable use.
Enjoyed your content and video! We have similar approaches and feelings about aircrete. My method is the "ice cream sandwich" method using a hard reinforced cement/galvanized metal/mesh form - "the two cookies" or wall and then filling the void between the "cookies" with the styroaircrete or the "ice cream." Decided to use styroaircrete instead repurposing Styrofoam destined for the landfill which is currently being done as a scale model first. This to test the insulative value of the styroaircrete. I am trying to see how little electricity can be used for this. This in an effort to create an inexpensive, durable, low maintenance, real house made out of landfill material for youngsters so that they can either build it themselves cheaply or have someone build it for them inexpensively with little to no mortgage payments. Airecrete Harry performed this experiment and it worked! However, he likes the blow up monolitic domes (very durable) and doesn't like metal or metal reinforcements. Metal though is the key to making aircrete work. This forgiving "ice cream sandwich" styroaircrete method allows for much error since it is merely insulation/filler.
I love how experimentation from varying priority sets allows us to develop these low cost, high performance alternatives. Escape from mortgages is so important. Keep up the good work!
I am testing a wall system that conforms to these production standards. There are some new, affordable materials which make this type of home construction affordable and durable. The insulated sandwich/SIP process is now viable, I believe.
So the idea of a hard surface stuck to a softer interior to make a strong form is used a lot -- take surf boards, for example. The strength of surf boards comes from the tension of the fiberglass outer shell pulling on the interior, usually made of soft easily formed plastic foam. The same strength is exhibited in tempered glass, where the tension between the hardened surface against the softer glass interior creates a super strong structure. Your Ice Cream Sandwich idea follows this idea if you can get the outside layers to adhere well enough to the soft interior, giving the whole structure much more strength. I think adhesion is key here as it is this tension that creates the overall strength of the panel.
Do you know what the surfactant in Drexel is? I want to avoid fluorosurfactants as i dont want to contaminate the groundwater. Fluorosurfactants are commonly known as forever chemicals. I dont wabt to build a house that eill be toxic easte in 100years. Unfortunately fluorosurfactants are still incredibly common as they foam extremely well.
I believe the majority of successful Aircrete is made in very large blocks (1' x 2' x 6") and left to cure for a week to 10 days before building with it. I do not believe it is meant for floors due to lack of compression strength but at those thicknesses above would be fine for highly insulated walls at least 1 story tall without needing additional supports.
Try shredding your row cover in a paper shredder, and mixing it in with the aircrete. I did something like that with worn out blue poly tarps, cut into 4" squares, and tossed into a cement mixture full of adobe hardpan (free in the California Central Valley). The result was indestructible. Once dried, I literally couldn't do more than scratch it with a pick-mattock. With a roof over it, it will last for centuries.
Feel free to ignore this, I don't know if you have had other people point this out or not. This is in regards to the foam generator, specifically the ad hoc eductor (were you in the Navy?) . This may be way off, since I can't see a cross section of the T joint, but it appears that the constraint in the flow of air is BEFORE the foaming agent. If you google "venturi" there should be a image that appears on the right hand side of the page. Apparently, the reduction of pressure happens along the length of the constraint (the drop in pressure is a direct result of the increase in velocity of the fluid). So if you want that thing to suck more (in a good way) you have to 1. Make the constrained section longer (not just an orifice/aperture, possibly the whole T joint long) and 2. make sure the soap input falls within that constrained section. Anyway, you got a great beard, wear it with pride.
For some reason this aircrete thing has been hard to stop thinking about. Specifically generating extremely high density foams. I have been comparing every result I have seen with Barbasol shaving creme as the go-to default. I think shaving cremes use isobutane or something as the propellent/foamer. The reason I'm pestering you again is I was wondering if you have ever seen anyone take a big air flask and fill it full of the water/surfactant mixture and carbonate it like a giant soda can. The interesting part, is not that it may generate a good foam, but that the foam is composed of CO2, which portland cement needs to cure. It would be interesting to see if the properties of a test block change in any way if this was done. @@radicalgastronomy
Have you tried mixing it with a fiber? See Fiber Reinforced Aerogel you can hold a jet flame one side and your finger on the other. Without the fiber a passing truck would crack it. They got it to work for the space shuttle windows tho!
Have you looked at MgO cement to adhere to the row cover material? It sets up fast and will stick to lots of things that Portland cement will not bond to.
I have not yet attempted aircrete, but it is something I am pondering on. I have wondered if the addition of graphine (which should be getting cheaper as a concrete additive if it's not already) would make up some strength. I've not seen anybody attempt that with aircrete yet. I have also wondered, if there was a way to foam "water glass" or a water resistant resin so the bubbles would be hollow, but would cure like a hollow glass bead. No idea if such a thing is possible (I mean, if you heat the water glass, it bubbles up and gets hard- like honey-do carpenter's aircrete rocket stove. But firing a whole panel seems less than optimal. I know that if you got a thick water glass solution, you could probably aerrate the hell out of it and make it foam up, to an extent, I just don't know if it would mix with the cement and reinforce the bubble voids or not.
I’m sure there are many ways a low cost, no toxic panel could be achieved. My interest is in low tech DIY solutions, but I encourage manufactured materials that are superior in cost, performance, and ecological considerations. The water glass thing is fascinating, for sure!
I have long been an aircrete fan. I built my own foamer, like you, etc. I think most of my aircrete-building future will center about two words: Tilt Up Nuf sed
Great summary. I'm planning a greenhouse build. Thinking of insulating the north wall with aircrete. I envisioned building a steel frame, then using r-panel or ag panel as an outside and inside skin; similar to how sheetrock and siding would be used in standard construction. The space between the r-panel I thought I would fill with aircrete to act as rigid insulation that rats cannot eat or nest in. Hopefully the expansion of steel and aircrete would be similar during temperature swings. Any thoughts or advice? I thought I saw that you subscribed to my channel around a year ago so I figured I would pick your brain. Thanks!
Getting back to your idea of using the agricultural cover mesh as a dry finish merrier on both sides of a "aircrete board. It will take the use of a foarm, a very small amount of silicone spray form release, other organic options may not work as a release media, and the assembly would go like this. The form board thickness would require it be no less than 30mm to allow the ingredients to holdup to movement and also be no larger than 1m square. The form will also require it sit in the same flat position until it has achieved 48 hours of drying and curing time, longer would be helpful. In the form, lay down the ag cloth, spray it with a mixture of clay, thinset mortar and water, sprayed on with a drywall texture hopper gun, then while damp add the aircrete filler, position section of 14GA welded wire fencing like the 2"x4" fence opening wire, inexpensive and itself light, pressed into the aircrete, finish off the form with aircrete pressed and screeded into place, spray over the aircrete with the thinset mixture hopper gun, lay on the top and cover it with a piece of weighted plywood for a few hours, remove and allow the panel piece to setup and cure for 48 hours or longer, This will make a stable and light finished panel that can be mortared into place like a thick piece of drywall, and may be attached with construction adhesive instead of thinset concrete, and the tube construction adhesive would probably work best with general construction protocols and within building code requirements. I estimate this will have greater than an R-value of 10. Panels could also be adhered to one another if a greater R-value is needed.
Thanks for the video! Not even myself who has built lightweight concrete structures knew how bad production of portland cement is for the envirornment, it has me rethinking a bit of my approach. One of my building goals was fire resistance, the use of timber in a fire prone area where I own land is required by code (without structure engineering approval) but the worst possible material to build with in this environment. I was using perlite which I believe is a significantly better approach than aircrete. Perlite is rock bubbles and has more strength than aircreate, but most importantly is it creates consistent structure as the perlite is graded, vs foaming that is very difficult for a DIY to be consistent. Requiring manual application of plaster/stucco really defeats the majority of the purpose in my view. This makes the whole process highly labor intension and time consuming. I have been looking into using Bamboo these days..
