Different qualities of building sand?

[TrevorL]

I hope LLL or one of you can help me.
I may sound a daft question, but do you get different qualities of building sand?
The reason I ask is, I have just taken delivery of a bulk bag of sand from Buildbase. It says on the invoice: 'Sevenoaks Building Sand BBBS1T'. The problem is that the sand is more a golden/dark brown than a yellow and when I tried to mix up some mortar with it in my mixer, it produced a sticky mess. When I tipped the mixer up to empty into my wheelbarrow only a bit of it came out. I had to scrape the rest out from around the drum! Also it took a lot longer to clean the mixer afterwards.
The mix was sticking like the proverbial to the blanket!
I then tipped it away and mixed up some fresh using the old sand I already been using.
Maybe I should ask Buildbase if they have had a problem.
Thanks

[lutonlagerlout]

trevor are you a pro or diy?

by the sounds of it the sand was delivered wet and you added too much water

if its been raining hard i always tell the lads to watch how much water they put in a mix as you can always add water later

but you cannot take away

cheers LLL

[TrevorL]

Thanks for your reply LLL

I would say the new sand was drier than the old if anything.
I mixed it well dry before adding the water and added the water graduallly. Tomorrow I might add a little water to the sand before adding the cement.
I've mixed up some wet mixes with the old sand but it's never been anywhere as sticky as this!

All the best
Trevor

[Dave_L]

Did you add any Feb?

[lutonlagerlout]

Thanks for your reply LLL

I would say the new sand was drier than the old if anything.
I mixed it well dry before adding the water and added the water graduallly. Tomorrow I might add a little water to the sand before adding the cement.
I've mixed up some wet mixes with the old sand but it's never been anywhere as sticky as this!

All the best
Trevor

eh?
mix always starts with 3/4 bucket of water Trevor
then 2-3 shovels of sand
then cement and plasticiser
then remaining sand
???
LLL

[TrevorL]

Thanks for that.
Yes, I did add Feb.
LLL, I will try mixing it the way you recommend. Although my way seemed to work up until now - I've been lucky I guess.
There's definitely something different about this sand!
I do add the water first when I mix concrete.
I only mix small batches of mortar at a time, otherwise I would get a lot of wastage at the rate I'm laying bricks! Hopefully I should speed up as I learn.
It's really good to have all this useful advice.
Regards
Trevor

[mctavish]

I had a great deal of trouble earlier this year with building sand. It seemed to vary a lot depending on where I had it from, some of the stuff from my local builders yard was almost like sharp sand and although it mixed correctly, the mortar dried very light. My mate who is in the building trade thought I had put too much cement into it but when I mixed a load in front of him he said there was no problem with anything I was doing.

I then tried some B&Q sand which was a lot better and dried the correct colour, but when i needed a couple of extra bags to finish the job I had the same problems as mentioned, the mix was so sticky I could not get it off the shovel.

Stu

[Rich H]

I was doing a job one street away from the high wycombe TP so thought it would be handy to use their 'orange' building sand for the rendering. The small bags were full of bits of grit, i.e., impossible to render the top coat smoothly. Went down there to swap the small bags for some loose from the bulk bags and got the same damn thing. Ended up driving five miles to a B&Q to get something decent.