Hairy lime plaster - the history - by Inside Out BBC1

Fascinating! Excellent report by the BBC
Why we should be using hair or fibre in the lime plasters we put on our timber frame buildings.
I won't be repairing my 16th century timber frame house in a sand/lime mix - flexible hairy stuff for me! Or more probably the modern fibre version.

[@Jack0375]

I do plaster/stucco for a living. We worked on older homes from the 1800s and we used a mixture with lime, mud from river, straw/hey, and juice from a prickly pear cactus. Worked out great.

[@StuccoPlastering]

Bravo me fellow plasterers Live long and plaster Mastering Plastering by Kirk Giordano Plastering

[@reecekairo4493]

I dont mean to be so off topic but does anybody know a method to log back into an instagram account? I was dumb forgot the password. I would appreciate any help you can offer me!

[@jacesalvador2387]

@Reece Kairo instablaster ;)

[@reecekairo4493]

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[@reecekairo4493]

@Jace Salvador it worked and I actually got access to my account again. I am so happy:D Thanks so much you saved my ass!

[@jacesalvador2387]

@Reece Kairo Happy to help :)

[@karimaosmani4211]

OMG! I was off doing it with sand! thank God I have seen this documentary!!!

[@jauld360]

I found a similar description of the ability to roll up plaster in Plastering, plain and decorative. "Haired putty was formerly used to a very considerable extent as a setting coat in districts where the local lime was of a strong or hydraulic nature, not very readily manipulated when mixed with sand, as used for setting stuff. This material is composed of fine lime putty and well-beaten white hair. The hair was thoroughly mixed with the putty to toughen and prevent it from cracking. To such an extent was hair added, that in some instances the setting coat, when broken, had the appearance of white felt. This class of setting stuff is now seldom used, owing to the railway facilities for obtaining more suitable lime for the purpose. Mr J. Welling, a prominent plasterer of Shrewsbury, who occasionally uses this material, informs me that during some alterations at County Hall, erected about a century ago, he stripped from the floating a piece of haired putty setting about 4 feet by 2 feet, and 1/4 inch thick, which admitted of being rolled up like a piece of felt, and with but little injury to it". archive.org/details/plasteringplaind00mill/page/51

[@petergambier]

Thanks for posting up the library link to the Millars book. When you read the beginning stuff you are told that there was a fire and poor Mr Millar lost his entire first draught of the tome and had to start doing it plus the designs from scratch. I once worked on an 800 year old former abbey building and tythe barn. After the Spanish Armada was toast, 300 of the Spanish, prisoners of war were kept in the tythe barn as a temporary prison. I worked there for about one year and did the exterior rough-casting work on the exterior walls and internal work. We had 4 full time Museum of London archaeologists on site and when working in a new area we had to take one with us when we went to do some repair or building work so that they could look first. One morning I had to do some repairs to one of the plastered stone columns in the undercroft. The top coat came off just like a sheet it was so hairy, thin and flexible and under this layer, scored into the render was a quatrefoil, a single lined 4 leaved clover, withing that shape was another 4 single lined clover shapes, each one getting smaller. I don't know why the quatrefoil was where it was on the 4 sided column or it's meaning because it just faced the corner of the chamber and could not be seen when you entered the room.

[@GLYNDYER]

John Auld what a great link. Thankyou!

[@petergambier]

Wow, 2 years ago I commented and I'm still using the lime putty and sand mixes but the chalk stuff sure looks great. I once attended a 2 day plastering course at the Wield & Downland Open Air Museum in Hampshire where they have 50 buildings spanning 950 years that were saved from demolition and rebuilt in the grounds. The coarse was given by two people Mr Orton on moulding work and fibrous plastering and Mr Sargant doing pargetting. I asked bill how he stopped his work from cracking and he said different grades of chalk with the lime putty, no sand plus he puts in a handful of chopped straw. I have also done experiments using the fibrous board that the plasterer was rendering the haired coarse stuff onto. One board I wet down and the other I left dry. I put on the coarse stuff and left it to dry, a month or so later when you pushed at the edges it was marginally stronger with the wetted board than the dry one and it was astounding how well it fixed to it. You can cut it with a saw, is super expensive to buy and is NOT the same as the waterproof OSB board.

[@bloodeaglehohos7099]

thx!!

[@MrPeskipisces]

Looking good Philip...whay a guy!!!!!....from Canada on our 150th...as a country.