I've wondering about perlite because it has insulation value but it is also a rock so hits the durability and strength button as well. What type of perlite recipe do you use or think you'd need to mix up to be applicable as a wall, structural or non structural? I think there is a company out there doing 3D printed houses using a perlite mix. I don't think they'll be sharing their recipe anytime soon. I was thinking something similar to a cob mix, but replace the sand with perlite rock and add the clay for cohesion (stickiness), straw or some other fiber for tensile strength. I'd love to experiment with perlite!
It sounds like it's a little finicky. What you need to look at doing is modeling your process off of tilt wall operation. Possibly with the Incorporation of a corrugated sheathing material on one side, and you'll definitely want fiber additives for concrete designed to mitigate cracking often marketed as anti cracking. I believe they come in a variety of materials, but fiberglass would probably be the strongest, but more importantly than the material, would be the length I would think. If I was going about it trying to do this, I'd probably start with a corrugated panel, with some kind of threw anchor from the outside facing the panel anchored 60 to 80% of the total depth of the proposed wall, and at the termination of the anchor within the form of the wall I would suspended some form of wire reinforcement to tie it all together. I would probably terminate the walls form for the aircrete below top of the corrugated panel, so I could lift, hoist, and tilt it up into place from anchoring to the corrugated sheathing. If you planned it out, you could probably work in a tongue and groove system into the sheathing if you left it intact, or you possibly could use a form release and unbolt the anchors after it set in place and reuse the corrugated panel. If you plan to remove the corrugated panel, you would probably want an additional layer of wire set on the bottom against the panel. You quite literally might be able to get away with simple chicken wire. Also, I think I've seen someone do a version with recycle closed-cell styrofoam ground up and mixed in instead of phone. Might be a little more consistent then the foam.
From what I understand the R6 may in fact be wrong as it was achieved by using non ASTM testing techniques that have not been verified. R 3.5 - 3.7 seem more likely. 3.5 is still not too shabby. I also wonder if skinning the panels with hempcrete or straw reinforced concrete would do the trick of making a sip that can be moved without cracking
As a Swede, I've never quite understood the love for aircrete. We've had basically the same product in our homes for 100 years by now, but we usually buy it in large ready made lightweight blocks. Actually, it's not that popular. Traditionally it was made with a radioactive clay, which emits radon gas. Today, it's as safe as any other material, but it still has worse compressive strength than concrete or brick and it offers lower insulation than mineral wool, which means it has a hard time beating out other construction materials. It has better insulation properties than aircrete (0.12 W/mK compared with 0.13-0.19 for aircrete, lower is better) and it has better compression strength. But even then, the insulation property is way overblown. It's actually comparable to plywood (0.14) or regular wood planks (0.14), and I don't think anyone would want to insulate their home with plywood as their main source of insulation. Sure, it's about 15x better than concrete (1.9 W/mK), but literally anything is better than concrete. Brick is 3x better than concrete (0.60). Mineral wool insulation and styrofoam are about 3-5 times better in terms of insulation than aircrete (0.037).
I would guess the draw is 'ease of amateur construction', 'organic DIY design', 'environmental resistance' (water-moisture resistance'), 'insulation', and 'affordability'. We're in a housing affordability crisis, and an increasing environmental and climate crisis. People are trying to become self-sufficient. All of these factors attract people to aircrete. They're not really aware that we're 'also' in a concrete supply crisis.
Check out styrocrete, shredded styrofoam mixed with concrete, fibreglass fibre, foam. Very interesting high insulated minimum frame and cheap building.
Have you considered using a form of reinforced rapid cure mortar that the foam/aircrete then fills in around to add compressive strength while still remaining relatively light?
nice rundown. i think a reinforcing fiber is needed. person below brought up fiberglass. where i am people will pay you hundreds of dollars to take their fiberglass boats. all you need is some sort of shredder. but your suggestion of garden covers are also good. putting a few layers between each inch of aircreat. or shred at paper shredder size. an other idea for the top for laying tiles why not just lay used industrial carpet like from offices soaked in the top layer. it will turn very hard and tiles will never crack on top of that if the aircreat underneath fails. carpet strips can also be used as reinforcing fibers through out the pore of the aicreate. 20 year old carpet wont offgas that badly. especially in aircreat covered with tyle.
Great subdued demeanor, excellent command of language expression. I so enjoyed the information and presentation for me completely effective. That said I would like to purchase some undeveloped land around or in South Carolina, New Mexico or the U.S. Virgin Islands w/out a third party to inflat purchase price. Thanks and thanks also to You tube Creator
Thanks for the great video! We have also build 8' walls that are poured horizontally on a frame that then tilts them up into place. We should have some information and a video on this coming out soon. We also have found that fiberglass stucco mesh offers great strength for the exterior layers. I would also like to offer one clarification on R-Value. There is one article out there that claims the 5-6 per inch but the information source for this is miss leading. There is an experimental commercial product that is similar to Aircrete that can achieve this r-value but it offers no structural integrity at all. Aircrete as we use it has an R-vaule of 1.8 to 2.3 per inch depending on the mix. this is still very good for the cost and lack of thermal bridging and air infiltration you get in a traditional wall. A normal 2 x 6 wall with R19 in it will actually perform around R-13 when the whole wall is factored in. I hope this information helps.
Outstanding. Thank you guys for innovating with this material. I’m looking forward to this new information!
Dome Gaia out here promoting correct info, Awesome! The mistake happened so early into the aircrete hype it became super widespread it doesn't help that Google still provides this incorrect information preferentially
I was wondering about that super R value also. Is Aircrete that much different from Aerated Autoclaved Concrete (AAC)? A friend of mine moved from a high mass solar house near Oak Ridge, TN that had a wood stove for cloudy winter days to an “ideal” AAC house in Northeastern TN. The R value of AAC was low but the ads preached thermal mass. Thermal mass is fine in New Mexico but not so good when you have week long spells of cold cloudy weather. My friends now depend a lot on their wood burning stove and found that the AAC loses heat in accordance with its stated, low, r value.
@@noellwilson1273 interesting. I had thought the big problems with AAC were cost and embedded energy. Seemed cool, otherwise. Good to know!
AAC, R value.varies depending on if it is loaded bearing or non-loaded bearing .AAC..
Plus it tends to have a relatively high levelized cost in the US, since the supply is limited.... much like Hempcrete, ....
I was gifted a 16' diameter geodesic dome made from 3/4-inch conduit. I lined the inside with metal lath and ferrocemented the inside. Then I built a 18' dome over the smaller dome and metal lathed and ferrocemented the outside as I poured lifts of aircrete.
Enjoying your videos, thanks. I built a straw bale in 2000 and used the bales as the lath inside and out to apply three coats of clay-sand/lime/chopped straw plaster in different recipes as you have done. I worked great, no chicken wire etc. The result was gorgeous, non-toxic, cured hard and sound, no cracks etc. Final coat was sand/water/lime with lime wash over all for a stunning bright light reflective structure. I sold it in 2022 for 10 time what it cost to build. I had a gorgeous home that never needed cooling and very little heat in the VT winters. I love watching all the innovative notions people are putting into practice. Good on ya mate!
I'm looking at building a straw bale home
Love to pick your brains on the things you learnt before and after building.
And a bit more info on the rendor
🍻
here in New Zealand there is a type called Foamcrete, its 20mpa and has fiber glass strands about 1.5 inches long but can spay out if pulled from each side resembling 2 'W's persay. ive seen it used as block fill in high rise buildings, on the uppermost floors , which also has steel rods within. And it has been used to form garden pool structures and then a final over lay is sprayed on at great force about 2 inches thick which is then troweled and sculptured and either sealed with a paint or tiled over. yes its been around for about 20 years now , Very light and easy to work even vertically which is alll in the batching success so its not wet enough to slump off the walls.great video thanks for sharing.
