Ferro-Cement with Basalt

If you're interested in long lasting easily formable building you might have heard of ferro-cement. This is one of the techniques we're using in the construction of our family's on-farm butcher shop. To maximize the space in our small building we poured the structural walls as trusses filled with air holes where shelves and such go. The covers of these holes are ferro-cement panels made using fiber sand cement and basalt mesh as shown in this blog post:

http://SugarMtnFarm.com/2013/12/26/flushed-away/

I'll bet that really smooth fero cement would make an excellent surface for walls and floors that are to be steam cleaned. After the room is dirtied, a RMH could be run with boiling water on top of the riser. An outside air intake might make sense. A couple hours at 300 degrees would leave everything sanitized.

I've used one of those wand steamers for small clean up jobs. A commercial sized one is bound to be handy in a butcher shop. I use my tree sprayer to coat walls with diluted bleach when disinfecting pig sty rental apartments.

Do you think that recycled plate glass on the walls would make life easier ? When I think butcher shop, I don't think of meat. I think about streamlining the clean up after the job is done so you don't kill anybody or get in trouble with regulators.

Dale Hodgins wrote:Do you think that recycled plate glass on the walls would make life easier?

We'll be seamlessly coating all the surfaces floor to ceiling with polyurea which forms a tough slightly elastic surface. I did tests this summer with it. I had considered polished concrete, FRP, epoxy, polyurethane and cementious urethane too.

NEAT.
How's the cost of basalt compare to steel reinforcing mesh? Are you sourcing it at your big-box home improvement stores or somewhere else?

Basalt is about 2.5 times more expensive than plain steel and about 1/4 the cost of stainless steel. We use all three plus polyfiber in our construction depending on the engineering needs and exposures.

Plain steel is strong and cheap but can corrode. We used this in areas that are well protected and thick concrete. See: http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2013/11/18/interlocking-pours/

Stainless steel is strong and expensive and won't corrode. We used this in critical areas such as the overhead truss beam that supports the high rail that may get as much as 30 tons of force dynamically. See: http://www.google.com/search?q=site:sugarmtnfarm.com+stainless%20steel%20rebar

Basalt is between the two on cost and strength as well as testing and also will not corrode. We used this in thin areas that are prone to acid, bleach and other corrosive exposures. e.g., partition panels, thin arched ceilings, brine room (high salt), etc. The basalt does not have as long a track record so I'm not depending on it in critical area like the overhead beam where the stainless steel is the primary reinforcement. See: http://www.google.com/search?q=site:sugarmtnfarm.com+basalt

We also used polyfiber in all the mixes and we'll be using basalt fibers in the mixes where there is higher heat levels such as around the smokehouse and ovens. See: http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2011/11/07/good-pour-great-pour/

Each reinforcement has it's pros and cons. Mixing them works well.

When I go down to the beach, I'm walking on basalt. It's the bedrock around here. There's lots of mixed glacial till on top in many areas. When I first read your title, I assumed that Sugar Mountain was made of basalt and you had brought in a crusher to make your own aggregate. Further investigation revealed that your material is a high grade fiberglass product that contains no raw basalt rock. The glass is made from basalt. I wonder if I could trademark the word granite ? I see that they call it technobasalt. The techno bit is important.

Here's a link to product information. Almost as strong as carbon fiber. --- http://www.technobasalt.com/products/

Fiberglass is different than basalt. They're different chemicals and different source materials. The basalt used to make the reinforcement we use apparently comes from volcanic basalt deposits in the southwest of the USA and northern Mexico area. I think I remember reading that what the company we get ours from uses is deposits in Arizona or New Mexico.

What we're sitting on here at Sugar Mountain is granite. We use a lot of granite, in fact it makes up the vast majority of the mass of our construction. Most of it is in the form of the aggregate in the concrete, the stone. Concrete is mostly aggregate which in our case is local granite. We also have used a lot of granite as spacers and for the door sills. See:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2013/10/26/front-door-sill/
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2013/10/20/secret-sill-saying/
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2013/10/11/hall-to-icutting-sill/

We've also used a significant tonnage of marble in building our butcher shop:
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2013/12/05/moving-bathroom-marble/
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2012/01/27/marble-cubes/

Much of the stone we use comes from the waste piles of the local stone quarries and carving sheds. The only cost is trucking it here. We get big dump truck loads full and then pick out what we want to use in construction. The rest becomes fill.

Have you tested for radon gas ? Granite is supposed to be the rock most associated with it.

There aren't many fero cement boats being built now. It would make sense for anyone building a boat, water tank or other concrete items that are likely to saturate, to use rebar that won't rust. I've seen three boats that blew apart when the rebar expanded.

We're very familiar with radon problems as it is a common problem in New England. My understanding is that the radon is not a problem with the volume of rock in a building but rather the amount that seeps up from ledge. After building our cottage I tested and we have no detectable radon. The butcher shop is not done yet but is built along the same principles and materials and I expect it to be similarly fine.

The problem people have with radon is it seeping up from the soil and ledge below buildings. The buildings are negatively pressured and suck in air from the soil and ledge containing the radon. The key is to have a barrier between the building and the soil and then a controlled flow of fresh air - e.g., proper ventilation.

Our cottage and our butcher shop both sit on a slab with an insulation and vapor barrier separating them from the earth so the soil air doesn't penetrate into the buildings.