[@rjmheritageltd5605]

good vid good mix

[@petergambier]

All true, lime uses less energy to produce it than cement and it absords carbon dioxide and it's 'self-healing' as well as being less wasteful because if you mix up too much lime putty mortar you can put it back in a tub with a lid and use it years later if you want. You can't say that using cement or hydraulic lime because once it's mixed together it will go hard and you'll have to bin it. Modern homes are only designed to last 30 or 40 years, build it with cob, lath and strawbale and it will last 100 or 200 years and cost so much less, for the environment and the pocket to build. I once read about a pit of lime putty found in Italy that was about 500 years old, it was still usable, cement has it's place like making lintols or non-porous floors and in it's time was the best thing since sliced bread but now we know that if you want a building to last, use lime. The pantheon, an ancient Roman structure that still has it's original roof, is a testament to the wonders of lime plaster and not forgetting the ancient Egyptian internal lime plastered tomb walls and my own 200 year old lime and cob home, all built with lime but slightly wrecked thanks to added cement in the 1960's and 70's. Well done to the BBC, broadcasting at it's best, worth every penny It's not bollox, it's true and haired lime putty truly is the 'dogs bollox' of the building world.

[@ingebrigtkvamen5331]

The pantheon is actually done in concrete.

[@zazugee]

@@ingebrigtkvamen5331 concrete is a mixture of aggregate and binding agent, its a name that refers to a structure that bears a load and not the name of the binding agent itself maybe you meant cement? but Portland cement is a recent invention, many tried to recreate roman cement, but the current understanding is that its a mixture of lime and pozzolan volcanic ash, it doesnt behave like modern cement, that hardens very fast pozzolanic cement takes a long time to hardens, but becomes stronger than super fast hardening cement Portland cement contains many binding agents, including lime, so its a a sort of hydraulic lime but have more binding agents than pure hydraulic lime

[@Kiansi1]

Hello! I have SO many questions for Philip Poels and/or Mike Frost regarding the plaster mentioned in the video. I have already begun my lath & plaster attempts using 1924 US Bureau of Standards information with disappointing results.

[@simontopspreadplastering5209]

I’m new to this old way of plastering, I’m going to be plastering a building from 1700’s The suits have specs, and guess what... it is the exact stuff that they used in the 60’s that they want me to use.. lime sharp and fibre(not horse hair) don’t you love being told what to do by people who know less than you... might as well use hardwall and multi finish it’s as authentic as the gear they are making me use!!

[@kotteeswarankotteeswaran5007]

Pls tell how to mix propostion of lime plaster?

[@brettknoss486]

Has anyone tried making a fiberglass reinforced plaster? I'd think that would have the same flexibility eith higher tensile strength. Also can polyfilla be added to gypsum guaging?

[@karimaosmani4211]

As a woman who dont know anything about plastering, can you please tell me what are the quantities of the lime hairy putty mix. What is the lime putty quantity? Do I mix it with chalk? How much chalk? And hair, any special hair? Sheep? Thank you so much for your time and knowledge.

[@JonathanRobinson42]

You can buy tubs or bags of lime mortar or render ready made up, you just have to add the hair when you are going to use it. Horse, cow or goat hair, the more flexible the base it is going on to, the more hair. Finer hair (e.g. goat) in finish coats. If you knock the mortar off the edge of the trowel there should be a good 'fringe' of hair hanging off visible. Straight on to stone or brick not much required but if onto lath or wattle, loads, to accommodate movement. If you are making your own using mature putty use it between 1:1 and 1:2 with aggregate (sharp sand usually for base coats but can be chalk (putting a bit of chalk powder in makes it even stickier than normal). If mixing 'hot' (Google 'hot mix lime mortar') with quicklime, 1 part quicklime to 3 parts aggregate. The quicklime will expand so you get a similar end result to the putty mix above. The latter is a slightly riskier mixing process from a personal safety perspective so make sure you have your PPE sorted but if done well and applied properly it can give you a more breathable mortar with less shrinkage and earlier strength so you can get on (a bit) faster. Edit: I forgot to say do not use sheep wool and certainly not raw as the lanolin (grease) on the surface means it will not bind well with the lime. You do occasionally see curly hair in old mortar but it is unlikely to be sheep wool. I added cow hair into the 'suitable' list above and noted that is usually goat hair used in finish coats.

[@ps7462]

If only we could get a rekindled interest in the US. I’ve been studying this subject very closely. At this time it is near impossible to get quick lime or lime putty. I have also read that making lime putty from hydrated lime is likely to produce an inferior product versus making a lime putty straight from calcium oxide.

[@chrissturgeon1571]

I've been searching for months!

[@jauld360]

hydrated lime won't set, because it absorbs CO2 from the air to form calcium carbonate. Having fine particles with a large surface area means that the conversion to the carbonate is rapid.

[@petergambier]

If you put a load of snail shells in a wood fire, let it finish and then put the broken shell bits into some water.........you get calcium carbonate. Sorry to hear of your troubles Philip, you could order some fine kibbled quick-lime instead of the coarser lump-lime that's found in a kiln.

