Concrete, so hopefully no asbestos. These blocks were put in some time around 1935 as best as I can tell. I spent a lot of time checking out the drywall situation because the drywall brand contained up to 50% asbestos from 1950 until it was taken out completely. It was a huge relief to date the extension work to the 1930s.
Also I've taken to using a respirator with P100 filters in it. I don't wear a full hazmat suit but the respirator is very good at keeping the crud out of my nose.
Can't say I've seen fibres in it. I can see a very visible difference in quality between the original bricks and the extensions - the newer bricks seem to be filled with whatever crud was on hand while the original ones are much more evenly made. Having ground up quite a lot of it all I see is a dull gray dust that gets into just about everything.
Another session with the angle grinder. I can't be sure I've got absolutely all the grinding done in that room - I won't know that until I fit the insulation panels - but I think I've got it all. I've been using an offcut to look for prominent lumps and I think I got them all. Now to give it a day or two to let the dust settle out of the air and run the vac again.
Tip: Corn Huskers lotion packed in finger protectors. Stop or relieve deep cracking in sub-zero weather.
My first wife told me that I used to act out my dreams when I was very tired. I became Superman, Batman, Spider-Man oh, and my father.
Preparing to assemble 36+ years of ministry work - thousands of photos, movie snips etc - into a DVD format for the mission community. Glad i have a habit of collecting such items.
Saw a big fat robin on the fence today. Rare spot that is not buried under snow-pack. She is the paragon of optimism.
NIce day today, so went for a walk around town. A couple of days back I went for my first walk in the woods in literally some months. It's been too long, I'd barely gotten into the trees and started to feel peaceful. The snow made the walk interesting but I decided if I couldn't complete the walk I'd go as far as I could and find a log or tree stump to sit on and just soak in the nature. I'm really not a city boy any more.
I'll be doing my first cross-country ski race tomorrow. More like a fun-run than a serious race though. I'd be demolished in something like that.
Trying to understand mortar. I've started using mortar rather than cement for my wall repairs because, despite the guy in Lowe's telling me the cement I'd been using was OK for my wall repairs, a couple of other people have made me doubt. I've managed to get mortar mixed, struggled with it because it doesn't stick on the back of my trowel like the cement did, and now it's in place it dries to an incredibly sandy consistency so that if I poke it with the trowel it crumbles. At present I'm spraying it with water every 12 hours or so trying to see if that will help it set in a state that's more useable. In any event the mortar mix is $7 for 80lb and the cement mix is $12 for 20lb so, assuming I can get it to work as it should, I'm paying 1/7 of the price for it. I just need to be sure I'm not going to end up having to revisit a load of joints because everything crumbles. A friend who used to work in construction said that 100-year-old concrete blocks will suck moisture out of everything, which is why I'm trying the approach of spraying it all with water. It's remarkable to watch the water hit the mortar joint and make it wet, and practically see it dry up right before my eyes.
There are bags, very similar to pastry bags, that you fill with wet mortar and squeeze the material into the gaps between bricks. You might be aware. There is also an acrylic ad-mix that you can use instead of water. Excellent bonding and dries very hard and impermeable.
That would be handy. It's crazy how fast some of these kids are. I finished up my 9km in about 57 minutes. About 4 minutes later, I hear the name of kid from our school who just finished up his 18km route. Granted he was skate skiing versus me doing classic, but still...