mix salty sea waterin the bags?

On our building site there is limited amount of water especially now when the dry season started and the wells will be running dry soon without us using water for the construction.
Is it possible to mix in salty seawater instead. What can be the possitive or negative effect of doing this?

/Atte

Welcome to Permies Atte, and thanks for joining.

Do you plan on using water to mix the actual bag infill or just the plaster? What kind of infill and plaster do you plan on using?
I suspect that sea water will work just fine but i don't know for sure. If you explain the details a bit more it'll be easier to help you figure it out.

V

As the bag dries out, salt crystals will form and grow.
With concrete and mortar this will reduce the compression strength and shorten the life. That said, a number of old forts built using cement and sea water are still standing after a few hundred years.

With earth bag, there is a different dynamic at play as the bag remains "elastic". My initial thought was that the salt will be constantly absorbing moisture from the air and you might be left with a damp building forever. On the other hand, if the salt migrates and forms large crystals as it does in concrete, then it is effectively bound up so the bags might be fine.

Some things to consider...

Voy Grabiec wrote:Welcome to Permies Atte, and thanks for joining.

Do you plan on using water to mix the actual bag infill or just the plaster? What kind of infill and plaster do you plan on using?
I suspect that sea water will work just fine but i don't know for sure. If you explain the details a bit more it'll be easier to help you figure it out.

V

My first taught was for mixing the salt water in the bags but my next question in a month or so will ofcourse be, how about in the plaster?

We are building in a tropicla climate in the Philippines.

I think that what Nick said would apply to plaster as well. It should be fine, possibly weaker because of the salt but that would need to be tested in real life. Maybe the hardness of the sea water would make the bonding actually stronger. Hard to tell without any actual experience.