My house is built with "Aircrete" (-like product, Ytong blocks). Such products are available in Europe for many decades and are now, at least in this part of Europe, number one material. The aircrete blocks material is ranging from pure cement to ones with high gypsum (and some other stuff) additives, that drastically increase R value. Unlike those DIY alternatives, those are "baked". Blocks are precisely polished to fantastic precision of 0.5mm, so they can be joined with super thin film of mortar or (approved) mounting foam. Typical wall thickness is 300mm (10 something inches), but Today often up to 0.5m. Even with 300mm you don't necessarily need any more insulation to suffice the code, but it is typically added. I have 300mm Ytong wall + 160mm EPS insulaiton and together with tripple pane windows the house performs about at about 2.5x of passive house limit. There's no point in doing aircrete DIY in Europe, but to those overseas, if they got all the way to building an aircrete foam machine, I'd recommend to also make also a very simple polishing machine and polish the blocks to precise shape - it will sure make the structure much more sound, will drastically reduce need for mortar (or mounting foam could be used) and make assembling super easy.
Yes, I have seen those systems in Europe and it is maddening that you can't buy those blocks in California or most of the USA.
Styrofoam pellets!
Foam crete, what is being called Aircrete here, IS NOT equivalent to Ytong AAC. There is a brand name Aircrete that is AAC but that is not foamcrete. AAC is an industrial precision material made to ASTM standards, not a DIY hack like foamcrete
@@dlorien7306 While there are differences for sure, like Ytong makes cavities using aluminum particles as opposed to foam, the end product is very similar and the goal is the same. I'm quite sure, no one in the US would bother to make DIY foamcrete, if they had a cheap procreate blocks available at the nearest home depo type store. There's a video on RUclips showing DIY type foamcrete process used in industrial scale somewhere in a small republic in Asia. The precise blocks are basically indistinguishable from Ytong products (which I'm sure was the point). In Europe, there are many porocrete/aircrete products, some of them much more different from Ytong, than those DIY foamcrete. I'm also quite sure Ytong AAC is not made to ASTM standards, it was based on old standards like DIN or CSN many decades ago, which were harmonized to EN and ISO. Most likely no changes to the product were needed to meet ASTM standards, just complete documentation for US market.
@@dlorien7306 @dlorien7306 While there are differences for sure, like Ytong makes cavities using aluminum particles as opposed to foam, the end product is very similar and the goal is the same. I'm quite sure, no one in the US would bother to make DIY foamcrete, if they had a cheap procreate blocks available at the nearest home depo type store. There's a video on RUclips showing DIY type foamcrete process used in industrial scale somewhere in a small republic in Asia. The precise blocks are basically indistinguishable from Ytong products (which I'm sure was the point). In Europe, there are many porocrete/aircrete products, some of them much more different from Ytong, than those DIY foamcrete. But of course, everyone is entitled to his own opinion, about proximity of the products 🙂
Great video! Thanks very much for not having distracting background music👍
Ive sprayed shotcrete and supervised a large shotcreting crew for 18 years in the mining contractor industry . we use robots and also spray by hand .
I never believed in the fibrecrete until we tried to demolish tunnel rings that were fibre crete .
Its next to impossible
I now totally believe in it the strength and durability is amazingly robust .
As far as vertical construction with aircrete -you need to do less than 1 meter per hour with high strength concrete without stopping if you stop you need to greencut the surface to get a proper bond with the next pours .
i would think air crete could be done similarly if you poured slower or used an accelerator
Like meco 160 to harden the mixes faster so u could increase the vertical rate.
If you build a house that lasts longer than the glue and sawdust ones we build in todays time your footprint get smaller as each year passes .
GREAT VIDEO
Thanks for the good info!
What is meco 160? I can't find it online
I have watched thousands of videos on various topics and yours is one of the best. Thanks
In the UK we used Aircrete on building many new hospitals 30 years ago, after about 25 years they started to fail and now are being knocked down and replaced, so whilst it had advantages in build it does not have the expected lifespan
It’s was built incorrectly that’s why
perhaps 30 years ago, I was working on a hotel, where they put rigid foam board insulation, then skinned it with a stucco finish. The walls were not painted before a child slamed his bike handle against the walls, and broke thru to the insulation. Then damage kept happening. So, what looked like it should last 50 years, did not last 2. Hard to believe how many times exterior walls get hit with something. Within two years, all foam board was removed up to 6', and replaced with solid durarock like stuff.
@@normbograham You are residents of a backward country :) Masons, sorcerers, horoscopes, etc. (The country's forces are dedicated to this! )
This problem was solved in the 70s in the USSR. It was enough to steal the monograph.
England is stuck in the 50s in the 90s (!). Buildings are falling apart due to corrosion of the reinforcement in the slabs.
Aerated concrete is a type of artificial shell rock. You might as well cut in the quarry :) (It’s hard down there, and fluffy at the top of the quarry)
Styrofoam is poison
@@normbograham - In the 1950's, My Father worked in California on Tract Housing. After Occupancy - The Low Cost Housing Tenants often knocked holes in the Sheetrock. Many trips back for repairing the sheetrock. Next set of houses, they put 1/4" Plywood on the studs first, then the sheetrock: No More Calls back to fix busted sheetrock!
Styrofoam can be bonded to Aspenite, Plywood, or other standard sheet materials with good strength, to give it greater durability.
Same with Aircrete, though it might require mechanical attachment (Screws, or Bolts).
@@ХозяинПолянки Is no country as backward as yours.
If you added in a lightweight fiber reinforcement like chopped fiberglass or basalt fiber, you might see enough increase in tensile strength to have moveable panels. Even some of the more natural fibers might be sufficient. Another possibility is your dustcrete studwork wall section built then stood up.
One idea I've had in my mind since I learned about earthbag homes, rammed earth, and aircrete is using a metal sprayer to put a thin aluminum shell over it to weatherize it. Apparently this kind of process has been used over 100 years.
Basalt fiber is a great idea for this application
They make hemp bricks, they are naturally sticky and can form hard resin as well, hemp fiber might be an extremely affordable way.
Wow! I have been following the same You Tube channels, and came to about the same place (minus making my own foam generator.) I am a fan of domes, but your drywall-type slabs sound like a very good idea for stick frame houses. Overall, this video was excellent in a number of ways! Also, I had no idea that grain bags were fireproof. That changed my thinking because fire safety is huge for me & I didn't want to incorporate anything in my aircrete that would melt (like AH's styrofoam mix) or offgas with intense heat.
I subscribed immediately, because you are the kind of person I want to hear from. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you! Glad to be of service.
I think domes are the best option for this material because they are self-supporting. If you build flat walls you still have to build a roof out of conventional materials. Then the question of load becomes an issue. They make materials for covering concrete roofs (fabrics) that are designed to adhere to concrete. I agree with you to keep toxic products out of a home construction. I believe the foam balls will weaken the finished product as well. You only need the fabric below the equator of the dome as the pressure is outward. Once you are above that line the structure is self-supporting. You could also make u-shaped blocks on the lower layers and add rebar "rings" to provide tension strength.
I know this is beside the point, but this dude has the most transfixing eyes. It's like looking into the sea.
I just love you tube University it’s the best!
Great video. Captures all the basics, including all the concerns.
I'm particularly interested in the slab walls poured vertically and then stood up. Need to be able to produce interlocking panels without the cost metal framing.
Also looking to include exterior design in the pour (board and batten) to further cut down on cost.
Would be willing to invest in facility to manufacture panels in the US. While DIY is fun for small projects, the potential for quality control failures is a concern.
If the remaining concerns can be resolved we will have an answer to affordable housing!
