Lime Terms ... oh so many names.. Trying to keep it straight.

Please correct me:

Quick Lime = Fat Lime = Calcium Oxide CaO = Living Lime = Burnt Lime
Hydrated Lime = Slaked Lime

Quick Lime / Fat Lime/ Calcium Oxide/ CaO  + Water = Hydrated Lime/ Slaked Lime

?Type S, or Special hydrated lime products, are a combination of calcium and magnesium hydroxides. In building applications, Type S dolomitic hydrated lime products have high hydration levels and controlled plasticity (water retention). This allows for minimal soak periods prior to application.? Same Special hydrated lime same as hydrated lime???
Does "Special" make hydrated lime different than plain Hydrated lime?

Hydrated lime also called slaked lime is produced when water is added to calcium oxide (Quick Lime = Fat Lime = Calcium Oxide CaO = Living Lime = Burnt Lime )

Reading about this stuff and trying to keep it all straight is exhausting

Correction I think fat lime is moved

Lime Earth Blocks

Quick Lime = Calcium Oxide = CaO = Living Lime = Burnt Lime
Hydrated Lime = Slaked Lime = Fat Lime

Quick Lime / Living Lime / Burnt Lime / Calcium Oxide/  CaO  + Water = Hydrated Lime/ Slaked Lime / Fat Lime

Still Don't know..
Is Special hydrated lime same as hydrated lime???
high-calcium lime? belong where

There are mainly 2 types of lime: lime (pure +90%) and hydraulic lime (lime + pozzolanic additives)

Rule of Thumb:
generally (pure) lime is used above ground and hydraulic lime is used underground.

Pure lime sets slowly by exposure to CO2 and hydraulic lime sets when exposed to water (it even sets UNDER water)

Generally, when making any sort of pure lime based mortar, it is best practice to use quick lime.
These are often referred to as hot mixes because your mortar is essentially going to be warm when you're working with it.

In terms of hydraulic lime, best practice is to avoid NHL (natural hydraulic lime) at all costs because it is impossible to predict their quality.
If you make hydraulic lime based mortar, add your own pozzolanic material to the pure lime in order to have a consistent mix. This will require some testing of your own. If you need the mix to be stronger, add more pozzolan. However, rarely are you going to need a super strong mortar.

Pure lime and earth-lime mortars have great capillary action and this is why they're used above ground: the wind dries out the outer shell of your wall which will then "suck" the inside of your wall dry. At the same time, lime mortar offers protection from water ingress. However, water always finds its way into your wall so it is important that your wall is designed so that it can dry itself out very efficiently.

Hydraulic lime is stronger and has has much less capillary action. When exposed to water, it gets stronger over time. No one actually knows when "setting" stops. It seems that there's no limit to it. Roman concrete port piers are getting stronger still, to this day.

In practical terms though; the things you need: find a good supplier of very pure quicklime and a suitable source for pozzolans if you're going to be doing foundation work with lime. The rest is just sharp sand and/or loam or very fine silica sand or marble dust and natural fibers of varying sizes depending on what kind of mortar you're making.

masonry bedding mortar: loam + 10 - 15% quicklime
masonry pointing mortar: 1:1 quicklime/sand + small fibers
base layer plaster: loam + 10 - 15% quicklime + hay fibers
finishing plaster: 1:1 quicklime + fine sharp sand + very fine fibers

experiment with your own mixes. Depending on the type of soil that you use, some of them are gonna have more clay in them, in which case you might want to add some sand, or example. If your soil is very sandy, then you could either add some clay or just add a little more quicklime. What you're ultimately looking for is a mortar that is sticky but not too sticky because the stickier it is, the more it will shrink. Too much shrinkage causes cracks. For a plastering base layers, cracking is fine, since you'll be filling that in with a brown or finishing coat.

In general I would advise to avoid cracks as much as possible. In my opinion a good mortar is a fine balance: it should be workable and sticky enough for a skilled hand to do efficient work. But that doesn't mean that it sticks like glue. You need just enough stickiness so that it doesn't run off your trowels straight away, but not too sticky because that suggests that there is not enough large aggregate in your mix which -again- causes cracking and also makes your wall less strong and more unstable in terms of expanding and contracting due to temperature/humidity variations.

Unfortunately this is something you have to learn to feel for yourself. And the only way to do that is to work. Build some flats in your yard, get some bricks, whatever and mix up some mortar. Test different soils in your area. Add sharp sand if there is too much clay in them. Lay some bricks with your different mixes, do some plastering and take notes. If you keep at this for a month or so, you will quickly understand what a good mortar feels and SOUNDS like. The keyword here is BALANCE. A good mortar has a good balance of different aggregate sizes and performs as you want to perform: when it sets it becomes a stable mass with minimal to no cracking at all.

