Hello!
I'm renovating an old house and need to build a common foundation for the chimney and fireplace, about 0.8 m x 2 m. At the bottom, I have a 20cm reinforced concrete footing. On that, I have built a 60cm high box of concrete blocks and need to fill it with something that can support the weight of the chimney and fireplace. The brick chimney will be about 5 tons + a substantial tiled stove (diameter 80 cm).
Regular concrete would be the obvious choice, but I'm curious if I could mix something functional containing leca balls since I have a lot leftover from frost insulation around the house (4-20mm leca balls).
Consider a mix of cement, sand, and leca balls. Or a mix of ready-mix mortar and leca balls. Opinions?
I'm renovating an old house and need to build a common foundation for the chimney and fireplace, about 0.8 m x 2 m. At the bottom, I have a 20cm reinforced concrete footing. On that, I have built a 60cm high box of concrete blocks and need to fill it with something that can support the weight of the chimney and fireplace. The brick chimney will be about 5 tons + a substantial tiled stove (diameter 80 cm).
Regular concrete would be the obvious choice, but I'm curious if I could mix something functional containing leca balls since I have a lot leftover from frost insulation around the house (4-20mm leca balls).
Consider a mix of cement, sand, and leca balls. Or a mix of ready-mix mortar and leca balls. Opinions?
You can certainly mix leca balls into the concrete as long as you cast a reinforced layer of concrete on top to distribute the load.
It is certainly possible to reinforce Leca concrete. Possibly depending a bit on how many Leca balls are in the mix, it might affect efficiency, but it should be compensable through how you reinforce. Aren't there reinforced Leca beams?