Ive experimented with a 50% shredded recycled styrofoam mixed into concrete with reduced heavy aggs also used fibreglass fibre for rebar replacement and had great success light - recycles guarbage stro foam strong fire resistant easy to put fasteners into or stucco or parge .
🎉
You can haul larger loads in a concrete truck as half the concrete is very light (foam and cement, water ) 🎉
Cool!
I have been searching and searching everywhere for how to make sawdust and lime insulation. I can't afford regular insulation as I'm moving into a shed to live. I'm 70 and have a fractured vertebrae but have heard that you can do this with little effort. However, I don't know the ratios for each. Your video's are so inspiring. Thank you for your ingenious inventions on building with local materials. I can obtain $1.00 bags of sawdust but am not sure where to go from here. Do you have any ideas for me. Thank you very much. Intelligent people always come up with using local things for building.
Wishing you the best and hope you find the help you need to build a nice home.
Also if you want insulation I'd recommend styro aircrete (eps). As I can't remember everyone you mentioned that you had looked at I'll recommend the channel of "Stephen Williams"
Stephen's channel is: Abundance Building Concepts. He has a great system. It's worth noting, Aircrete Harry also uses styro aircrete.
Thank you for the summation of the various folks solving the aircrete!
Greetings! Great, sober analysis of aircrete as a building material!
There are two things that I would like to see done with aircrete that I think would compliment the material very well.
1) Continuous flow with in-line agitation for large pours. This should be feasible with a hopper for the portland cement, a screw pump/agitator to move/mix it, and the foam inlet behind the screw to ensure you don't make a clogged cylinder in your screw pump.
2) tilt-up single form cast walls with cast-in fastening joints, mesh reinforcements, etc. Aircrete should lend itself very well to the tilt-up method, as a substantial logistical burden for tilt-up is the weight and then insulation of large pours of reinforced concrete; aircrete minimizes the weight so you may get away with smaller cranes or no crane at all to erect the casts, and your insulation is integral to the material itself, and the logistics of laying your mesh saves a lot of labor as the cast-in aircrete will give you the best chance of adhesion.
Also the problem with adhesion and aircrete is the foaming agent acting as a separator as well. Most surfactants have long polymer lipophilic tails which are good at forming mono-layers when they're not bunched up in micelles. I'll have to think up some ways to modify the foaming mixes chemically to avoid this. Probably rheology modifiers like CMC or maybe just table salt can promote micelle formation and swelling, which should make for good adhesion to synthetic fabrics.
If anyone knows why Drexel foam is commonly used instead of bulk Sodium Lauryl Sulfate for aircrete please let me know.
The foaming agent is one of the keys to making a successful product. The longer the bubbles remain intact during the curing process the higher the quality with less shrinkage. SLS does not last long enough to make good products. Drexel is better. It is an agricultural foam used on spray rigs to mark the edge of where you spray. It has to remain intact so when the tractor comes around the operator can follow it for the next pass. I have contacted many producers and some claim up to 3 meters of pours at once. Even better is Alpha Olefin Sulfonate also a product used in common products. The bubbles are extremely tiny and resilient. I also like the mixtures containing Gypsum which cure in 15 minutes as apposed to hours for straight Portland.
I was curious about arecrete myself. Thanks for the video. Never tried it.
I have not tried it, but it has popped up in some of the videos that I watched. Also I do not have experience with building homes, or anything of the sort. Just like learning about it all, and such. Eartships, tiny homes, and just anything that seems... unique.
I'm on a similar hunt for the "best" infill material for timberframe walls. Considerations for an ideal infill/wall material: 1. Insulative and thermal mass value 2. Strength and durability 3. Anti-Pest 4. Ease of installation (a one step, al in one process would be ideal) 5. Environmentally and human healthy- Low embodied energy, natural renewable material, non toxic. 6. Aesthetic value 7. Low cost. So far, old ways and new ways still haven't produced a "best" way. Thanks for having boots on the ground with your experiments.
This is the quest. I’m really liking the dustcrete. I plan to test a lime/clay binder, in leu of the portland/lime mix I’ve been using. I think it will be the closest to meeting these specs.
“RUclips University”!
Thanks for sharing
You bet!
Great video! I've done some work with papercrete and a hempcrete-like substance using other vegitative substrates, but now that I've retired, I have time to delve into this exciting material. Thanks for your insights!
Right on. Enjoy yourself!
way back when, i was desperate, there was no aircrete, i developed styrocrete, made it into 3X3 blocks 4 inches thick and insulated our entire root cellar, that was 35 years ago and it still looks and smells like new in there.
😳 What does it smell like?
Did you use bean bag type pellets?, I personally think they are better than Aerated Concrete.
@@jamesmatheson5115 i did, i think i mixed it to three buckets full of beans for one bag of portland cement
@@dirttdude With some shredded pvc fibre mixed in would make it strong, make your own fibre out of old bags that people throw away.
Nice synopsis of your findings and your efforts.
Best of luck with your goal.
I do hope you reach it.
Jamey Mantzel has used something like dustcrete. He used a Styrofoam grinder, to take styrofoam products into the cells, and then using the cells as a basis for styrocrete. It is pretty interesting. Used this stuff to make several domes on his homestead down in South America.
I used this by mulching styrofoam and mixing mortar to make a vegetable grow box.
I made the outer form surface to mimic a stone by squirting trails of silicone as the joints, and roughed the plywood surface.
It turned out quite authentic.
I threw brown and black concrete dye on it and it reminded me of a railroad bridge stone.
Hey I really appreciate the analysis and multiple applications/uses. I had not personally stumbled upon many videos demonstrating floor slab assemblies. Keep crushing
Right on. Will do!
Aircrete has been in practical use for many years. My first notice of it was its use as the primary wall surfaces of a warehouse-type building in which my workplace was housed in SHAPE, Belgium, a NATO installation, in the '80s. I'm uncertain of the superstructure design, although I assume it was steel beam supported, but the walls themselves were probably at least six meters high, and supported their own weight. They were very large blocks, probably each half a meter in height and approximate thickness, and quite long. They appeared to be bonded using some synthetic caulking-type material, although that could have been only an exterior sealant rather than the primary bonding. My only critique, which would apply for some uses and not others, was that it was easily scratched and dented, but that could be addressed when desirable with some over-coating. On the benefits side, it doesn't transmit impact forces efficiently, so it is resistant to cracking and shattering.
Those blocks are self-sustaining but you can't build a second floor on top of it. In many countries, in Estern Europe for example, you won't get building permit to build more then one floor without reinforced concrete encasing, columns. Another issue will be, if you want to apply insulated boards on the façade using drilled fixxings. It may crack or crumble. That being said, those blocks are brilliant for indoor partitions, separations walls etc.
@@SpiderF27 I saw one video of a couple who wasn't able to get consistent enough results and gave up on the material but if it is pre-cast by an experienced manufacturer I'm sure it's fine. No I wouldn't think you should use it under a more compressive load than maybe a small roof.
@@crawkn For a single storey building will be no problem. Now there are plenty of manufacturers, big enterprises all over Europe that make those blocks in all sizes. Ytong is one of them. You can build a house in no time with those blocks.
Great video. Gives us a more balanced approached to aircrete, a quite fascinating and promising material.
Thank you. I'm watching closely and hope to integrate some of your principles into my projects.
Wonderful!
Put a stick under the 98 pound portland mix and cut the three exposed sides. Lift the stick and stand the bag up leaving you with half of the portland on each side. Slice the remaining side. Now there's two 49 pound loads.
Or just pick up the 100 pound bag?
Thank you for that. - my back
Thank you very much for your time well spent, excellent work, saved me a couple hrs.
That’s what I like to hear!
I fully agree with your final statement in regard to the use of portland in ANY project and the LONGEVITY of the project usefulness. If the statement were not absolutely true - we would not be witnessing Roman architecture still standing to this day. The same can be said of Meso-American structures that stand COMPLETE in this day and age as well!
