DIY Permazyme recipe/alternative?

Hello all,

I'd been doing some reading lately about permazyme and related products. For anyone unaware, it's a soil stabilizer that's mostly marketed as an alternative to expensive paving. It's primarily made from molasses, along with water and epsom salts and maybe a few other ingredients, and then fermented for a week or so. Then, by virtue of some unspecified enzymes produced during that fermentation process, it can act as a waterproofing agent and soil stabilizer. It's diluted around 500x or more, sprayed onto soil or gravel, then mixed in and compacted. Once it dries, hey presto, you end up with a hard and durable surface that resists wear and tear and sheds water much better than un-treated soil. Best of all, re-applying the enzyme temporarily "softens" the soil so it can be worked and smoothed out again until it dries, making it very easy to fix pot holes, regrade roads, etc.

I've seen it in use once before, and there's a wealth of evidence online, so I'm willing to buy most of their claims about how well it works. I'd like to do some of my own experimentation, but I'd like to avoid shelling cash out to the Permazyme company or their competitors if it could be avoided. I've searched around but not found much solid information about exactly what ratio to mix things in, environmental conditions for the fermentation, etc. If anyone happens to have information on this or suggestions on where to look, I'd be incredibly grateful. Alternatively, if the permaculture community has found an equivalent or superior method for producing a similar result (hard, waterproof soil from natural materials that isn't heavily dependent on soil composition) I would be more than happy to hear about that instead.

Thanks for your time and consideration everyone, and hope you're all having a good day.

Lia

For the record, I figured this out. Thanks everyone for all your help, lol.

I hadn't heard of this product before, so I wasn't any help to you. I was interested in your original post though. What did you find out?

Jan, the answer turned out to be a microbe called Sporosarcina pasteurii. It's a facultative anaerobe that breaks down urea for energy and (when respiring aerobically) precipitates calcium ions out of the soil.

Basically, it turns calcium ions into calcium carbonate, and you end up with something like soil cement. I'm reasonably certain that the enzymes present in permazyme/ecozyme and similar products are urease enzymes produced by S. pasteurii or other bacteria. In any event, they give similar results.

There are limitations--due to the requirement for an aerobic environment, they function best in lighter, sandy soils or even fine gravels. The cost for a lab sample of S. pasteurii is also rather high, though this should be tempered by the fact that it could easily be cultured for years, making it a one-time purchase.

Unfortunately, the microbe also seems to release ammonia as part of this process, so you'd have to be careful if you were using a lot of it, or using it indoors. And off-gassing tons of ammonia isn't very eco-friendly, even compared to normal roads.

Hello Lia,
Thank you for posting about this! It's a topic I'm interested in too, and having trouble getting really clear information about, since so many of the relevant companies seem to want to be "proprietary" to the point of obscurity. Sounds like you got at least *some* really clear info, but it differs from what I'm reading, so there may be multiple techniques out there.

What I'm seeing is literature from the enzyme companies (Naturalcrete, IEC Distributing) saying the "enzymes" (exact composition unknown) do NOT work in sandy/gravelly soils, but instead form a chemical cationic bond between clay and organic matter, making not a calcium carbonate but a type of shale. At least 15-20% clay is required, plus heavy compression (so not likely to be aerobic) and they're very squidgy on what they mean by "organic matter." I haven't gotten any of them to reply to me directly yet, although if I do, I will pass the info along.

Not saying that what you found is in any way wrong, of course, just that there may be more than one way to go about it, different formulas for different soil types. I would love to know more.

Also I know that cow poop greatly increases the water resistance of a clay plaster (I've tried it), possibly by a similar enzymatic effect, but I don't know anything about its effect in a structural mix, or how long that effect lasts. An exterior poop-clay plaster does eventually break down under weathering but that might not happen so much inside the wall. I've heard of people just glugging molasses into their slip pits but I don't know if they ever did any hard testing on the results or if they were going on a wing and a prayer because it seemed like a good idea. There's also an interesting thread somewhere around here about pond-sealing with "gley," which seems to be a type of biofilm created in anaerobic conditions. Also possibly related to this question.
https://permies.com/t/3409/Gley-technique-sealing-ponds-dams

Contacted 3 enzyme suppliers with an identical list of questions. Got ZERO response from Natural Crete or IEC Distributing. Perma-Zyme did reply promptly, if not to my full satisfaction. Answers as follows:

1. (ME) Once diluted in water, how quickly does the enzyme solution need to be used before losing strength? How long does the soil-enzyme mix remain workable?
(P-Z) Once diluted in water, there is no set time you have to use the solution, we just recommend agitating the water/Perma-Zyme mixture as Perma-Zyme is heavier and will settle at the bottom is unused.
*OK, great. No answer about workability time on the treated soil, though. Answers from their published literature appear to be contradictory.

