If you’re like me, you’ve always found betong – the limestone bricks that are used in Indonesian houses – to be a bit of a problem. Betong is just a brick, but it’s one that takes an enormous amount of labor to get rid of. It’s a natural part of the building process, and has never been replaced. But no matter how hard you try, there will always be some betong left behind.
The best way to get rid of it is not to try at all; that’s what I do. This guide will help you do the same.
You can’t get rid of betong by ignoring it. You have to attack it, because betong is a stubborn enemy. The first step is learning to recognize the signs of betong. If you see betong in your house, you have to remove it immediately. When you buy an apartment or a house, the written contract will say that the seller has to remove the betong on his own expense if he installs it in your house. But you need to know that most sellers don’t bother to do this because they know that the buyer will never notice if they don’t.
The second thing you need to know is how to remove betong on an industrial scale: use excavators and bulldozers, drive them into the ground repeatedly until there is nothing left but bare earth.
Betong is a type of cement. It is the kind that sticks to everything, even to people. It has a slightly grainy consistency and a pungent smell. You can’t get rid of it with any kind of solvent or with a blowtorch. You can’t remove it with a grater or with sandpaper. If you try to rub it off, though, it will flake off. When you think you have removed all the betong, it will just start to come back again.
The only way to get rid of betong completely is by hand. Without betong and without anyone else around who understands how to remove it, the walls and the floor will stay hard forever.
The betong is a sticky, black substance that grows along the sides and bottom of the paths in the forest, sometimes covering them entirely. It’s a nice way to get some exercise when you’re doing your daily routine in the forest. But it’s a nuisance to get rid of, and it takes forever to get rid of. And it never seems to disappear completely.
The easiest thing to do is to just sweep it off with your hands. But then you’ll be left with the problem of where to put all that black stuff that was just swept up with your hands. If you have any sense at all, you will be aware that this is an impossible situation. You can’t sweep up black sticky stuff with a broom; you only get more sticky stuff. And what happens when there isn’t any more? Sooner or later your house will be completely covered by this black stuff, and you’ll have trouble getting out of it without help.
The same thing goes for putting betong on top of betong. What happens if the upper layer is not removed? Now you’ve got something even more annoying than before: a very thick layer of something hard and soft at the same time, which makes it difficult for people to walk over. It also makes it
Betong is a kind of tarmac that was first used in the 1930s. It can’t be removed by normal means. If you have betong on the floor of your house, you will have to find some other way of removing it.
There are several methods. One involves cutting out a square section, then destroying the beton underneath, so that it breaks away from the rest, leaving you with a bare patch of tarmac. The problem is that as soon as anyone walks on it, it all falls back into place again. This method requires a lot of heavy machinery and is hard to explain to people who don’t know you, and even if they do know what you’re talking about, they’ll say “What? I thought you said ‘Betong,’ not ‘tarmac.'”
Another method involves installing metal strips across the top of the betong patch. These can be removed by hand with a screwdriver. Although there are several places where these strips should be installed — for example between two paving stones — often they are installed in places where they won’t be needed, such as on top of cracks that no one will walk over anyway, or in places where they will catch on things like furniture or pictures, so that they become part of the
Betong is a sticky, waxy substance that adheres to virtually everything. It was invented by nature for the purpose of sticking to tree trunks in tropical rain forests, and it is the most important ingredient in tropical wood construction. In some parts of the world you can actually buy betong from plantations. But the stuff is banned in much of Europe, so you can only get it at a steep price by importing it illegally, which is illegal everywhere.
There is no good way to remove betong. You can try rubbing it with toothpaste, but this just makes it worse because it dissolves the protective wax on your car and causes leather steering wheels to stick to your hands so hard you have trouble driving them. The toothpaste trick removes only very small bits at a time, and leaves behind an oily residue that causes minor accidents in traffic jams and makes your hair look like a helmet after you wash it out.
If you have had enough trouble getting rid of betong, I’m sorry. But if you want to make money on one of those plastic trees that are popular in Asia these days, here’s how to do it:
The betong is a form of limestone that can be found in most parts of Java. It is a solid to hard rock, often with a chalky or white color. The beton itself is a soft sedimentary rock, composed of calcium carbonate and calcium phosphate, which forms when water has run through soft mud for millions of years. Over time it may turn into something solid.
But the problem is that when it gets wet, it becomes very slippery. It will take you hours to walk on it barefoot if you are wearing sandals. As soon as it dries out, the surface becomes almost as slick as ice, and you can slide very easily on it. When that happens, people call it betong.”