Here here
Romans had access to a particular pumice that helped them make lightweight domes. Had many types of concrete including underwater setting types.
I've made thousands of aircrew bricks for equipment sheds. We live in an arid desert regen, so extremely hot days and cold at night. Curing aircrete in extreme heat is a huge challenge. However, it works well, is cost effective, and has awesome insulation properties.
In American scientific literature, engineers complained that the builders of the 50s and 60s were crazy and lived in the 19th century or did not work well.
And now Americans remember “how good it was in the 60s.”
Naturally, wild lameness. There is a super construction crisis in the country and the banking and construction lobby. They cannot make cubes from free concrete (the price is only for cement and air - waste).
(1 plant per country) So that lonely homeless people build 150 m2 houses in 3 months.
Soviet panel houses are divided in 1-3 days into a House (Foundation month or from ready-made elements = week.) And the first floor itself in 3 days.
7 days = 2 floors.
The city mafia seems to steal 20,000 per homeless person per month. And this is the price of the apartment :)
5 floors without elevator. 60 apartments. 200 people with housing.
Very interesting and informative. Respect.
Amazing video thank you. Your conditions, with holds and requirements mirror my own.
Great video! I have experimented with Aircrete insulation blocks. They get more ridge with time...months.
I enjoy your channel. Thanks for reporting on all of your experimentation. Also, thanks for supporting your local farmers in their fight against the new County Dude. Anyway, in my county I have codes to deal with (I envy your "lack" in that respect), but I'm thinking I might be able to use some kind of aircrete system for insulating a timber frame structure. I like your idea of making a SIP-like material. Thinking out loud, James Hardie makes a 4x8 fiber cement panel product for board and batten look siding. I wonder about fastening one of those cement panels to a dimensional lumber frame, then pouring aircrete or dustcrete into the panelized frame. Maybe drive some nails through the panel to add something for the aircrete to grab onto. If the aircrete bonded well to the siding panel, with the added rigidity of the lumber, that might make a nice SIP replacement. Finish off the inside with plaster applied directly to the aircrete panel. Again, just thinking out loud for now. Won't have time or space to experiment with it for a while. I know that you would balk at the cost and all the commercial products, but for me, it would be a way to avoid all the outgassing foam as well as being very fire resistant. And cheaper than SIPs, especially since they would not need an additional layer of siding. I think I might be talking myself into this...
It’s definitely an intriguing product. It just seems so tough to get the mix right for what a person needs.
I have been interested in aircrete for a while and plan to build a shed with it this year. Aircrete has been around for decades and is widely used in Asia. It is referred to as cellular concrete, or air entrained concrete. One method of manufacture involves curing it in an autoclave.
One method I have seen is to make panels and connect them with spikes. When the wall is up cover both sides with chicken wire & stucco for strength.
I believe there is an autoclaved block available, as well.
Commercial airkrete (spelled with a k) does have an r value of 5 or more and is used as an insulation but it isn’t made with Portland cement so it doesn’t doesn’t have much strength. DIY aircrete spelled with a c is a lightweight concrete with some structural strength but the r value is only 2 per inch thick not 5 (with the density most commonly used on RUclips- 94 lbs cement, 6 gallons water and 43 gallons of foam) denser mixes will have more strength but less than 2 r value. Aircrete with little pieces of EPS foam added to the mix will have close to a 3 r value but strength is very compromised.
Thanks for your information!
I've played with creating my own foam generator but have yet to actually make the foamcrete for the project I'm working on. I love your idea for a foamcrete composite sandwich material. I imagine applying a water based starch glue like wall paper paste to the cured foamcrete slab while still in the form. Then cover it in a paper product like newsprint. No plastic, you want it breathable. When dry, flip the planel and apply the glue and paper to the other side. Paper should be overlapped to avoid seams.
Good commentary on the matter. Aircrete has my attention and I've heard from other sources that it is a file product with a lot of possibility.
Here in Brazil theres a movement (who say they´re green but they´re not) where they use sheets of polystyrene stood up and held by short sections of rebar coming out of the concrete slab. They then put up metal slab reinforcing either side, tie it all together, give the polystyrene a light coat of water cement mix, then a fairly thick stucco layer. Its a pretty fast construction technique by our standards and they build multiple story buildings with it. But is metal and polystyrene intensive which have doubled in price the last few years. I always figured that aircrete panels without metal frames like ac harry honey (whatever is his name is!) would make a good substitute for the polystyrene sheets. But from what you´re saying, you were unsuccessful in making an aircrete panel that would make it out of the form?? Or were you solely focused on the drywall concept?? Cheers.
Just subscribed to your channel. I think my goals are closely aligned to yours. I like persons who are not closed minded to one system but willing to shop around for ideas and combine concepts if necessary for their specific needs and projects. With that said, take a look at Tiny Giant Lifestyle. He is my favorite "explainer" of aircrete. I love his channel because he goes beyond simply sharing his passions and experiments with others but, against the backdrop of a very analytical mind and years of building experience, he walks his viewers through very logical and well presented reasons for his building decisions as they pertain to aircrete.
In my opinion, he presents the most logical arguments as to why aircrete is perhaps the most practical alternative building option for our modern society. (p.s. I have zero affiliation with him - in fact, I don't even know the name of the gentleman, only his channel)
Cool! I’ll check him out.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Have you tried styroaircrete? It's basically shredded styrofoam mixed into aircrete. It seems to overcome a lot of problems typically associated with aircrete.
I love the idea of styrocrete and have made my own, but unfortunately it has been banned due to 2 hour fire resistance requirement, and toxic gases emitted in a fire. Interested to know if anyone has overcome this issue.
Use perlite instead
@@ShivaTD420 Perlite does appear to have the potential for a successful natural alternative to petroleum based Styrofoam beads.
@@geoffreydebrito7934 just don't mix it too hard when the perlite is in, over mixing will crush it into a powder loosing the insulation benefits.
It will also make the concrete a bit more water permeable than the styrofoam mixes. So make sure you get decent vapor barriers. The perlite mixes are not too far behind the Styrofoam in weight, but they are usually much stronger.
For perimeter walls or multi nozzle concrete printers I usually lay down three layers. A conventional structural mix for the outside envelope, a perlite insulating mix for the core and a fine particle white sand mix with high latex for the interior layer. This gives the walls a nice shiny white finish that looks like it's painted. This white layer is impermeable, so it can act as a vapor barrier by itself.
One attraction of using Styrofoam is that it's an environmental disaster, and encapsulating it with mortar seems like a good solution.
There's plenty of it that people want to freely be rid of; the mix results are consistent.
I've made a grow box with it. Turned out very nice.
I'm thinking that timbers may be a viable option.
A 6"x6"x 8'or 12' stacked like a log cabin with spacers to create mortar joints, filled with touch n foam (painted)
Just discovered aircrete, like the light weight, good to see pure honesty, we went to u-tube university and are in the process of building a cabin at the age of 70 and 66. Are we crazy, yes.
No use Styrofoam pellets
My kind of crazy. I’m planning to fill some existing uninsulated walls on my old house. Trying to build a foamer out of a harborfrate wash gun. Low volume, cold joints, but inside a wall where the siding is replaced a foot at a time. (With foilcell for IR reflection)
You should consider buying 50 pound bags of milled fiber it comes in different lengths. It is fiberglass in almost a powder form, but it can come as long as a quarter of an inch down to a 60/4th of an inch when you mix this with your air Crete it acts like microscopic rebar. It adds an immense amount of strength. You just have to get the right ratio. And then, of course, I would go back to the hardware cloth galvanized for more reinforcement. There are also other Paula burners that can be added for more Elastomeric benefits, making this thinner, stronger and lighter
I have built structural panels 2 inches thick with no reinforcing materials that are still in use outdoors as table tops with no coating either 4 years old. Used gypsum and latex additives. It can be done.