2. (ME) Do you know if anyone has tried this as a stabilizer in adobe or other unfired clay-aggregate building methods?
(P-Z) We apologize we do not have any data of brick manufacturing with Perma-Zyme.
*fair enough

3. (ME) It appears this requires at least 15-20% clay particles and some unspecified quantity of "organic matter" to complete the reaction. Please expand on the latter. Someone using this to build with could of course make up an ideal mix, but the subsoil and aggregate typically used in blockmaking would be fairly poor in SOM. Would one need to shovel in cow poop or what?
(P-Z) Yes, Perma-Zyme does require at least 15% of clay fines or more in the soil to bind the particles together. It does not work with soils that are predominantly sand but you can introduce clay/limestone to bind the sand together.
*This is not any kind of answer to the question I asked. I understood the need for clay at the outset, and specified that understanding in the question. If “organic matter” is not needed, he should have said so instead of ignoring the bulk of the query.

4. (ME) How do these enzymes react in the presence of hydrated lime?
(P-Z) Perma-Zyme works great with natural crushed limestone-based roads but we have never applied it in conjunction with hydrated lime.
*fair enough

5. (ME) Any way I could get a small amount to make test blocks with? It would presumably be a *very* small amount; if your standard rate is 1 gal/165 cubic yards, then for a few test blocks in a home lab, we'd be talking, I dunno, a milliliter? Any advice on titrating and measuring small enough quantities for an accurate test?
(P-Z) We do sell 8 oz bottles of Perma-Zyme for smaller projects. The price for an 8 oz bottle is $50 + shipping.
*In other words, “NO!” 8 oz is a cup. 16 cups to the gallon. 8 oz would treat 10 cubic yards, 270 cubic feet, or 30 running feet of 8’ tall, 1’ thick wall. 2 cups would pretty much build the entire project I had in mind. It’d be $100, which I guess isn’t much when you’re talking building supplies, but they’re offering ZERO chance to see if it works first.

6. (ME) Also, what are you actually charging per gallon?
(P-Z) Perma-Zyme also comes in 1 gallon jugs and 5 gallon pails. The price for a 1 gallon jug is $547.00 + shipping and you do get a price break in getting the 5 gallon pail as the pail costs $1,997.00 + shipping.
*Well, that’s an answer. So broken down for the rest of us: Plasters would need a few mL, tiny houses with cob walls would need barely a pint and 1 gallon would treat 4,455 cubic feet of material. Which would be like trying to make something roughly the size of a warehouse or a big-box store out of cob! So most of us would be buying it by the cup at $50+ a pop. They offer nothing in test quantities. Another way to figure it: 0.21 mL/ 15lbs soil (dry weight) Yes, they’re mixing imperial and metric. Their data, not mine.

Perma-Zyme required me to send them my personal contact information before they would allow me to view any of their scientific data. I found that offensive so I am summarizing everything they sent me in some depth (with annoyed commentary) for any of you who should care to know.  

Super-Short Summary: This is pretty much junk data, so if Perma-Zyme works in your soil type at all, you’re gonna have to prove it for yourself.

Long Summary below. If nothing else, take it as a meditation on the perils of credulous idealism….
==============
They Sent Me:
* A Tech Specs sheet which says, in short, “Don’t eat it, don’t apply it in freezing weather, set time 4 hours (not sure what precisely that means), curing time 72 hours (apparently you can drive on it after that, gently, if the weather’s been dry.) For those of you who use metric, the converted application rate is 1 kg / 30.25 cubic meters. Oh, and it’s acidic enough you probably want to wear gloves, at least until it’s been diluted. All good to know. Not nearly everything I *want* to know though.

* An extremely vague “booklet” (basically a copy of the pages on their website) which offers nice graphs and charts that, when you actually squint at them, convey no information whatsoever. Lots of “can” and “may” when describing the miraculous results. Phrases like “the soil’s strength [can] increase 13x!” or “Unpaved roads [can] last over 10 years without maintenance!” Since they can’t be bothered to specify EXACTLY WHAT CONDITIONS these results were obtained under, I can only assume they cherry-picked the most ideal circumstances possible. Also an “Engineering Report” claiming a compressive strength (saturated or unsaturated?! They don’t bother to say but it would matter!) of over 900 psi after 42 days in—get this—“Native Soil.” The obvious problem here being, what in heck do they mean by “Native Soil”?? Because a gravelly kaolin is going to act very very differently than a pure bentonite or anything with a layer of quick clay or deep silt—or, as the company does admit when pressed, any soil with less than 15% clay—but probably also any soil with significantly MORE than 15% clay. So this assurance of great results in “Native Soil” means diddly-squat! The booklet also assures me the stuff is food grade and I can eat it; the Tech Sheet says under no circumstances ought I to do any such thing. In other words, the booklet/website is worse than useless and possibly actively misleading.

