It’s time to get get on with work in the adega area to get our main bathroom installed. First though we’ll need something to walk on! This is the story of laying our first limecrete floor.

The adega currently runs on a downhill slope, from the front of the house to the back. It drops almost half a meter over its 8 metre length. Not ideal for a slippery bathroom floor!

So the first job is to get levelling and remove any excess stone, old concrete and earth. Secondly, we’ll prepare water and waste pipe channels and then, when everything is in place, lay the first limecrete floor in Casa Grande. Sounds easy, yes?

We have large rocks forming the old floor, all sitting between looser, smaller stones and gravel, and covered in clay and soil. Occasionally an animal bone will also present itself!

The terrace is being raised from the earth and rubble we are extracting from the adega. Unfortunately, it’s on the other side of the house, so we have to shift it bucket by bucket. And there’s plenty of it! When completed and with the gabion wall retainers full and in place, the terrace will be a peaceful, go-to spot at the end of a busy day. Perfect with a glass of vinho tinto and a cat on your lap. Anyway, enough of the romantic dreaming for the moment; on with that bathroom floor.

After we’ve cleared the rubble and marked out the bathroom area, it was time to lay water pipes for the shower, WC, bidet and vanity sink. The pipework will run under the limecrete floor. To protect the pipework, they get encased in corrugated tubing – blue for cold and red for hot. Plumbers in Portugal will use green tubing for the cold supply, but we had trouble finding any when we came to do this part of the job. We opted for blue instead. It seemed like the right thing to do!

In Portugal, plumbing fittings are different to what we use in the UK, so we had to weigh up the options; crimped fittings or heavier-duty compression joints. Both are considerably more expensive than the UK’s PVC push fittings we are used to. As we have plenty of plumbing to do here, now and in the future, we opted for the crimping method of jointing. It’s faster to work with. We did need to buy the crimping tools, but the pipe joints were slightly cheaper than the compression joints equivalent. And with the art of crimping mastered, this method became very efficient for our needs.

It’s really important, in our opinion, to ensure that the fabric of these old houses is allowed to breathe. Our research told us that filling spaces and rendering stonework with modern building materials like concrete, sand and cement will smother the essence of how historic buildings work and live, leading to future issues such as trapped moisture, mould and dampness. It’s something we want to avoid. From a renovation cost point of view, there is no significant difference between using more traditional materials like limecrete and slaked lime plaster. There is a bit more work involved and more caution required with lime products, but the benefits outweigh the alternatives.

Of course, there is a lot of debate on this subject, with many trades persons here in Portugal opting for quicker, more modern methods. We don’t need to rush this aspect of our renovation or make for future problems and so will be spending a considerable amount of time and effort on making sure we do not destroy and smother the fabric of this building. That doesn’t mean we won’t be using more modern materials and methods on some of our projects (like our new circular stairs, for example); we just won’t be laying floors or plastering walls with concrete.

The finished floor consists of two layers containing various-sized clay ball aggregate.

We have used the ARGEX brand expanded clay. It is a natural, ecological, long-lasting, non-flammable and inert product. It does not decompose or rot, is light and capable of storing a certain amount of humidity, which is slowly released.
The aggregate comes in two sizes. The first level is 8 – 16mm clay balls enclosed in a geotextile wrap, permitting moisture under the floor to be released. Nothing is trapped; no damp odours. This first layer is poured loose. Limecrete cement can be used at this level but isn’t necessary.

Once the first level is laid and wrapped in the geotextile, we can mix and pour the second level. We now use a smaller clay aggregate size (3 – 8mm), slowly adding HL5 lime cement and water into the mix. We use the same method as laying a concrete slab, only the limecrete aggregate is slightly drier, stickier and firmer to work with. Concrete will find its own level to some degree because of its weight, whereas this limecrete floor needs to be ‘worked’ more under a float because its lighter. Enter Julie, queen of the float!

And that’s it! Our first floor and new bathroom window (which we installed along the way).

The limecrete will take a little longer to set than concrete and while we could walk on the floor the next day, it did feel a little soft underfoot. The day after that it was considerably harder, so we’ll probably give it a week to 10 days before walking on it more and then continue with laying the floor tiles that we recently purchased.

In the mean time, we’ll build the walls and start thinking about the excitement of installing the shower and loo! We’ll keep you updated as we progress.

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