Groovy. In what form was the gypsum?
Very well done Sir, great job at accurately explaining AC pros and cons. It's early days and smart people are busily playing with AC and coming up with innovations. I'm sure you will be one of those.
It’s so close to amazing. I bet we see an industrially produced wall system in the near future. A DIY alternative would be epic, though.
@@radicalgastronomy I'm certain the 'powers' will do their best to suppress aircrete innovation. It's just to easy for the average Joe to replicate. Imagine all the insulation products etc that might be superseded if aircrete became mainstream. Here in Latin America that's not an issue so we might see some exciting developments from here. I agree with you though, a mass produced, cost effective aircrete system is achievable. I've got a few things in mind. I'll let you know how I get on. Best of luck with your project...I've subscribed👍
@@MaskMasterEsquire right on. I look forward to hearing of your progress!
Thanks for sharing!
Have you looked at the Styrofoam AirCrete (Stephen Williams) I am wondering if you could use the Sawdust in place of Styrofoam, and get a substance that is wetter like his, and more readily available in your area.
I have not, but will, now.
Mr. Williams seems like a neat inventor.
@@radicalgastronomy Sir, i 2nd with Mr. Jarnod Jordan on Mr. Stephen Williams styrocrete. I watched many videos on Aircretes (aircrete Hairy, Honeydocarpenter, styrocrete etc. Your Dustacrete seem to be the simpliest and easiest to work with and create. Glad i found your channel and videos..
@@tanjirokatoichi7425 I have watch some of the styrocrete info, and agree that there is potential. Personally, I like to avoid materials that have the potential to “off-gas”. I find styrofoam to be kind of gross. The dustcrete is performing quite well, and avoids the use of petroleum based synthetic materials. Glad you like my info!
@@radicalgastronomy i love it!
I am going to be looking for land to homestead in about 4 months. Videos like yours have my imagination going with possibilities.
That’s super exciting! Good luck with your search.
I will use aircrete as a layer of insulating mortar on the brick walls, on both sides, interior and exterior. I bought a foaming device and I will begin soon with some trials.
Best of luck!
Have you looked into using poly fibre in the aircrete like shotcrete .
No rebar or mesh required increases strength and resistance to cracking .
Amazing strength increase in concrete
I haven't tried it, but it sounds viable.
I was about to correct the r-value info but the legit Dome Gaia already corrected thats awesome
The hive mind is on the case. 😁👍
@@radicalgastronomy Haha
Your voice is very nice. I've watched other videos where the person's voice made me just change channels altogether. 😅
Thank you for the information!
@8:09 being a penny-pinching miser myself, I support your position. 😊😂
I'm looking for cheap material for a few projects I need to get done with a coin-screaming budget, and i think aircrete would be perfect for one of them.
On a side (but very important) note, please, please take time to tell your loved ones you love them EVERY chance you get. Tomorrow is not a given; you're never promised the next sunrise.
~ ~ ~ ~
"And don't let it break your heart. I know it feels hopeless sometimes. But they're never really gone as long as there's a memory in your mind." _Hold On To Memories_ Dave Draiman, Disturbed
Great video! I also was interested in a sheet rock type material. I made a 24” x 10” x 1.5” test shelf. I used a wood form lined with wax paper then garden weed block cloth (one long piece wrapped length wise, around the ends). I over filled slightly. Folded the weed cloth over the top, added top cover wax paper then a board and a weight to press the weed cloth to the air-crete. I also added a piece of rabbit wire in the middle. I think for this project I mixed the foam:cement at 7:1 by volume (1:4 water used; with Shampoo 4 oz/gal. & cement 15 lbs/gal.), using Suave Daily Clarifying Shampoo (I found thick & better and cheaper than any dish soap). You may be able to recycle used garden cloth. The shelf produced was very light and strong. I had it hold up 2 bowling balls&bags while supported at its ends. Ron (rondesc at aol.)
Dustcrete using mining waste was used post war in the UK. Results are Mundic blocks which disintegrate to dust if they get wet.
Aircrete has the insulating values, but needs the structural strength that would be provided by aluminum screen, or nylon mosquito screening. The simple design would be an inflated dome pressurized with inserted water and electrical tubing, boxes, bubble windows or light tubes. An air lock doorway entrance provides heat/ cold / security protection. Rocket mass heater and cooling pipes in floor using air would help control temperature. The exterior/ interior may have chicken wire / screening and be epoxy coated for waterproof. The base design includes drainage slope to the door.
We must share some genes. I have been building with all sorts of mixes of cement and sawdust for 30 years. I did a lot of architectural components like european style window and door frames, on a heavy scale. I always used sand in the mix and typically white cement so that no further coloring was needed. Great videos here. I would never use chopped Fiberglass on a finish coat of plaster, it's just a burden and especially in a lime plaster. But it makes perfect sense in the dust crete itself. If you use a good mixer, you can use soap and get aerated mortar which is highly freeze cracking resistant. My favorite tool is a water mister/sprayer when doing finish work, it gives superb control over your materials hydration. Pity that my work was mostly pre camera and youtube days. Where are your sponges? Great for color coats using lime or white cement and a pigment.
Good tips. I’ll play around with your techniques!
I have not used or tryd ether yet although your dustcreet looks very good and I will be testing it and probably building with it in the nere futcher.
Great research, and well done video's!
I appreciate the fact you pointed out that concrete is very energy intensive. And the fact we have to pick the lesser of evils. We will never go back to "neutral" lives... I think we all like AC, cheap items, and cheap energy too much. Building items will probably never be "sustainable" but we do need to pick the MOST LONG TERM EFFICIENT designs.
Great video!
Thanks!
Thanks for your helpful insight.
to get the fabric to bond to the aircrete you could try soaking it in Bonding Agent before lining your form with it. You might have to look at what you are using as a form, maybe use shiny polycarbonate or similar.
I also wondered about chopped fibre strand, but you dont want to waste it by having all through the mix but just mix it in a few gallons enough to cover the base of the form about an inch or so, then after it starts to set pour in the rest, and later top off with another inch of the chopped strand added batch. this should give you a sandwich of aircrete where the base and top is tough.
I am assuming you would make big panels and cut up as needed
Perhaps a sprinkling of fiberglass in the form, then on top of the pour. I bet if one did that and added some concrete reinforcing wire in the panel it would work.
Thank you for the video. Some really good trade off analysis there and consideration given to alternatives.
Ignoring for a moment the material source and looking at it more from a long term goal perspective: truck bed liner both as a reinforcement itself and as a bonding agent with a stiff backer in a manner similar to drywall is intriguing. I really like the SIF concept for if a panel is sturdy enough to survive handling, shipping, and more, then it is likely a lot less fragile once installed as well.
Paper is pretty high density... When paper is rolled up tightly, it is stiff. When paper is pulled tight and bonded to the gypsum, the taut paper is a key part of its overall sturdiness. That coupled with the fact that trying to bend drywall: one side of the paper is under tension regardless of which direction you're bending, the key here is having that tension on both sides.
A high strength material bonded to the aircrete with a bonding agent itself that exhibits high strength properties could be key. Have you seen how truck bed liner has been used to reinforce cinderblock walls or allows something else survive catastrophic impact?
Where it might fall down is cost per square foot? Not sure. That seems like something that is solved with economies of scale and labor savings. Rolling out or spraying a bed liner is pretty quick.
If the physics and bonding hold up, then other substitutions may be worth experimenting.
That’s an interesting thought. 🤔
Excellent presentation. Many thanks.
You bet.
Fantastic advice! Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge.
I would love to see you find a successful way of making an aircrete wall. The R value per inch is amazing. Can you imagine a 6 inch thick wall and or floor!
It still intrigues me, but other commenters have pointed out that that r6/inch number is inaccurate.
