Tried to save money on mortar mix and it backfired hard

I bought a cheap bag of generic mortar mix from a salvage store last month (saved like $8 a bag) and ended up spending 3 extra hours on a retaining wall because the stuff wouldn't stick right no matter how I mixed it. The whole batch crumbled on me after two days, so I had to tear it down and redo it with proper type N mortar. Has anyone else gotten burned by bargain bin materials or am I just unlucky?

3 comments

3 Comments

milaprice1mo ago

Honestly been there with a bag of cheap stuff from a clearance rack. I mean it looked fine in the store but once it hit the wheelbarrow it was like mixing sand and water. Threw the whole thing out after about an hour of fighting with it. These days I just stick with the name brand stuff from the big box store. The extra $8 is worth not having to rip out a wall and start over.

nina_johnson861mo ago

That thing @the_holly said about the thinset cracking is pretty much what I'd expect from those salvage store finds. Read a post on a masonry forum once where a guy tested a bunch of cheap mortars and most of them failed the pull test after a week. The extra lime or sand ratio is off, that's why it crumbles. You're not unlucky, it's just a bad product. Probably cost you more in time and materials than you saved on the bag itself.

the_holly1mo ago

Right there with you, the salvage store stuff is always a gamble. I grabbed a pallet of "contractor grade" thinset once and it dried with these weird cracks all through it, had to scrape every bit off the backer board. Eight bucks saved turned into a whole weekend lost and twice the material cost to fix it.