Marissa Bartz: Hi, my name is Marissa Bartz and I am a research
associate here at NCPTT.
I'm working on a study that deals with evaluating anti-efflorescence, or salt crystals, that
form on historic masonry.
I'm evaluating different products to see which one works best on preventing these salt crystals
from forming.
Marissa Bartz: Today, I am going to be testing the water
absorption of this control wall.
Basically, it just sees how much water is absorbed in or how long it takes one milliliter
of water to be absorbed in the wall.
This test is good because it can tell us how the coding has been affected by the weathering
that we did previous to this test.
I will show you guys how to start this test.
Marissa Bartz: The first step for a [Reiland 00:01:02] test
is to put the plastic cement or whatever puddy you are using onto the Reiland tube.
But before you do that, you just want to clean it off so that way it adheres a little better.
I'm just using a chem wipe.
Nice and clean now.
Then you just roll it between your hands, just like you would if you were playing with
Play-Doh.
Just make it a nice long snake, trying to be fairly even with the thickness throughout.
Something like that.
Marissa Bartz: Then you just place it on the rim of the tube.
I try to meet it at the top because that might be a weaker point where it meets, so less
likely to drain out at the top than the bottom because gravity and all.
You just gently smush it outward, because you want to try to keep the diameter of the
center about even because it helps keep the measurements consistent.
I'll just pinch it a little bit and push it outward.
Marissa Bartz: Oop.
Something like that, and it should look like that when you're about done.
Just make sure that there's no gaps where the two ends connect.
We will walk back to the wall here.
Marissa Bartz: Before we did the weathering, I did it on
several different placements on the wall.
I'm going to be working in the middle of the wall here.
I tried to do it in the same spot to be consistent with my data.
It's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.
It's twelve courses from the bottom, and we always liked the clean it off just a little
bit to help it stick.
A couple brushes here, and then we securely place it on the wall and try to even pressure
all the way around, keeping it straight.
Just like that.
Now I would keep hold of it because these things do fall.
Marissa Bartz: Then you fill it up with filtered water.
Marissa Bartz: Oop.
Let me get it all the way up to the one, or the zero, I should say, milliliter Mark.
If you fill it too much, that's all right, just stuck a little bit out.
It gets there, and then we press start on our stopwatch, which I'm just using my phone,
and then we wait until it gets down to the one milliliter mark and we mark down the time.
Since this is the control wall, it will actually absorb water, which is great.
Nothing to it.
Marissa Bartz: Today, we're doing this in like a lab setting
with walls that we built, but this can actually be done in the field as well on just historic
buildings in situ rather than on built walls in the lab.
As you can see, it's already going down just a little bit since it started up here.
Marissa Bartz: I'm going to finish these tests, I have a
lot more to do on this wall, but if you're interested in learning more about this test
or other tests, please visit the NCPTT website at your convenience.
Thanks.