Ready mixed mortar

Of recent years ready mixed mortars have come into use particularly on sites where extensive areas of brickwork are laid. The wet material is delivered to site, ready mixed, to save the waste, labour and cost of mixing on site.
A wide range of lime and sand, lime cement and sand and cement and sand mixes is available. The sand may be selected to provide a chosen colour and texture for appearance sake or the mix may be pigmented for the same reason.
Lime mortar is delivered to site ready to use within the day of delivery. Cement mix and cement lime mortar is delivered to site ready mixed with a retarding admixture.
The retarding admixture is added to cement mix mortars to delay the initial set of cement. The initial set of ordinary Portland cement occurs some 30 minutes after the cement is mixed with water, so that an initial hardening occurs to assist in stiffening the material for use as rendering on vertical surfaces for example.
The advantages of ready mixed mortar are consistency of the mix, the wide range of mixes available and considerable saving in site labour costs and the inevitable waste of material common with site mixing.