disposing of plaster

Plaster is mostly calcium sulphate hemihydrate, obtained by roasting gypsum, a common mineral. The reaction reverses on the addition of water. Normally clays like bentonite are added as are cellulosic or starch thickeners. None of these would appear to have much of an environmental impact. In fact, there is no reason you should not dig it into your garden, gypsum lightens clayey soils. If it ends up at a sewage works, like all the other solids it ends up as garden fertiliser much praised by Alan Titchmarsh. Some of it will dissolve in the water, about 2 g/l, go out to sea and form evaporite deposits for use in a couple of hundred million years. The only risk chucking it into drains is that you can block your own sewerage system. The largest object recovered from a sewage works I was involved with was a three-seater-sofa. How exactly it got into the system nobody seems to know. Dead dogs and cats are regularly found on the

John Schmitt

No.

Yes, I bunged mine up doing that over several weeks.

I wash them outside with the hose, and let it drain into the soil. It probably isn't allowed, but It seems to work. After all, plaster is just treated rock.

Smash it to bits when hard then shovel into a polythene bag and dump in the nearest skip.

-- Sir Benjamin Middlethwaite

I once (briefly) worked for a company that built filters for sewage works. On a site visit once we found it had filtered a complete artificial leg! Not sure how the owner managed to flush it.

John Blessing

Nah. Chuck it all down the bog and flush it away. Same goes for surplus concrete.

While I'm on uk.d-i-y can anyone tell me why my garden has flooded?

:)

sponix

Rain ??????????

Baz

I have bunged up the odd sink, but a half litre of brick acid generally unbungs it all :-)

Best is to bury in garden or summat, especially if you have acid soil..

I chuck it over the garden. It certainly doesn't seem to do the grass any harm. Actually one corner of the garden which had a surface depression now has several inches of plaster, and the grass grows in it very happily.

You live near Dr Dribble and have my greatest sympathy.

:-)

A few months ago, I was gonna mix up some undercoat plaster to patch u an eare in the bedroom. Things is.... as I was doing it in the evening all the shops were closed, so had to make do with the last 1/4 bag had.

So, filled a bucket with water and promptly began to tosh in th plaster. Half way through sticking the plaster in, I realised I had to much water in the bucket and not enough plaster to make it solidify... Bugger!

I know.... I'll pour some down the toilet (the laziness gene kicked i as I could not be arsed to go downstairs to throw it in to th garden).

Flushed the toilet and conveniently the water washed the brown slurr away leaving a lovely little deposit of fines sitting in the bottom o the trap.

Got the missus on my case straight away, but bluffed her with my theor of "Don't worry about it!. Every time you have a pony they will pick u a few grains and eventually it will all go!"

To this very day they are still there and they just move around wit the flushes. Bugger if you think I'm putting my hand down there an horsing them out!!

Toilet brush was useless too! Might try the plunger next year if it i still there.

Moral of the story: Never use a pony to pick up plaster. Its hoove just can't grip it!

-- Cordless Crazy

Why ever not?

If you don't flush it well enough, it will settle in the U bend and eventually block it.

I use a hose pipe and clean up in the garden. Once job is done, just dig the garden over.

Rick

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "John Schmitt" saying something like:

Somebody somewhere had one helluva sore ringpiece.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Cordless Crazy saying something like:

Never mind all that; what's an eare and why were you plastering it?

Slake it in an excess of water, to avoid it setting into one solid lump. Then dig it into the garden - here on Bristol's sticky clay it's a useful improvement.

Um, water makes plaster set...

Not into a blob though. Maybe "slake" is the wrong term here.