Doesn't make sense to me though. Bag of cement costs 10€, bag of quicklime costs 18€ (but has almost twice the density of cement)
to make an earth/lime mortar you need, generally:
5% quicklime
35% clean sharp sand
60% "dirty" sand (loam) which is unwashed sand with clay/silt particles.
For sand/cement plaster you need:
20% cement
80% clean sharp sand
1 ton of "dirty" sand costs
9€ !!!
1 ton of clean sharp sand costs 60€
So if we do the math:
cement: 0.22€/L
quicklime: 0.26€/L
clean sharp sand: 0.04€/L
dirty sand (loam): 0.006€/L !!!
earth/lime mortar costs
0.46€ for 1m2 plaster at 15mm thickness
sand/cement mortar costs
1.14€ for 1m2 plaster at 15mm thickness
So when you're plastering a house with earth/lime mortar,
you roughly save 55% on material costs.
In terms of plastering, there is little difference between earth/lime and sand/cement with added plasticizer. It has the same weight. The only real difference is the set time. Sand/cement will harden within 24 hours and be fully cured after a month or so. Earth/lime initially dries out and then takes up to 3 months to fully cure and reach its full strength. In practise, after about 1 week it is usually sufficiently hard for finishing, probably even earlier. Also, on high suction masonry backgrounds, it will harden within half an hour because the masonry sucks out the moisture. So in terms of organisation and also the method of spreading/ruling/floating is different from the sand/cement method where you would usually kill the suction to give you enough time to spread a wall in one go and then rule it off. With earth/lime you can't kill the suction because that would defeat the main purpose of using this plaster (stimulation the convective drying capacity of the wall system). So earth/lime is applied in the traditional method before suction killing chemicals were invented. This is the method
@Smudger1 was talking about.
But since you're not applying pva/sbr to the walls, you save time
and money. But you do add a little bit of time because you have to form screeds on the masonry and then fill them in. Although I think in practice, this added time is negligible.
So really, in terms of cost/efficiency as well sustainability (stimulating convective drying and thus largely eliminating damp problems), earth/lime mortar makes sense from an initial standpoint (cheaper initial cost) but also in the long term, because costs related to (future) damp issues will be decreased dramatically.
Earth/lime is the future. It's much more fun to work with (imo). It has a much nicer colour (earth toned) and it spreads like butter without having to add plasticiser. It also smells lovely... it's hard to explain the smell, but adding the quicklime to it, it give it a sort of earthy and sweet smell. It's very enjoyable to work with.
Also; there is
ZERO WASTE with earth lime. At the end of the day, if you have gear left, just put it in plastic bag or leave it in a tub or bucket and just cover it. The mortar will be perfectly fine as long as the moisture stays in it. I've kept earth/lime mortar in plastic bags for months.
I haven't done much cement work so I don't know how cement affects your skin. The earth/lime can burn your hands but I've never worn gloves. In fact, working with lime taught me to be more neat. If you work neat, your hands will be fine.
edit:
I forgot to add: earth/lime is more flexible than sand/cement. So slight movements in the house won't affect it as much as it would sand/cement. Lime also has self-healing properties, it can deal with microcracks.
Even tho earth/lime is more flexible, it is still strong. If you punch the wall, the skin on your fist will split before the wall does. And yes, I've tested this.
Online, you also read a lot about home owners complaining they can't find any plasterers that want to do lime plastering. I'm pretty sure that if you get into this game, you can charge a little more because lime plasterers are hard to find. So yeah... material costs are lower, you're giving your customers a better product and you'll make more money.
There is absolutely no reason why you guys shouldn't be doing this. Imagine the best plasterers took matters into their own hands and start changing the industry from the bottom up...
Before the technological revolution, the mortar design was decided by the craftsmen. Traditionally, this has always been so. But then some idiots who sit in an office all day decided they knew better... and the irony? These same people are now slowly starting to realise that we have to reduce our reliance on cement... And the solution is literally hidden within the listed properties from the past, built by our great ancestors.
Thousands of years of tradition has a lot of common sense and wisdom in it. Until "scientists" and "industrial lobby" and "corrupt governments" ruined it.