On an episode of MASH, becaue of gems, they need to put a cement floor in the operating room. The army supposedly won't do it because they are a mobile hospital.
Klinger told Hawkeye the formula was 1 part cement, 4 parts sand, and 6 parts gravel. He wrote it down. Later Klinger admits that's wrong and it's 3 parts gravel.
The concrete doesn't harden. Does the amount of gravel have much to do with hardening?
Or is this like the way they show lockpicking in the movies, never really showing how to do it, so more people won't know?
Perhaps they never even give the real formula, for fear more people would make concrete!
Extra gravel won't make it set differently. Just harder to float and level. Some older sidewalks/roads are probably 6 parts gravel. But I would't go over 5, Might affect the strength to resist cracking.
Yeah. MASH was a good show but because it was "TV" not necessarily a reflection of real life.
For the show to have been completely factual I suppose they could have had Klinger add considerably too much water and had the cement simply not have been ready in time .
I haven't checked, but I fully expect that every bag of Portland cement in the home center has instructions for mixing it with aggregate, sand and water to make concrete. It's not a trade secret.
That episode was just on ME-TV a few days ago. I was thinking the same thing, it's TV not the real world. It would still dry, but be hard to trowel, and would make weaker concrete. I also noticed they mixed it by hand in a wheelbarrow and it had way too much water in the mix. But again, it's a TV show!
It actually did harden on the show, because they were doing surgery on it later in the show. It was sort of vague on how long it took, etc, but once again, it's TV.
When I was young, I mixed a whole garage floor by hand, and it was a lot of work. But I know how, and that show had several flaws. Yet the average person wont know!
By the way, when I mixed that floor, I used
1.3 portland cement
2 sand
3 stones.
More Portland cement makes a stronger concrete, and since that garage belongs to relatives, I just recently saw it, and it's still in good shape with little cracking. This is many years later. I mixed it around 1980 to 82.
I'd never mix that much by hand again. I'd least least use an electric drum mixer, but it's a lot easier to just have a truck deliver it.
It might be less expensive to have it delivered also. About 10 years ago I needed about a yard. I think the price of sackcrete was atleast double the same ammount delivered. Only problem was a truck could not get where I wanted and it would have been a minimum charge of much more for only one yard.
Jumping to a conclusion. . On the episode they called it cement, never used the word concrete, even if others would have correctly called it concrete. MASH was the only thing that wasn't factual.
You must have missed a moment. Someone pointed out there was still a lot of cement [and sand and gravel] left, so it implied they removed the first stuff and either made new, (or mixed in more of what was missing. )
So now are you going to tell me that the things I learned about surgery aren't reliable either. Am I going to have to remove the "Skilled in surgery" line from my Facebook and Linkedin profiles?
That's great.
For a few years my parents rented a house with a stone planter in front of the front patio, with the stones shaped and laid like bricks. Hmmm. Maybe it was a brick planter, with a stone-like layer at the top. Eventually 1/4 of the planter fell apart, and they didn't want to bother the landlord about this, so when visiting for just a couple days, I put it back together, mixing mortar and using it as if it were glue. Not removing the mortar that was stuck in place, but putting on a thin layer most places and filling in any gaps where the mortar fell off.
It lasted several years until they moved, but 6 years after that, I was in NJ, and it was only an hour out of my way to check it out again.**
I got there and it looked nice, but not perfect, and I just couldnt' tell if it had been totally rebuilt or if it was the way I had done it. No one was home to ask, and I couldnt' find out their names to call them. (I wish you coudl find a phone number by looking up an address, either the address of a fixed phone*** or of the person who owns the cell phone.) What happened to the City Directory?. In cities where it was published, It listed stuff like this by address, based on door to door data collectors. There was also a criss-cross in other cities
**I also wanted to check out the neighborhood itself, including a stream at the bottom of a steep rocky hill, but it had been raining and it would have washed me away if I'd gone much farther down. It's centrally located so maybe I'll go back later, but by then the tenants won't be the ones who would know if the planter was totally rebuilt.
Yeah it's great to be young. But your muscles probably grew because of doing that.
I had tentative plans to enlarge my basement, and build a deck over the added room. (Plus I wanted to put in an outside stairs to the basement. It got too complicated and I didnt' do anything.)
No way to get a truck or car close to my townhouse backyard, even the front of the house is not that close to the street, so then I had a plan to use those unfoldable pipes that deliver concrete. Going over the house, iirc, the long one just barely did not reach.
IIRC, the guy then told me they had a little motorized concrete hopper that would fit in the 8 feet between my fence posts. Removing a section of wood 42" picket fence would have been easy.
Probaly a hefty extra charge for the unfoldable pipes and the motorized hopper, but might be worth it sometimes.
I want to put some concrete in a small feed room 7 x 10 feet, inside my barn. There is no way a truck can get there with trees, my garage, and some steps. I suppose I could wheelbarrow it from the truck, but would have to go down those two steps. And would have to pay to hire at least one helper if not 2 or 3. That's slightly less than a yard, and they charge quite a bit extra for anything under 2 yards. I decided to just mix it myself from raw materials (portland cement, sand, stome). Redimix is too costly and I've always added more portland to it, because the stuff tends to be a weak mix.
I own an electric drum mixer now, since i bought one cheap at an auction. I figure I can do half that room at a time, because it would be very hard to trowel it in one pour anyhow, because the door is on the narrow end, so I'd have to try to trowel it while standing on it (inside the room). I'll just do a 5x7 area, insert a few rebars to joon the second pour, and then do that one. That 5x7 area seems small, but it still takes a lot of time to mix that stuff.
I had considered just buying patio blocks, but I'd have to cut a lot of them and fit arount the posts and an electrical conduit. Cutting concrete is often harder than mixing it, plus I want a tight fit to keep mice/rats from getting in there.
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