Very useful information. Thank you.
My pleasure.
Aircrete is well developed in Russia, but because of the complicated technology, many people have switched to polystyrene concrete. It's a very convenient material. You can make panels. To strengthen these concretes add polypropylene fiber. Good luck!
Thanks for that.
Interesting discussion, thank you.
You bet. Thanks for watching.
Very good video. I live out on a small homestead. I built a metal shop about 6000 square foot and I also have a home here already. I'm interested in building some out buildings with this method. I've got a few questions if you've got time and are comfortable discussing them. I don't know why but I had the impression that people also use brown up Styrofoam waste to create air pockets. I also am curious about the addition of fiber into the Portland mix . When the engineered plans came for my metal building I was kind of disappointed with how lax they where with concrete thickness and strength requirements. I went to a far higher strength concrete but I also had them add fiber to it for more strength. The fiber just came out of a bag and didn't add much cost at all. It was mixed in the trucks before they poured the concrete. My location has one thing, very dry and hard ground. My current idea is to use my small tractor with backhoe to make forms in the dirt itself. To tamp it down with sand and to then make panels and let them cure for a few weeks before anything happens. I would like them to be structurally sound and insulating. Inside I plan on sewing plastic materials and making a dome roof inside a rectangular building. The walls would be these pre formed pieces and the roof would be a first pressurized dome, using chicken wire, rebar and whatever else may add structure I would spray the outside first with thin layers, next would be a layer inside to lock the shape in. From there I would use bonding agent or whatever is necessary to make a roof strong enough for the high winds and such in my area. I would like to be as environmentally considerate with materials as possible but not to the point of loosing strength, adding excessive cost or time to the build. My hope is for 8 foot walls, with a 20x30 outside footprint. For the floors I've seen a few dirtcrete jobs that I would like to do with a lot of compression and then a good coating over the top. The eventual goal for me is to have this as an efficiency. I have years of hvac experience professionally and I've developed a small geothermal / underground storage tank cooling system from small pumps lines and a converted inverter style window 12000 btu window ac, that I currently use in my bedroom in my home. 1 ton is typically good for 500 square feet in a typical home in my area so I'm sure with highly insulated walls and roof the 600 square feet plus added air space of the dome will be well within reasonable use.
Enjoyed your content and video! We have similar approaches and feelings about aircrete. My method is the "ice cream sandwich" method using a hard reinforced cement/galvanized metal/mesh form - "the two cookies" or wall and then filling the void between the "cookies" with the styroaircrete or the "ice cream." Decided to use styroaircrete instead repurposing Styrofoam destined for the landfill which is currently being done as a scale model first. This to test the insulative value of the styroaircrete. I am trying to see how little electricity can be used for this. This in an effort to create an inexpensive, durable, low maintenance, real house made out of landfill material for youngsters so that they can either build it themselves cheaply or have someone build it for them inexpensively with little to no mortgage payments. Airecrete Harry performed this experiment and it worked! However, he likes the blow up monolitic domes (very durable) and doesn't like metal or metal reinforcements. Metal though is the key to making aircrete work. This forgiving "ice cream sandwich" styroaircrete method allows for much error since it is merely insulation/filler.
I love how experimentation from varying priority sets allows us to develop these low cost, high performance alternatives. Escape from mortgages is so important. Keep up the good work!
I am testing a wall system that conforms to these production standards. There are some new, affordable materials which make this type of home construction affordable and durable. The insulated sandwich/SIP process is now viable, I believe.
@@kevinhornbuckle Which affordable materials and techniques are you referring to?
So the idea of a hard surface stuck to a softer interior to make a strong form is used a lot -- take surf boards, for example. The strength of surf boards comes from the tension of the fiberglass outer shell pulling on the interior, usually made of soft easily formed plastic foam. The same strength is exhibited in tempered glass, where the tension between the hardened surface against the softer glass interior creates a super strong structure. Your Ice Cream Sandwich idea follows this idea if you can get the outside layers to adhere well enough to the soft interior, giving the whole structure much more strength. I think adhesion is key here as it is this tension that creates the overall strength of the panel.
Dawncrete works great too. Just squirt some Dawn dish washing liquid into your mix and you are done.
Just a thought have you thought of using dust Crete with polystyrene balls in it, say 25% to combine both materials without the bother of foam.
Do you know what the surfactant in Drexel is?
I want to avoid fluorosurfactants as i dont want to contaminate the groundwater. Fluorosurfactants are commonly known as forever chemicals. I dont wabt to build a house that eill be toxic easte in 100years.
Unfortunately fluorosurfactants are still incredibly common as they foam extremely well.
I believe the majority of successful Aircrete is made in very large blocks (1' x 2' x 6") and left to cure for a week to 10 days before building with it. I do not believe it is meant for floors due to lack of compression strength but at those thicknesses above would be fine for highly insulated walls at least 1 story tall without needing additional supports.
Try shredding your row cover in a paper shredder, and mixing it in with the aircrete. I did something like that with worn out blue poly tarps, cut into 4" squares, and tossed into a cement mixture full of adobe hardpan (free in the California Central Valley). The result was indestructible. Once dried, I literally couldn't do more than scratch it with a pick-mattock. With a roof over it, it will last for centuries.
Nice
Feel free to ignore this, I don't know if you have had other people point this out or not. This is in regards to the foam generator, specifically the ad hoc eductor (were you in the Navy?) . This may be way off, since I can't see a cross section of the T joint, but it appears that the constraint in the flow of air is BEFORE the foaming agent. If you google "venturi" there should be a image that appears on the right hand side of the page. Apparently, the reduction of pressure happens along the length of the constraint (the drop in pressure is a direct result of the increase in velocity of the fluid). So if you want that thing to suck more (in a good way) you have to 1. Make the constrained section longer (not just an orifice/aperture, possibly the whole T joint long) and 2. make sure the soap input falls within that constrained section. Anyway, you got a great beard, wear it with pride.
Ha! Yeah, the science of that prototype was weak. Great tips. I did not join the Navy, but have a brother, sister, and son who did.
For some reason this aircrete thing has been hard to stop thinking about. Specifically generating extremely high density foams. I have been comparing every result I have seen with Barbasol shaving creme as the go-to default. I think shaving cremes use isobutane or something as the propellent/foamer. The reason I'm pestering you again is I was wondering if you have ever seen anyone take a big air flask and fill it full of the water/surfactant mixture and carbonate it like a giant soda can. The interesting part, is not that it may generate a good foam, but that the foam is composed of CO2, which portland cement needs to cure. It would be interesting to see if the properties of a test block change in any way if this was done. @@radicalgastronomy
@@jonathanseagraves8140 that would be a great experiment!
Have you tried mixing it with a fiber? See Fiber Reinforced Aerogel you can hold a jet flame one side and your finger on the other. Without the fiber a passing truck would crack it. They got it to work for the space shuttle windows tho!
Have you looked at MgO cement to adhere to the row cover material? It sets up fast and will stick to lots of things that Portland cement will not bond to.
MgO cement is also not conductive of heat, electric, or water.
It is not cheap....but...
I have not yet attempted aircrete, but it is something I am pondering on.
I have wondered if the addition of graphine (which should be getting cheaper as a concrete additive if it's not already) would make up some strength. I've not seen anybody attempt that with aircrete yet.
I have also wondered, if there was a way to foam "water glass" or a water resistant resin so the bubbles would be hollow, but would cure like a hollow glass bead. No idea if such a thing is possible (I mean, if you heat the water glass, it bubbles up and gets hard- like honey-do carpenter's aircrete rocket stove. But firing a whole panel seems less than optimal.
I know that if you got a thick water glass solution, you could probably aerrate the hell out of it and make it foam up, to an extent, I just don't know if it would mix with the cement and reinforce the bubble voids or not.
