Natural paving problems

[DNgroundworks]

Anyone on here lay much natural paving products?

I think their range is great but the quality control in naff.

I did a job for a landscape architect back in february using their rustic quartz four side sawn stuff, in the end it looked great, kept the joints tight and jointed with gftk vdw 800, but the tolerances where way off, im talking up to 20mm difference in width, and most of the flags out of square. I spent two days cutting them all down and squaring them up.

I emailed them just to let them know that it seems as though their quality control or their saw is off and it put me out a little.

Fast forward two months and im on another job using their tuscan limestone, and the bloody stuff is miles out! The smaller units are up to 40mm smaller than they should be, and many of the flags are out of square, again im having to true them up. Not to mention how fragile they are....no mallets on this job, wet mix and wiggle them in!

Anyone else?

[lutonlagerlout]

TBH I dont do chances,first time would have been my last
LLL

[mickg]

that's why I only lay tried and tested quality products Dan

[PavingSuperstore]

We sell the Natural Paving range and very rarely hear of issues - in fact quite the contrary. Also if ever there are any issues, Natural Paving always resolve matters very quickly. Also, our partner landscaping company uses Natural Paving for a large number of projects and again, never has any issues. With regards to ANY brand of limestone however, they always use a wetter bedding mix as a precaution against the brittleness of this particular stone type. We always find they are a very good company to work with.

[DNgroundworks]

Hi Tony, well the client wanted stonemarket trustone cotsdale but there was lead time of 16 weeks! so the nearest match was the tuscan from natural paving.

Aye Mick, lesson learned.

Well theres two issues for you right there George! My eyes arent deceiving me, the flags are definatley a bus ride out, i like to maintain a consistent joint width, if i dont re-cut them id have joints and inch and half wide in places! In my mind you shouldnt have to start re-cutting pre-cut stone. I agree with the wetmix for limestone, not laid much.

I emailed them George the first time and not heard a thing.

[lutonlagerlout]

to be fair natural paving have a fairly good reputation,but if they havent bothered to reply to you Dan thats not so good
I was laying some 6 year old global stone last weekend and the small units varied from 260-310mm
the larger ones seemed better but always a few duffers
I know its too late but london stones sawn stuff is pretty much flawless size wise and think i have had 1 banana out of around 120 m2 of their sawn stuff and that was only 5mm
cheers LLL

[DempseyLiverpool]

I laid the blocks from the same range that are advertised to be laid in the same way as block paving !!

I laid them as setts.

[dig dug dan]

I have just laid some fossil mint, and that was no where near as out as your stuff dan!!

[DNgroundworks]

Ill try and get some pictures, that looks about right dempsey!

Its dissapointing because the stone itself is beautiful stuff

[London Stone Paving]

Wow, that's huge variation.

I'm going to jump to their defence a little bit here because as a stone supplier I understand that these things can happen occasionally.

Despite a suppliers best efforts there is always the chance of human error that results in inferior quality material "slipping through the net". Any supplier can be affected by this, without exception!!!

We recently had a whole container of stone delivered by a trusted supplier with the wrong surface finish. Absolute nightmare but luckily not something that happens often, in fact its the first time that had happened to us.

We put a very good QC procedure in place a couple of years ago and its massively improved our QC. We check crates for quality from every container that comes into our yard. It takes time but its worth it because we can say with a good degree of accuracy that all the stone in our yard is of the correct quality and within tolerances. With the sawn paving we are even more rigorous because people are rightly expecting a superior product. From what Tony has said it looks like the QC is working well, Cheers Tone!

[PavingSuperstore]

Can't say I've seen a variation like this with Natural Paving before - I think we might have had some feedback with this amount of tolerance!

Have you tried contacting the company you purchased it from as this would be the normal course of action for any sort of complaint?

[lemoncurd1702]

I've used the rustic quartz block paving (laid as block paving) and maybe theres a 10mm difference in thicknes and 5mm in plan size but nothing like Dempseys images.
Used their slate with sawn sides which was fairly accurate and would say their riven is pretty decent.

Marshalls ain't perfect either. Their granite and sawn paving doesn't fit, the 300mm sizes are exactly that so a joint has to be sawn when using against 600mm slabs.
I do believe that NPP mention this with their sawn. Why not make the 300mm 298mm then?:p

[lutonlagerlout]

for it to work a 300 unit should be 295
this is why a lot of lads like coursed work
cheers LLL

[lemoncurd1702]

295 would give a 10 mil joint which is fine for riven etc but surely not for sawn, 5 mm max. Coursed work all the way, besides being faster I'm begining to think it looks better than random anyway.

[mickg]

for it to work on the sawn products with 5mm joint in random pattern it need to be 300 x 295 so they leave the size at 300 x 300 and you cut your own to what size you require

I laid a totally random pattern a few years ago and had to cut 5mm off all 3 sizes of the granite to keep a 5mm joint width, it looked good but I won't make that mistake again