Residentially speaking ?
Since moving on from being in turbines, I'm at the other aspects of power station life, the feeding and diapering of the power stations, getting coal in, and removing the ash.
One of the interesting parts of the job is trying to find more applications for the stuff.
For those that are unaware, power station ash has some pozzolanic qualities (cementitious), and is mixed to greater or lesser extent, as an environmentally friendly "cement extender", however making concrete more resistant to chemical attack and carbonation.
However, it's use is pretty much single stream...through the cement companies, and into concrete and not much else. Scale of industry has seen to that, in that it's the quickest way to move reasonable volumes.
Hasn't always been that way, this pair of conjoined houses here in town was built, along with dozens of clones from a series of pre-fabbed "blinds", with coal ash and hydrated lime rammed into the space, forming walls...sort of a super strength rammed earth construction.
Other backyards uses used things like my back steps, shown below, where you can clearly see the blast furnace slag peeking through the concrete surface.
These were all reasonably plentiful "wastes" from local industry 50 years ago, and were part of common construction in the district, as we had coal mines, power stations, steam trains, blast furnaces etc.
Now, with power generation centralised, there's not much "scavenging" going on for these products, as they aren't scattered around like the old days.
My question is, would you guys consider buying ash for home use ?
Houses down here are increasingly being made from clay, energy intensive bricks, then cement rendered (bagged) to give it a monolithic look...why not make them monolithically in the first place (first example above), or for construction purposes, using ash based bricks, and then bagging them ?
Would you buy/build with power station ash ?
Why/why not ?
Ash and lime make a superb sub-base for paving blocks, and can be made to have permiabilities that rival clay.
Would you buy bags of the stuff alongside the sand, cement, mortar at your local hardware/landscaping store if there were how to's on how to use it ?
Since moving on from being in turbines, I'm at the other aspects of power station life, the feeding and diapering of the power stations, getting coal in, and removing the ash.
One of the interesting parts of the job is trying to find more applications for the stuff.
For those that are unaware, power station ash has some pozzolanic qualities (cementitious), and is mixed to greater or lesser extent, as an environmentally friendly "cement extender", however making concrete more resistant to chemical attack and carbonation.
However, it's use is pretty much single stream...through the cement companies, and into concrete and not much else. Scale of industry has seen to that, in that it's the quickest way to move reasonable volumes.
Hasn't always been that way, this pair of conjoined houses here in town was built, along with dozens of clones from a series of pre-fabbed "blinds", with coal ash and hydrated lime rammed into the space, forming walls...sort of a super strength rammed earth construction.
Other backyards uses used things like my back steps, shown below, where you can clearly see the blast furnace slag peeking through the concrete surface.
These were all reasonably plentiful "wastes" from local industry 50 years ago, and were part of common construction in the district, as we had coal mines, power stations, steam trains, blast furnaces etc.
Now, with power generation centralised, there's not much "scavenging" going on for these products, as they aren't scattered around like the old days.
My question is, would you guys consider buying ash for home use ?
Houses down here are increasingly being made from clay, energy intensive bricks, then cement rendered (bagged) to give it a monolithic look...why not make them monolithically in the first place (first example above), or for construction purposes, using ash based bricks, and then bagging them ?
Would you buy/build with power station ash ?
Why/why not ?
Ash and lime make a superb sub-base for paving blocks, and can be made to have permiabilities that rival clay.
Would you buy bags of the stuff alongside the sand, cement, mortar at your local hardware/landscaping store if there were how to's on how to use it ?
