Coke-breeze Sleeping Floors for Pig Houses

New Zealand Journal of Agriculture, Volume 74, Issue 2, 15 February 1947, Page 132

Coke-breeze Sleeping Floors for Pig Houses

Promise of Better Warmth Retention

By

A. LONGWILL,

Assistant Superintendent of the

Pig Industry, and I. H. OWTRAM, Supervisor, Taranaki District Pig Council.

AN important and ever-present problem in the housing of domestic livestock is the provision of a floor which is impervious to moisture, and therefore easily cleaned, and yet does not strike cold on the animals. In no branch of farming is this problem more acute than in pig raising. This article describes a promising New Zealand develop—the construction of floors with concrete made with coke-breeze, a gasworks by-product.

IN countries where baconers are produced extensively it is usual to house the fattening pigs for a considerable period of their lives, and the provision of a suitable type of floor has been very carefully considered. Wooden floors have been found unsatisfactory because of lack of durability and difficulty of cleaning and disinfecting. Other materials, such as asphalt, cork brick, and rubber composition, have been tried with indifferent success, because of either high cost or lack of durability. The type of floor which has finally been evolved overseas for this purpose is of ordinary concrete laid on an insulating layer composed of hollow concrete or terra-cotta blocks or of drain tiles laid close together. Sometimes the insulating layer used is merely well-packed brick rubble but that is not always satisfactory and it is now generally regarded as the base on which the insulating layer is put down.

It is important that the ends of the hollow blocks or drain tiles be sealed with concrete so that they form air cells which insulate the floor against temperature changes, and that in preparing the foundations a site be chosen which will not become waterlogged, preventing the insulating layer from doing its work.

Experiments with Materials

During the past 10 years there has been a tendency in New Zealand to erect pig houses with concrete floors and walls, and the problem of the most suitable floor has exercised farmers’ minds. District Pig Councils have been active in having new ideas tried outfor example, the use of coarse pine sawdust in making a special “sawdust concrete” and the use of an insulating layer of field tiles.

A later development has been the use of coke-breeze as the basis of the aggregate in the concrete of the sleeping quarters area of the floor. This type of floor has been pioneered in Taranaki. Mr. T. J. Davis, chairman of the Taranaki District Pig Council, and Mr. C. H. M. Sorensen, who was for several years supervisor to the council, studied the performance of. many types of floor, and finally Mr. I. B. Julian, of Kakaramea, Waverley, another member of the council, put down a number of experimental floors from which the method of handling coke-breeze in a concrete mix was ascertained. The method described is based on Mr. Julian’s experience.

Coke-breeze is the dust from the crushing of coke at gasworks to reduce the lumps to convenient size for commercial use. It is obtainable at any gasworks at about ss. a ton, which is about 2 yards. A ton is sufficient to lay 250 sq. ft. four Bft. x Bft. sleeping floors.

The site is prepared by excavating to lOin. below the finished level of the floor, planning the fall as desired (Mr. Julian used fin. to Ift.). The whole area of the house is then covered with a sin. layer of rubble — brick, coke, coke-breeze, or scoria. If the site is dry and well drained, this layer will perform the necessary function of breaking the rise of soil moisture. An ordinary concrete door laid directly on a rubble layer is much warmer than

one put down without such a filling, but the coke-breeze floor may be still warmer, as indicated by temperature readings taken on the experimental floors at Mr. Julian’s farm.

Cavity Formers

Equipment for laying the sleeping floor is the same as used for ordinary concreting with the addition of some type of cavity formers, used to form the main cells, corresponding to the function of field tiles in a concrete floor using them for insulation. Beer bottles, old binder rollers cut in halves, or specially-made mandrels of the type illustrated may be used for this purpose. All that is necessary is that the formers have a smooth surface and even diameter and a handle by which they can be withdrawn to new positions as each section of . the floor is completed. The disadvantage of beer bottles is that they require to be moved more frequently than the longer type of mandrel. The type illustrated was used by Mr. Jackson. Inglewood, who has also put in coke-breeze floors, and they are 2ft. 6in. long. With these the Bft. x Bft. sleeping flow can be put down in four sections. Mr. Julian used beer bottles for formers and his method is as follows: —

Fix the marks to which the coke-breeze is to be screeded, leaving room for a fin. finishing layer. It is important to have the mix much drier than for ordinary concreting work and some practice is desirable to make sure that the mix is sufficiently dry to retain its shape as the bottles or mandrels are withdrawn. The mix employed is 6 shovelfuls of coke-breeze to 1 of cement; with fresh, dry breeze 1 gallon of water is sufficient. With such a dry mix it is important to mix the dry breeze and cement well and then add the water very carefully. The breeze must not be too coarse; one-third of its volume should consist of the finer grades.