[@Fen1and]

There is renewed interest in this. On Talking Natural Home facebook group, (80K member - 1m viewer) there are a lot of people who are talking about it about how to get it and use it. Quite few in the the US aswell as architects there

[@anonoyingmuck8071]

lime was the original plasticizer. Co -polymer takes that place in many new products. The hair in cement (exterior) plaster is now replaced with fibre glass but be careful, too little water for absorbtion can results in cracking. a delicate balance.

[@anonoyingmuck8071]

possibly the problem with the 1970s mix was the balance of plasticizers going wild

[@imiy]

what's the proportion?

[@user-gw6bu2px8c]

Where can we find the animal hair

[@retired4337]

In the last minute of the episode the plaster was being applied to a substrate that I have never seen here in the U.S. Can you tell what it was ?

[@db7610]

RETIRED EDUCATOR it’s a passiv-haus so looks like some sort of recycled insulation. Perhaps a type of EPS board.

[@mervynhardy6161]

He doesn't even get a trowel full of stuff off his handboard properly let alone keep his trowel clean.

[@ChrisBGramz4u]

Since this new/old recipe is breathable. Will this stick to cob walls? In the past i have been told lime plaster could not be used, because cob needs to breath, and modern plaster does not. Seems the same problem you had.

[@flat-earther]

Did you find out? I think in Yemen they used lime plaster called Qudad which hardens solid and is waterproof, I think they used it to waterproof mud houses.

[@ChrisBGramz4u]

@@flat-earther I've read a lot of papers an such since then. Yes one can use lime as a plaster. Or add it into the cob finish, how much depends on the amount of clay in the earth ones using. Every recipe is a little different, depending on where one lives. One should also be able to add a bit of cement directlyinto the cob, if desired, as well. But think of the earth an the cement as the same thing, when mixing. Cob, sand, straw. Cement, sand, stone. Cob+cement, sand, straw or stone. It seems cob an cement are almost the same. To make cement they fire clay filled earth in a kilm. Then grind it into a powder.

[@Parkour_People]

Yes look up Mike Wye Ltd videos, best instruction I've found. You need to use lime for cob, specifically none hydraulic lime that hardens via carbonation. That's the most breathable and flexible lime.

[@larryholland1466]

I thought plaster and rendering came through the Roman era?

[@Chanesmyname]

Looks much harder to apply and more expensive, I wonder if that is why it lost favour

[@adobemastr]

No doubt.

[@m101ist]

Ceiling falling down, done by cowboys plasterers. 😳

[@TheRealAmythyst]

But is it water resistant?

[@chrissturgeon1571]

Yes, the lime grabs carbon dioxide from the air to turn into Calcium Carbonate. Essentially limestone. It can be used to weatherproof erodible sub walls like cob or rammed earth.

[@jfsabl4917]

unlike gypsum plaster (which gets crumbly with water) lime plaster hardens. Either type can be found as lath and plaster...done with a double layer...with animal hair in the ground coat (bottom layer). You can find gypsum with animal hair from, I think, 1900-1920 or so (basically, so long as horses were still a major mode of transport / before horses were banned from city streets.) Horsehair was a waste product, more or less). Lime with hair through 1900, maybe 1910 or later, depending where.

[@dismaldog]

Fantastic-looks quite awkward to apply with all that hair content-truly think i was born too late but would love to do this type of work with 10yrs to go till retirement

[@shaun2049]

So is coloured render any good

[@MMGJ10]

The thumb nail looks like Jaromir Jagr, but older and no mullet

[@frederickbowdler8169]

Whilst that may be true a lot of the cement render was applied because the wood was already rotten . my advice is to use a part mix of cement lime and sand which has a bit more strength but allows breathing as well a mesh of some sort is also useful to mimic the wattle.

[@Justthemow]

Why did he say 5 inches thick if they are in an EU country

[@thefowlyetti2]

UK uses a mix of imperial and metric units.. Younger people are tending to use metric more

[@jonerlandson1956]

well... i'm learning a lot...

[@mikegert2199]

A number of things not quite right here. One is you dont apply the render in one inch coats, another is the claim that the insect and rot damage had occurred in the last forty odd years - that is nonsense, esp if those are oak sections.

[@garymarcks]

mike gert when this was actually filmed anglia lime company was stating there lime was to go on 25 mm - 30 mm in one coat. Not that I agree with that. If you can get an old bit of lime from the building like philp was holding you will see that has clearly been put on in one coat and lasted for hundreds of years. With anglia limes lime plaster they still haven't quite replicated what philp was holding although they do produce good lime plasters, you just need to know how to apply them properly. Once this project was completed inside and out it was simply stunning, the BBC should have go back to show the end result. Not many would have made the house look like it did as an end product.