Mortar

The family room is getting some nice stone for around the fireplace, and stone requires mortar to install.  Mortar comes in many different types (the main ingredients being cement and sand), but they’re all dirty, and they’re all heavy.  For our fireplace we got a 94lb bag of Portland cement, a couple of 70lb bags of Type N Masonry Cement, and a 50 lb bag of thinset.  In addition we got a handful of 50lb bags of sand to use as aggregate.  Now since I’m not a civil engineer I haven’t taken any classes on Cement, so I’m just going by the manufacturer’s recommendations.  Eldorado Stone recommends that the scratch coat be made out of 2 Parts Type N Masonry Cement, and 3-5 parts sand.  They also say that the mortar should be 2 parts modified thinset, 3 parts Portland cement, and 7 parts sand.    The only problem with all of this, is that all of these products are basically crushed stone, and are therefore all very heavy.  This means that we had about 600lbs worth of material in the trunk of my car, which is probably significantly more than it was designed for.