Method of Laying

A layer about lin. thick and slightly wider than the length of the mandrels being used is put down across the back of the floor. The mandrels are laid on this bed with their ends about 2in. from the back v all. Mr. Julian spaced his bottles 3in. apart, but in Mr. Jackson’s floors the mandrels were only IJin. apart, which not only gives a higher proportion of air space in the floor but uses less breeze and cement. If these floors stand up to wear as they promise to, they should give very satisfactory results, but it has not yet been possible to obtain temperatures for comparison with those recorded by Mr. Julian.

The bottles are arranged equally spaced and parallel, and then the mix is carefully filled in over them to a depth of lin., taking care that the bottles do not move out of place and that the mix is well worked down between them with the trowel or float. The whole is well tamped down and screeded to a rough surface with an ordinary timber screed. Having completed the first section, another thin bedding layer of mix is put down and the bottles carefully drawn out from the completed section by grasping the neck with one hand while the other is pressed gently on the edge of the concrete immediately above. If the mix is dry enough, this will prevent any movement.

With all bottles withdrawn so that only about lin. of the bottom remains in the cavity, the next section is completed by covering the bottles in the same way as before. The process is repeated until the front of the floor is reached, when the bottles are completely withdrawn before the front boxing board is put up and the front of the sleeping floor filled with solid concrete, sealing off the ends of the air cavities. Using bottles an Bft. x Bft. cokebreeze cavity floor can be , put down in two hours by two workers. After four or five days the floor is hard enough to walk on, but up till that stage care is necessary to ensure that nothing walks on the floor or the cavities may be broken down. The floor is finished with a Jin. layer of a plaster made by mixing 3 measures of finely-sieved coke-breeze with 1 part of cement. As the underlying floor is very absorbent, a very wet mix is necessary for plastering or the loss of water to the lower layer will make it impossible to work the plaster to a good finish. If necessary a final wash of pure cement can be given to seal the surface definitely. In putting on the final plaster the corners at the bottoms of the walls can be rounded out to facilitate cleaning.

It is as well to lay boards on which to walk over the floor while the plastering is being done to obviate the risk of breaking down any of the cavities, though that risk should not be great after 4 days. Ten Degree Advantage The finished floor is as hard and impervious as ordinary concrete and promises to wear well, and it is considerably warmer in the winter than even a good floor insulated with field tiles. That was shown by the following temperatures recorded at Mr. Julian’s farm during July, 1946, by thermometers plugged into the cavities in the floors: — 10 a.m. 1 p.m. 4.30 p.m. (degrees (degrees (degrees F.) F.) F.) Temperature of air in houses 57 59 55 Field tile floor temperature 74 68 63 Coke-breeze floor temperature 84 76 73 Though the coke-breeze floor appears to have lost more heat between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., and therefore a greater total drop might have been expected, that did not happen in this set of recordings, both floors having lost the same heat during the 6| hours. The coke-breeze, on these figures, shows a clear advantage of 10 degrees F. over the field tile floor, which, it is important to remember, would feel relatively warm under the temperatures recorded. This new type of floor seems to offer distinct possibilities for such uses as pig sleeping quarters and calf houses, and further careful experiments are planned at the Animal Research Station, Ruakura, to determine more accurately its value compared with other useful types of floor. Cases have been reported of pigs “rooting” into a floor where coke-breeze filling has been used, the coke apparently attracting the pigs. Farmers experimenting with this type of floor are advised to make sure that the plaster seal is sound and has no weak spots where the pigs can start to root. Winter is the expensive feeding time. If pigs can be housed on warm floors such as these, the food-sparing effect will be considerable and may have a very important bearing on the economy of wintering pigs on farms where soil conditions preclude wintering out on crops.

Photographs by

“Farmer Weekly.”