My final suggestion is: don't overthink it. Get your hands dirty. A book is not going to teach you what a good mortar is. Your own hands and your ears will. Good luck!

Wonderful complete response... Thank you for your time

I just kept getting confused with people using different terms for the basically same product if not the exact same product.  

and so i have additional names added.
Lime Earth Blocks Project

Quick Lime = Calcium Oxide CaO = Living Lime = Burnt Lime

Hydrated Lime = Slaked Lime = Fat Lime = Type S Lime = Hydrated Lime powder = Ca(OH)2 = Calcium Hydroxide = ?Dolomitic Hydrated Lime? = Best Egypt Hydrated Powder

Quick Lime / Calcium Oxide/ CaO  + Water = Hydrated Lime/ Slaked Lime / Fat Lime / Type S Lime / Ca(OH)2 / Calcium Hydroxide etc

Well I'm sure there are many differences and variables at play when you're shopping for lime commercially. However, the bread and butter of any type of mortar you make is very simply quicklime (CaO). What you're looking for is quite simply limestone that was fired in a kiln which is now CaO. And you want a product of a high purity (+90%).

When you make your mortar and add water to your mix, that is when you're slaking the lime. It then becomes hydrated lime. You can buy hydrated lime as well, but it is presumed that it is better to use quicklime and slake it yourself. The reason is because after the lime is slaked, it has a limited shelf life. Generally you want to avoid using hydrated lime that is more than a year old. Look on the bags for the dates. But still I would certainly recommend to use quicklime in stead, if you can source it. Of course, quicklime is a little bit more dangerous, so when you're adding it to your mix, take the necessary safety precautions.

When mixing mortar, you can just add the quicklime to the mix and give it the right amount of water while mixing. In terms of lime earth blocks, you probably need to slake the lime first by itself and then mix it with the earth. My guess is that you would have to slake the lime beforehand because the mixture for the blocks is rather dry since a machine is going to compress the earth into a block.

If you want to delve into the subject of lime much deeper, look into the work of Nigel Copsey.

Houtje Uytdenbos wrote:Well I'm sure there are many differences and variables at play when you're shopping for lime commercially. However, the bread and butter of any type of mortar you make is very simply quicklime (CaO). What you're looking for is quite simply limestone that was fired in a kiln which is now CaO. And you want a product of a high purity (+90%).
Nigel Copsey.

Thanks Houtje, You helped me focus.
I've watch Nigel but so many old buildings that I have 0 interest in.  I love he does it.

I think i found what i needed using this link permies 5/6ths the way down the page
https://permies.com/t/43637/Breathable-Walls

And this link about lime as I was hoping to keep the magnesium MgO levels high for energetic, strength and longevity reasons
https://www.lime.org/about-us/faqs/
Now to find the purity of that is and the drawbacks of High MgCO3/ MgO Cements.
Then a small test and a big test.

My Inspiration was and trying to understand Lime Cements some which have high magnesium content which evidence suggests both are healthy. MgO Used in operating rooms EMF, Radioactive waste immobilization, Great wall of China, Many Roman building etc etc lasts a long time, healthy energetically.

Robert Murray-Smith
All About Magnesium Oxide Cements
https://youtu.be/dX_QbphiM6I?si=pUIbGssILnytIl_a

"Q:  What is lime?  What are the differences between quicklime and hydrated lime, high calcium lime, and dolomitic lime?
A:  Although “lime” is sometimes used as a generic term for various materials, it should properly be used only to refer to the manufactured products quicklime and hydrated lime (click here for a short description on how lime is produced). Limestone, which is the feedstock for lime manufacturing, is not itself lime, although confusion is sometimes caused by references to limestone as “agricultural lime” or “aglime.”

