1725 polozzanic lime mortars

this is an english site which might help also....you have obviously been doing your homework... i think gauging is what you are referring to [url]http://www.buildingconservation.com/articles/limegauging/limegauging.htm#top[/url]

i know in france when i lived there many of the builders were adept at the older methods...and also devon where we had one of those clay/straw barns and we rendered the walls we also had to use a lime mix.... many people in the past had used cement to repair them...with disastrous results

i think when you arrive here you will find many ready prepared mixes available and it will not be as complicated as many of the more in depth articles where you appear to have to know more about chemistry than anything else in building techniques...i realise to testore say a national trust building it might be that complicated.... however ....our normal houses might not require so much in depth knowledge.....

our local builder.... he works for a building firm .... but lives close to us and all our work we have done together is knowledgable about the use of different materials.... and he he can work both modern and traditional.... we have used ready prepared and our own mixes....and the results have been that we now have walls that breath...eliminating most if not all damp problems of the older type of building.... where it still exists is in parts where people before have added concrete flooring without thinking ....

i think a combination of modern ...ie those plastic type mushroom underfloor mounds ..which allow air to circulate.... and cement where you need it are not things that you have to avoid.... reinforced concrete is something that has to be used in certain areas because of planning constrictions.... if you combine all these with traditional rendering and pointing where walls meet ground you sort of have a combination of old and new which should suffice to provide a building which is both structurally sound and reacts as it was designed to when originally built.....

one thing is that all trditional methods cost more..... even in the uk people with these skills tend to charge a lot more.... and the work tends to take longer....here you will most probably find if you can find the right local builder to assist and you work with them it may work out more reasonbly

sorry cannot help with italian based training.... but the site above may be able to refer you to somewhere here

Is it the same stuff?
have been using the above stuff for a few years and have got the hang of it; suck it and see training in the back yard consisted of willing me, retired builder, various quality sands and occassional visits from manufacturers rep - keen to promote use of his lime!

Regular builders don't like it/use it because it takes too long to go off - come back a few hours later and your cement is rocklike, lime takes days/months.

Then, choice of sand important, enough tiny bits (fines) to give a creaminess, but too much and the mortar ends up overly 'slimey' and creeps - the next day you see 'cracks' in the render, they might be real shrinkage cracks, but often it is slimey creep! Wet it up and squash it back into shape.

Wet lime you don't use; bag it up and keep it airtight and it'll be good weeks later, also mortar that is mixed gets progressively creamier, ie it's even better the next day.

There is plenty of chemistry in this which I do not begin to understand, other than the type of the lime (hydraulic and/or aerien(?)) defines how it sets, ie requires either air or water or both to go hard.

We've built, rendered and painted with NHL with great results.

Now if this all has nothing in common with polozzanic lime my appologies, I'm just happy to waffle on about a building material that is a delight to work with.

Now here's a really interesting thing - the lime crystals have a double face, or some such thing, and they reflect light in a special way. That is why façades that are painted/rendered in lime have a warm glow....

Patricio

Yes we are talking about a similar thing but I think with the addition of volcanic ash or brick dust .It was used by the Romans don't you know!

We have used lime wash inside our house in Cornwall its dirt cheap and not too smelly like some paints but very strange to work with.

cheers

Becky