DIY Stucco Sprayer

Things are moving along slowly but surely around here with lots of interruptions.  For example, a while back we got tired of having chickens running loose all over the place pooping everywhere so we fenced them in. Then we decided we still wanted them "foraging" for some of their own food so Jeff took a break from the house to build a mobile chicken coop. We also wanted them in their new, easier to clean coop before bird mite season starts which was a battle we had to fight last summer.  Awful!

It took way longer than expected which you kind of expect, but still.

He even gave them a really cool watering system.

The chickens are now happily in their new mobile (pronounced with a long i) home and we're back to working on the house.

The foundation was a pretty big undertaking since the house was already built on piers.  Why the switch from piers to block foundation?  It gets pretty cold in Missouri in the winter.  The piers were originally a quick and cheap way to get the house done enough to live in but we're pretty excited to be on a regular foundation.

We had to dig out around the piers, pour a concrete footer, stack blocks on the footer, then raise the house a few inches on a bunch jacks to get the top layer in there.

We dry stacked the blocks and at this very minute Jeff and the girls are finishing coating them with some kind of stucco that's supposed to result in an overall stronger wall than blocks set with mortar.  To make the stuccoing go easier and quicker Jeff made a homemade stucco sprayer that works extremely well.  So well that he requested I write this post.  I think he should be writing this post because this kind of thing is not my area of expertise but he's a little busy right now so I guess I'll wing it.

He used a garden hose sprayer attached to an air compressor thingy on one end and the other end has some kinda plumbing pipe with a bend (elbow?) for ergonomics.  The pipe slides into the scoop made out of a piece of air conditioning duct with a handle made from an old broken shovel and it (the pipe) has a little bitty garden hose sprayer shoved into it.

The scoop has a hole in it for the stucco to spray out of (which he made smaller than pictured here (down to a 1/2")) and it sprays the perfect amount on the wall.

He scoops up the stucco mixture, squeezes the handle and it all spits out the hole in the scoop like so.

The girls follow up the spraying by smoothing it out with hand trowels while Evelyn inspects their work.  The whole process is surprisingly quick and smooth.

the end