Ferrocement Garage - page three - Eco-Living Design Services

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Ferrocement Garage - page three

Cultural & Ecological designing

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	The arch above the front door is formed by expanded metal lath filling in between the rebar top of the door opening and the curved rebar forming the roof shape above it. The lath is wrapped around and doubled over on itself above the door top edge, forming a thicker ferrocement 'beam' when plastered.
Hinges for the front and rear doors were embedded directly in the mesh and lath matrix. This is an inside (rear of hinge) view of a front door upper hinge placement. Extra lath overlapping the main mesh-lath matrix and forming a triangular brace from below the hinge up into the arch above the door is also visible here.
	This close-up shows a front/side view of hinge placement. Wires, run from front to rear and rear to front as necessary, were used to tie the hinge firmly in position once it was embedded in the lath/mesh matrix so that it would not be knocked out of position during plastering.
Here's the first full batch of plaster applied to the outside rear corner. I used a simple mix of roughly three and a half (3.5) parts sharp mortar sand to one (1) part portland cement, by volume. I measured dry materials using the one-gallon red buckets seen in some of these images. Mixing was done in an "Odjob" mixing drum, which proved excellent for this purpose.
	This closeup from inside shows how the plaster penetrates the lath and part of the mesh as it is applied to the outside. Wire ties, staggered mesh layers and other armature details are also visible. The coarseness or "tooth" of this inside surface and its rigidity once the outside has set up makes for faster and easier plastering of the inside.
In order to get a good bond between plaster batches, I feathered the edge of each batch down to the armature surface when applying it. After the batch had begun to set up and become firm but before it set too completely, I used a fairly coarse synthetic bristle brush to rough up the feathered edge. The next batch then overlapped this roughened and feathered edge.
	Both front corners now have several batches of plaster on them. I plastered the outside (the lath side) first, working from all four corners up and along the walls. The armature was rather wobbly in places before plastering, so this allowed me to apply a batch in one area, leave it to set up and continue working on another area without disturbing it.