*Whew! Well, that was frustrating, let’s see if the white paper is any better….
It’s 9 pages (awfully short by industry standards) and published by NOVA Geotechnical, lead author Mehdi Khalili, Ph.D., P.E. Project No.: G-19-130.  It doesn’t seem to have a title. It doesn’t have anything suggesting it’s been published peer-reviewed journal. It’s not clear at all whether NOVA Geotech is independent from Substrata, the Perma-Zyme company. It’s not clear whether Substrata funded this study themselves; it appears they probably did. “Substrata” is misspelled in the header (just so you know these people check their work carefully). The work was done in Nevada.

But at least this one specifies exactly which tests they’re running. CBR=California Bearing Ratio; I do believe that’s *saturated* compression; good to know. “R-value”=“Resistance to Deformation.” (NOT to be confused with “R-value” the insulation term) Specifically testing how much it squishes outward or smears sideways when you push on it. The scale is, water=0, steel=100. Test procedure “requires that the laboratory prepared samples are fabricated to a moisture and density condition representative of the worst possible in situ condition of a compacted subgrade.” (I’d sure like to know how exactly that’s done. But again, it doesn’t really say.)

All samples contain “at least” 21% clay except Sample 1 at 11%. There is zero specific information given on the makeup of these soils!!!

Sample Preparation Method:
0.2% solution (2mL enzyme : 1L water)
Further dilute 1:10 with water
600 mL dilution per 15 lbs dry soil
conditioned 3 days, then tested

This appears to be telling me the samples were “conditioned” in an uncompacted state 3 days, then compacted for the R-Value test. It’s very unclear about the order though. Does that mean there’s NOT a four-hour set time??

They tested a range of moisture contents and counted their R-values from the one where water squeezed out at 300 psi. Although looking at these graphs I am only seeing 3 broadly-spaced plot points per sample.

Sample 1: This is the one that was only 11% clay. R-40 with Perma-Zyme. Results worse than the untreated soil. (untreated R-53.) This is probably naturally a high aggregate gravelly soil, but they DIDN’T BOTHER TO SPECIFY
Sample 2 (53% fines): R-38, untreated R-30
Sample 3 (62% fines): R-66, untreated R-12. Tremendous difference and kept its strength as it got even wetter.
Sample 4 (61% fines): R-64, untreated R-57. BUT, as the soil got soggier, again, the treated soil became worse than untreated (though still R-40). BUT BUT BUT, how is an untreated soil of 61% clay/silt bearing so highly on its own in the first place? What’s going on here?
Sample 5 (47% fines): R-48, untreated R-38
Sample 6 (93% fines): R-42, untreated R-10. Pure muck, apparently, which did stiffen up some.
Sample 7 (57% fines): R-44, untreated R-28

SO. Adding Perma-Zyme to clay soils generally seems to help, but the variation is extreme (-27% reduction vs. 442% improvement!!) GOSH WOULDN’T IT BE NICE if they had told us the actual specific makeup of these samples!

In the one single low-clay sample they tested, not only did Perma-Zyme not help, it made it worse. One sample is not a reliable result, of course. For that matter, NEITHER ARE SEVEN.

Seriously, this is an international company basing their entire business on a product that’s had a grand total of *seven* samples ever tested, all in Nevada??

Okay. Now they’re plotting the increase in R-value against a chart of increasing fines content, which is at least a *little* data about the soils. Going back to add that to the above list…. Lo and behold, if they THROW OUT 3 OF THE 7 SAMPLES, they can get a nice line showing that increased clay content = increased improvement of strength when treated with Perma-Zyme….

Mind you, that’s increased *improvement,* not necessarily increased strength overall….

Oooh. And NOW, on the “Conclusions” page, they get around to mentioning that all their samples have a pH of 8.0 or above. Nothing at all like our acid New England soils, which often run closer to 5.5.

Also, they claim to have run 5 different types of tests on these samples, but they have only published a single set of results, nearly half of which they’ve thrown out to make the data fit. Where are the CBR results?

No help for it: This is junk science.

Conclusion: MAYBE these enzymes work. They certainly didn’t convince me of it. Looks like there’s no possible way to know but to make my own tests. Is it worth giving $50 (+ shipping) to a company who obviously holds such a poor opinion of my intelligence? Honestly I’m pretty ticked off.

Anyway, I hope that saves someone else some trouble in research. Anybody finds better data, please let us know.

April, your review of their replies to your questions (when no one else did) seems a bit slanted negatively as evidenced by your use of caps.  I am trying to see reviews of whether the stuff works, despite having invested significantly more than $50.00 already.  I provided 5 soil samples to them that they tested for me for free to be sure the soil was compatible, which it was.  In addition to buying a pale for $2k, I bought a smooth drum roller and a pad foot roller to ensure proper application.  While I could have rented these, we plan on doing several miles of road and purchasing was more economical than renting.