Quicklime, the product of calcination of limestone (calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate), consists of the oxides of calcium and magnesium and, in the United States, it is available in three forms:

High calcium quicklime -- derived from limestone containing 0 to 5 percent magnesium carbonate.
Magnesian quicklime -- derived from limestone containing 5 to 35 percent magnesium carbonate.
Dolomitic quicklime -- derived from limestone containing 35 to 46 percent magnesium carbonate.
Hydrated lime is a dry powder manufactured by mixing quicklime with water, thereby converting the oxides to hydroxides.  Depending upon the type of quicklime used and the hydrating conditions employed, the amount of water in chemical combination varies, as follows:

High calcium hydrated lime -- high calcium quicklime produces a hydrated lime containing generally 72 to 74 percent calcium oxide and 23 to 24 percent chemically combined water.
Dolomitic hydrated lime (normal) -- under atmospheric hydrating conditions only the calcium oxide fraction of dolomitic quicklime hydrates, producing a hydrated lime of the following chemical composition:  46 to 48 percent calcium oxide, 33 to 34 percent magnesium oxide, and 15 to 17 percent chemically combined water.
Dolomitic hydrated lime (pressure) -- this lime is produced from dolomitic quicklime under pressure, which results in hydrating all of the magnesium oxide as well as all of the calcium oxide, producing the following chemical composition:  40 to 42 percent calcium oxide, 29 to 30 percent magnesium oxide, and 25 to 27 percent chemically combined water."

Edit add Below:
Dolomitic lime binder was used in the construction of the Ming Great Wall. The lime mortars used to build the Great Wall around Beijing contain about 5–22 wt. % MgO. Based on chemical analyses, these lime mortars can be classified as dolomitic limes.

Dolomitic Roman cements can contain up to 17–23 mass % magnesium.

Thanks Houtje, you helped me figure this out.
Inspiration:

Robert Murray-Smith Recipe:
Magnesium Oxide 90-60%
Fumed Silica / Silica Dioxide 10-40%  (as Pozzolan) add water make gel to make it easier to handle

Fumed Silica
Water mixed
Then Add Magnesium oxide

Fumed Silica acting as Pozzolan... NOT natural sub out  
Can't i just use Dolomitic Lime and the Pozzolan and it's Natural no Toxins. Yes I can!
Natural: Pozzolan = ash, ceramic tile dust, suuki (indian specific type burned terra cotta/ Burned brick),
{Me answer:  Pozzolanic / pozzolan is the same as a geopolymer Fumed Silca, etc}

Earthblocks:
But I still want to use MgO so I can use Dirty Aggregates. And don’t have to be perfect on mix!
Is that true? I read it was… need to see that. Read from someone who did it a bunch test for years.
Can I use non perfect Aggregates with Dolomitic Lime in earthblocks or dustcrete or cob?
Fall Back 1000s years Dolomitic Lime.

Calcium hydroxide used for cooking is also called "cal" in Spanish, and pickling lime in English.

Also many people mistakenly refer to lime as waterglass.

J Hillman wrote:Also many people mistakenly refer to lime as waterglass.

Yeah super confusing!!! thanks... now I think i have a paper with some dots.. connecting is gonna be fun.

@Childers

I'm not familiar with dolomitic limes but thanks for pointing it out. Good luck with your experiments!

I've got a pile of red bricks, a bag of hydraulic lime and a desire for a chicken coop. So I am intending to build a brick foundation for the coop. There is a lot of information about repointing bricks. But not so much about building a brick foundation. Still, I think this video on mixing hydraulic lime is helpful.

Jeremy VanGelder wrote:I've got a pile of red bricks, a bag of hydraulic lime

use either stone or concrete block for the foundation. Brick doesn't do well when perpetually wet.
Just use regular portland cement for the foundation because it's much cheaper. Hydraulic lime and portland cement are essentially the same thing. Unironically, portland cement is probably significantly "greener" than hydraulic lime. Portland cement production is very effient due to large demand. So to cut production costs, their manufacturing process is much more efficient and thus "greener".

When you marry your wooden mud sill to the stem foundation, put it in a bed of air lime mortar on top of you stem foundation. Then fasten your anchor bolts. You want the wood to be in contact with air lime mortar because it dries faster so your mud sill is less likely to rot.

Rule of thumb: everything below ground: use hydraulic lime (aka Portland cement)
everything above ground: use air lime.

for the stem wall it's better to do it in portland cement entirely, even the part that is above ground which would be about 50cm's or so. The foundation/stem wall is designed to stop and resist moisture: rising damp, rain water, splash water, ... The idea here is that your foundation and stem wall have to be able to resist the erosion effects of being perpetually damp. The portland cement mortar will also act as a plug and it will stop most of the rising damp going up into your wooden frame. So finish off your stem wall with a layer of portland cement mortar, make it flat and let it set. When it has set, put a bed of air lime mortar on top and then sandwich it with the mud sill.
But starting from the mud sill and up, everything needs to be designed to be able to dry out fast. For example: don't paint your wooden frame with latex paint or something silly like that. If you want it painted, use limewash or whatever.