Having retired a few months ago, I recently volunteered with a local "Habitat-type" organization, understanding that I would be called on to do minor home repairs for local vets, seniors, and poor people. I've done some of this in the past with a church group, and I know that it is usually not as "fulfilling" as you would hope or expect.
Yesterday, I was assigned to work with a couple of guys who were "parging" the basement walls of an old house in Pittsburgh. These walls were universally used in low-cost houses in central Pittsburgh a hundred years ago. The foundations were made of limestone boulders stuck together with mortar, and over time the mortar turns to dust and has to be replaced. It is a difficult, time-consuming, thankless job, but I suppose if you don't do it, there might be a catastrophic failure sometime in the future.
The two guys working there were both salaried employees of the AmeriCorps, and were doing a number of projects on this particular house that would last - I gather - a month or six weeks. The materials they had seemed to be appropriate, and they had worked out a process to get it done that was, I thought, simply wrong. After knocking off the loose pieces with a hand chisel, they were mixing up chemicals and two different types of mortar (with water, of course), then smearing the compound on the walls with their gloved hands. Half of it just fell to the floor (where it could not be re-used), and the other half stuck to the walls, but very tenuously. It did harden fairly quickly, but looked like a half-assed job in the end.
I told them, "There MUST be a better way of doing this," but they said this is how they were told to proceed. Maybe we should moisten the walls first, at least, I suggested. "No. We are doing it right." I said jokingly that they had to go to YouTube and get some pointers, and they just laughed.
It was a long, frustrating day in nasty conditions, but I volunteered for that, so I can't complain about that aspect of it.
Then I got home and went to - You guessed it! - YOUTUBE. After checking out a couple of the more promising videos on parging, There IS a better way, using exactly the materials we had on hand. You wire-brush the walls to prepare them, moisten the walls, then paint on the "bonding compound" (we were mixing that in with the cement and water). Once the bonding compound sets ( a couple minutes), you can TROWELL on the mortar mix. The bonding compound helps the mortar adhere to the wall. Doing it properly, the whole basement could be done in a day. These guys were going to take a week using their method, and the stuff is going to crumble and fall off those walls within a year. No question about it.
No private contractor would ever do such shoddy work, or waste materials like that. But these guys were emphatically proud of their work to help the community.
Perverse, ain't it?
Yesterday, I was assigned to work with a couple of guys who were "parging" the basement walls of an old house in Pittsburgh. These walls were universally used in low-cost houses in central Pittsburgh a hundred years ago. The foundations were made of limestone boulders stuck together with mortar, and over time the mortar turns to dust and has to be replaced. It is a difficult, time-consuming, thankless job, but I suppose if you don't do it, there might be a catastrophic failure sometime in the future.
The two guys working there were both salaried employees of the AmeriCorps, and were doing a number of projects on this particular house that would last - I gather - a month or six weeks. The materials they had seemed to be appropriate, and they had worked out a process to get it done that was, I thought, simply wrong. After knocking off the loose pieces with a hand chisel, they were mixing up chemicals and two different types of mortar (with water, of course), then smearing the compound on the walls with their gloved hands. Half of it just fell to the floor (where it could not be re-used), and the other half stuck to the walls, but very tenuously. It did harden fairly quickly, but looked like a half-assed job in the end.
I told them, "There MUST be a better way of doing this," but they said this is how they were told to proceed. Maybe we should moisten the walls first, at least, I suggested. "No. We are doing it right." I said jokingly that they had to go to YouTube and get some pointers, and they just laughed.
It was a long, frustrating day in nasty conditions, but I volunteered for that, so I can't complain about that aspect of it.
Then I got home and went to - You guessed it! - YOUTUBE. After checking out a couple of the more promising videos on parging, There IS a better way, using exactly the materials we had on hand. You wire-brush the walls to prepare them, moisten the walls, then paint on the "bonding compound" (we were mixing that in with the cement and water). Once the bonding compound sets ( a couple minutes), you can TROWELL on the mortar mix. The bonding compound helps the mortar adhere to the wall. Doing it properly, the whole basement could be done in a day. These guys were going to take a week using their method, and the stuff is going to crumble and fall off those walls within a year. No question about it.
No private contractor would ever do such shoddy work, or waste materials like that. But these guys were emphatically proud of their work to help the community.
Perverse, ain't it?