I’m sure there are many ways a low cost, no toxic panel could be achieved. My interest is in low tech DIY solutions, but I encourage manufactured materials that are superior in cost, performance, and ecological considerations.
The water glass thing is fascinating, for sure!
I have long been an aircrete fan. I built my own foamer, like you, etc.
I think most of my aircrete-building future will center about two words:
Tilt Up
Nuf sed
Yup
Great summary. I'm planning a greenhouse build. Thinking of insulating the north wall with aircrete. I envisioned building a steel frame, then using r-panel or ag panel as an outside and inside skin; similar to how sheetrock and siding would be used in standard construction. The space between the r-panel I thought I would fill with aircrete to act as rigid insulation that rats cannot eat or nest in. Hopefully the expansion of steel and aircrete would be similar during temperature swings. Any thoughts or advice? I thought I saw that you subscribed to my channel around a year ago so I figured I would pick your brain. Thanks!
Getting back to your idea of using the agricultural cover mesh as a dry finish merrier on both sides of a "aircrete board. It will take the use of a foarm, a very small amount of silicone spray form release, other organic options may not work as a release media, and the assembly would go like this. The form board thickness would require it be no less than 30mm to allow the ingredients to holdup to movement and also be no larger than 1m square. The form will also require it sit in the same flat position until it has achieved 48 hours of drying and curing time, longer would be helpful. In the form, lay down the ag cloth, spray it with a mixture of clay, thinset mortar and water, sprayed on with a drywall texture hopper gun, then while damp add the aircrete filler, position section of 14GA welded wire fencing like the 2"x4" fence opening wire, inexpensive and itself light, pressed into the aircrete, finish off the form with aircrete pressed and screeded into place, spray over the aircrete with the thinset mixture hopper gun, lay on the top and cover it with a piece of weighted plywood for a few hours, remove and allow the panel piece to setup and cure for 48 hours or longer, This will make a stable and light finished panel that can be mortared into place like a thick piece of drywall, and may be attached with construction adhesive instead of thinset concrete, and the tube construction adhesive would probably work best with general construction protocols and within building code requirements. I estimate this will have greater than an R-value of 10. Panels could also be adhered to one another if a greater R-value is needed.
Sounds viable
Thanks for the video! Not even myself who has built lightweight concrete structures knew how bad production of portland cement is for the envirornment, it has me rethinking a bit of my approach. One of my building goals was fire resistance, the use of timber in a fire prone area where I own land is required by code (without structure engineering approval) but the worst possible material to build with in this environment.
I was using perlite which I believe is a significantly better approach than aircrete. Perlite is rock bubbles and has more strength than aircreate, but most importantly is it creates consistent structure as the perlite is graded, vs foaming that is very difficult for a DIY to be consistent.
Requiring manual application of plaster/stucco really defeats the majority of the purpose in my view. This makes the whole process highly labor intension and time consuming.
I have been looking into using Bamboo these days..
Perlite retains water so might not be a good additive especially in cold climate. It could cause cracking or flaking.
@@spamman007 Perlite does not retain water, it is a sealed rock bubble, same as glass 'microspheres' used in fiberglass work on boats.
I've wondering about perlite because it has insulation value but it is also a rock so hits the durability and strength button as well. What type of perlite recipe do you use or think you'd need to mix up to be applicable as a wall, structural or non structural? I think there is a company out there doing 3D printed houses using a perlite mix. I don't think they'll be sharing their recipe anytime soon. I was thinking something similar to a cob mix, but replace the sand with perlite rock and add the clay for cohesion (stickiness), straw or some other fiber for tensile strength. I'd love to experiment with perlite!
It sounds like it's a little finicky. What you need to look at doing is modeling your process off of tilt wall operation. Possibly with the Incorporation of a corrugated sheathing material on one side, and you'll definitely want fiber additives for concrete designed to mitigate cracking often marketed as anti cracking. I believe they come in a variety of materials, but fiberglass would probably be the strongest, but more importantly than the material, would be the length I would think.
If I was going about it trying to do this, I'd probably start with a corrugated panel, with some kind of threw anchor from the outside facing the panel anchored 60 to 80% of the total depth of the proposed wall, and at the termination of the anchor within the form of the wall I would suspended some form of wire reinforcement to tie it all together. I would probably terminate the walls form for the aircrete below top of the corrugated panel, so I could lift, hoist, and tilt it up into place from anchoring to the corrugated sheathing. If you planned it out, you could probably work in a tongue and groove system into the sheathing if you left it intact, or you possibly could use a form release and unbolt the anchors after it set in place and reuse the corrugated panel. If you plan to remove the corrugated panel, you would probably want an additional layer of wire set on the bottom against the panel. You quite literally might be able to get away with simple chicken wire.
Also, I think I've seen someone do a version with recycle closed-cell styrofoam ground up and mixed in instead of phone. Might be a little more consistent then the foam.
From what I understand the R6 may in fact be wrong as it was achieved by using non ASTM testing techniques that have not been verified. R 3.5 - 3.7 seem more likely. 3.5 is still not too shabby. I also wonder if skinning the panels with hempcrete or straw reinforced concrete would do the trick of making a sip that can be moved without cracking
You are correct. R 6 is not accurate. I doubt hempcrete would not crack, but straw concrete could work.
I found out by accident that 0.125mm metal window screen mesh
sticks to aircrete really well. Maybe you could give that a try.
That might also work as a Faraday cage to outside EMF. One possible problem would be cell phone reception inside.
As a Swede, I've never quite understood the love for aircrete. We've had basically the same product in our homes for 100 years by now, but we usually buy it in large ready made lightweight blocks. Actually, it's not that popular. Traditionally it was made with a radioactive clay, which emits radon gas. Today, it's as safe as any other material, but it still has worse compressive strength than concrete or brick and it offers lower insulation than mineral wool, which means it has a hard time beating out other construction materials. It has better insulation properties than aircrete (0.12 W/mK compared with 0.13-0.19 for aircrete, lower is better) and it has better compression strength. But even then, the insulation property is way overblown. It's actually comparable to plywood (0.14) or regular wood planks (0.14), and I don't think anyone would want to insulate their home with plywood as their main source of insulation. Sure, it's about 15x better than concrete (1.9 W/mK), but literally anything is better than concrete. Brick is 3x better than concrete (0.60). Mineral wool insulation and styrofoam are about 3-5 times better in terms of insulation than aircrete (0.037).
I would guess the draw is 'ease of amateur construction', 'organic DIY design', 'environmental resistance' (water-moisture resistance'), 'insulation', and 'affordability'. We're in a housing affordability crisis, and an increasing environmental and climate crisis. People are trying to become self-sufficient. All of these factors attract people to aircrete. They're not really aware that we're 'also' in a concrete supply crisis.
Excellent video. 👍👍
Thanks.
Great share.
Thanks
Check out styrocrete, shredded styrofoam mixed with concrete, fibreglass fibre, foam. Very interesting high insulated minimum frame and cheap building.
Have you considered using a form of reinforced rapid cure mortar that the foam/aircrete then fills in around to add compressive strength while still remaining relatively light?
I have not. Interesting idea.
I am working on such a demonstration project.
@@kevinhornbuckle nice!
nice rundown. i think a reinforcing fiber is needed. person below brought up fiberglass. where i am people will pay you hundreds of dollars to take their fiberglass boats. all you need is some sort of shredder. but your suggestion of garden covers are also good. putting a few layers between each inch of aircreat. or shred at paper shredder size. an other idea for the top for laying tiles why not just lay used industrial carpet like from offices soaked in the top layer. it will turn very hard and tiles will never crack on top of that if the aircreat underneath fails. carpet strips can also be used as reinforcing fibers through out the pore of the aicreate. 20 year old carpet wont offgas that badly. especially in aircreat covered with tyle.
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