What to do with old bags of multifinish

use/sell it as filler

NT

borrow some old clothes and take it to the tip in the Z4 a few bags at a time?

Cheers JimK

andrew wibbled on Thursday 29 April 2010 21:56

Offer it to anyone who has clay soil - gypsum is a good additive for clay bound soils as it granulates the clay.

Dig it in your soil if your desperate - it's harmless. I've poured loads of plaster washings over my lawn (and cement washings) and the lawn is happy, as long as it's hosed in so it doesn't form big lumps.

None of the above is necessarily legal - but whatever...

No need to borrow, I wear them.

It would still be cheaper to put them in the plaster waste skip for recycling than spend time on getting rid.

I'm actually horrified at the waste plastering and dot and dab seem to generate, seems around 30% of the new material.

AJH

Could always make interior building blocks from it. Not concvinced it'd be worth it, but it just might. Just stone, sand, gypsum & water.

NT

mmm when i had some builders in I too was gutted at the "mix a full bag up whatever and bin what's left attitude"

is there any retarder to delay the set for even a bit? seems the preoccupation with getting it to "go off" to complete a job in a day (which they never did anyway) is at the heart of this, or is it more of a manufacturer's design/sales-volume-based feature???

Cheers JimK

Offer it on freecycle?

I keep a bit of old finish coat for this. It's good for filling in chases. Add a little PVA, and use it for bonding coat, and then a few minutes later you can mix up a little more (without PVA) to use as finish coat. All set in 10 minutes or less.

Finish coat doesn't have anything much in the way of bonding properties unless you mix in a little PVA.

Don't mix up lots of old plaster in one go - you'll discover that setting is an exothermic reaction, and setting fast means all the heat is given off very quickly and it runs away with itself.