Moan. Buying lime mortar is an absolute nightmare.

[danlightbulb]

Both a moan and a request for solutions.

I am going to be repointing my whole house. Big job, so will be done over multiple years.

1930s solid wall house so originally done with lime. Original lime is a pale yellow colour with fine aggregate.

I tried to make my own lime mortar using nhl3.5 and local sands. Did not work. The colours it produced were terrible. Pale pinkish grey colour no matter what sand combination I used.

So I looked around. Bought samples of Womersleys Ironstone premixed lime.

Lovely product to work with. All of them had great texture and colour. But I prefer the finer aggregate ones but I prefer the sandstone colour which is more yellow, but which has a larger aggregate size.

Could try and add a pigment to the finer mortar, but if I do that it's yet more testing, yet more batching, and Womersleys are near Leeds and I'm in Birmingham, so I can't just nip there and buy a bag, every time it's added delivery charges.

Ty Mawr in Brecon is also of interest. Their London aggregate is the right colour, I have a very small pre-made sample. They are in Brecon and I'm in Birmingham, so I can't just nip down and buy a bag to test properly.

It's taken me months just to get to this point of testing several combinations.

Can't get any local quality products.

Absolutely tearing my hair out with it to be honest.

Picture below has 6 different combinations of colours in it.

Why is this so difficult.

 

[HayMaker]

I might have misunderstood, but why don't you drive to Ty Mawr and buy enough lime for all you need, as you'll need the lime anyway, and it might well be the right colour once it's on and dried? If it's not the right colour, you can test small samples with different kinds of mortar tones.

Ultimately, very few people would scoff at or even notice any of the colours shown on your picture. If it were me, I'd not want the very darkest grey nor the very lightest, but anything in between would be fine. Striving for perfection on such a scarce (in your area) product is kind of making a rod for your own back, I think you need to accept mediocrity sometimes?

 

[danlightbulb]

I might have misunderstood, but why don't you drive to Ty Mawr and buy enough lime for all you need, as you'll need the lime anyway, and it might well be the right colour once it's on and dried? If it's not the right colour, you can test small samples with different kinds of mortar tones.

Ultimately, very few people would scoff at or even notice any of the colours shown on your picture. If it were me, I'd not want the very darkest grey nor the very lightest, but anything in between would be fine. Striving for perfection on such a scarce (in your area) product is kind of making a rod for your own back, I think you need to accept mediocrity sometimes?

Thanks.

It's just the logistics of it all really. Lots of factors coming together to make things awkward.

None of the lime suppliers are open at weekends so it's a day off work in the week just to travel 4-6 hours round trip to pick up some bags to test.

I've already tried some samples and not 100% happy with any of them. I've already spent c.£50 testing different combinations and it's taken me months. You are probably right I'm chasing perfection though, but I feel the choice of mortar is quite important in the look and quality of the repointing work I need to do.

I can't buy all the material for the whole house at once because this job will be done in stages over multiple years. To do it all at once I would need like 6 weeks off work or something which I can't do. I'll be doing a few square meters per weekend for months on end, probably 2 years in a row. The materials don't store that long.

 

[StephenStephen]

I've found Mike Wye helpful in the past...

 

[danlightbulb]

I've found Mike Wye helpful in the past...

I looked at them. They don't do pre mixed mortars, or aggregates I don't think, and they are in Devon so same problem with distance.