Substrata sent out their production guy to oversee the initial application to be sure we were doing it right, which was appreciated.  The customer service has been great, but I'm a guy who doesn't care about the length of their white paper.  As someone serious about a solution, I invested thousands of dollars in what I hope is a great solution for our needs.  I get buying-power is relative, but you won't invest $50 to do your own test?  

What I find lacking on the internet is reviews of long term results.  As such, I plan to review my initial results after the 3-day cure period, 6 months from now, and a year from now.  Why am I still researching results having already made the financial investment?  Because like you, I am skeptical that it does all it promises and I guess impatient, so I'm looking for a little reassurance while I wait for the results.  My suggestion to you is to "roll the $50 dice" and do your own testing.

I missed this topic the first time it made the rounds.  Thank you for reviving it.  I am interested now to see how well this works for you going forward.   Eventually we're going to have to add wheelchair accessible infrastructure to our yard for my sister so that she doesn't effectively end up on house arrest as her health declines.  I am still pretty sure concrete is going to end up part of the solution, but I like knowing other options are there.  Hopefully we can put off making a decision for a few more years.  

Hello Eric, Welcome to Permies!
I'd not come across Permazyme either and found it quite interesting. The gravel road building did look very impressive. It sounds like it might work as a way of forming a gley in the soil: they also mention using it for pond sealing on the website. Independent results are always useful, so do let us know how you get on.

Hello. First time posting here. Once the snow melted I realized (after a tow from a friendly neighbor with a large tractor) that I have another hurdle in order to live on my land. During a Google search permazyne came up and a link to this forum.

So has anyone successfully used this product to build a road or driveway. I'd love to hear about your experience.

My road is graded clay, but when wet it's slick AF and I slid sideways into my neighbors field. If I drop gravel the road will just eat it. And at first glance I thought maybe this would be a good cheaper alternative. But the more I look into it, you're supposed to "mix" the road w the product and not just top coat it. Which sound more expensive and involving multiple machines.

Dear All,
I am working on the life cycle assessment of chemically stabilized roads. We used a perma-zyme stabilizer on several roads. I was wondering if information about the "Life Cycle Assessment of Permazyme" report is available or if there are other published data on Perma-Zyme. I am mainly looking for the raw material, fuel, electricity, and water needed to produce 1kg of Perma-zyme.
It would be appreciated if you could share any published reports or patents on Perma-zyme. Thanks in Advance.

I'm interested in Permazyne as well. I've narrowed my soil hardening to them from other products like asphalt, concrete, chip seal (or tar and chip) (the tar used in asphalt applied to group and then a layer of rock on top that is pressed into the tar), DirtGlue (a polymer), Land Lock Natural paving (a polymer). The asphalt I don't want because it get too hot. The concrete because of the cost. The polymers because I could not find any examples of use in a cold climate like CO.

But Permazyne does have an example of a cold climate installation.  It has a video on their web site (about midway down on https://www.substrata.us/perma-zyme) for Atlas, Michigan. I called the city planner and talked to her for a while. They seem very happy with this product for the last 10 years. Saved them lots of money compared to other installs. Low maintenance over the years.

I'll be doing a small test sample where I park my trailer, before I decide if I want to apply it to the entire driveway.

My business partner and I are researching Permazyme for an industrial application on heavy truck use roads in Colorado. It has been installed in a couple of smaller industrial county roads in Wyoming and we are planning on installing it in Colorado on a few high traffic heavy semi/tractor trailer use county roads.  It is very expensive when compared to Mag Chloride or other chemicals that improve road durability and reduce dust. I think  it will last longer once it is installed and left to cure as the Substrata suggests.  I have seen many of their videos but it seems like they are just using it for residential county roads especially in Michigan. We have experience in road construction and can get contractors to install the enzyme. The only issue is the cost and it  

For a driveway, I think you would only have to disk the road, spray the permazyme / water mixture and then compact.  I don't think you would even have to wait 72 hours for it to cure since its low volume, light traffic.  The Michigan counties only spay it twice a year to maintain the roads. I know you have to install it above 40 deg F.

We are looking for the following
1. An enzyme recipe that is cheaper or research on how to make it.
2. Someone who has used it it either Wyoming or Colorado on heavy traffic large vehicle roads with success.

We will probably be purchasing some permazyme in the near future and are willing to give some of it away to someone who want to try it out as long as we can observe the results as well.
Let me know what you think and maybe we can get on a conference call.

We have a truck yard which is heavy use with potato trucks during harvest when farmers are bringing them into storage cellars and later when they take them out. The soil is heavy clay and turns to powdery dust after a single day of heavy traffic — if it blows the dust storm is terrible. Looking for solutions. The area is about an acre of turn around for the trucks. I’d love to get my hands on some of this to try if you’re willing to share. More than happy to share results.