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seattle_li

Newbie questions: tufa vs. concrete and 'skeleton' for wall

seattle_li
18 years ago

Reading through the "newbie raised bed" thread and I had a couple questions. I'm also trying to make walls for a retaining bed (but need them to be thin so it won't work for me to use/make blocks).

So what I'm trying to figure out is:

1) What do you think would be best to make the "skeleton" out of if I use the "build the mix into chicken wire, etc" method...will chicken wire give it enough strength? my one idea was that maybe chicken wire or mesh around some form of lattice (like you see on the top of fences) would help it stay upright better - does that matter?

2) and several regarding concrete:

a) first, a really newbie question...what's the difference between concrete and 'tufa? -- Per an mix tufaenough suggested in the other post, if I use peat, vermiculite/perlite and Portland, doesn't that make it tufa? or can I even mix peat into "regular" concrete and have it cure ok?

b) even more newbie question..if I want to make lightweight concrete (adding in perlite instead of sand) what exactly do I need to buy (ie - do I still buy a bag of "Portland cement", is it a bag labelled just "concrete mix", or is there some other name I'm looking for at the bigbox store?)

c) And last - does concrete need to be cured in a different way than tufa?

Any and all advice is appreciated and thanks for the help! I'll try to post pictures once I get started.... :)

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