there is a hole in my wall.

[robgil]

in my kitchen wall , its a clay lump wall. there must have been some damage to the clay wall so there is now a big , ugly , randomly shaped hole that has been very crudely 'patched' with some common brick , horrid orange ones with cement mortar sagging out from between them.
i cant have this. so , i will be buying some new clay lump bricks to try and patch up the patch. the bricks are easy to get hold of , my question is what kind of mortar do i use to glue them together?
the mortar on the original bits is very thin in-between the bricks , just a small slither. is it a lime mortar?

 

[Moo]

No idea about the mortar, I'm afraid, but I just had to log in and post something so that your unanswered message didn't sink any further below the plimsoll line.

Will someone please say something helpful!

 

[middi]

It could be lime putty or more than likely liquid mud. What colour is it?

A picture may help.

 

[Jon Maine]

As suggested picture should help.

Likely that you will find that the original clay for the building was dug up on site or next to it, it should be a simple process of extracting some of this, making a simple mould working it about a bit possibly adding a bit of straw for re-inforcement and turning out of the mould to dry. when dry you could use more of the same in the joints or some lime.

That's my rough interpretation of it this may be useful too http://www.eartha.org.uk/Clay%20Lump%20Construction.doc

 

[robgil]

no pics of the hole i am afraid , but i will get some tomorrow.
this is the wall though. seems to be lots of straw in there.

 

[Penners]

I'd always understood that the mortar for a clay lump structure was usually a clay slurry, as Middi says.

 

[robgil]

just watered down clay lump bricks then?

 

[robgil]

here is the hole.
the room was battened and hard board panelled. i stripped out the hard board and found this bricked up hole.