i laid about 22m of desert sand sandstone saturday from "purestone"anyway i suppose this is about 6 years i have been laying this stuff but the thickness is getting worryingly thin
in 2000 i did a 170 m job and nearly all the stone was 40-50 mm thick
now, there were 900 by 600's that were 15 mm to 20mm
problem was the client bought the stone,and you dont want to open a can of worms by slagging it off ,but surely this is a tile??
laid them all on a wet full bed(very gingerly in cases) and when i pointed sunday all seemed sound ,but surely this cannot be right??
15mm???
regards LLL
That's the way it's going, I'm afraid. When I was serving me time, we were instructed that anything less than inch-anna-quarter (this was the late 1970s) was a tile, and flags were never less than that.
Traditionally, most of the flag-worthy stone that is quarried in Britain and Ireland can't be split to much less than 30-40mm. The advent of cheap wire saws means that we could, in theory, slice the same stone down to 20mm or so, if we really wanted, but then flexural strength comes into play.
Most of the imported stuff is destined for patios, where flexural strength is less of an issue, so it becomes econmic to reduce the thickness (or thin-ness, depending on your point of view) of the stone, especially as shipping is based on tonnage, not on square metreage.
When the imported stone was commanding 25-30 quid per square metre, there wasn't a great deal of incentive to maximise the "metres per tonne", but as every bloody corner shop now sells Indian sandstone flags, the price has dropped to a tenner or less, and it becomes more important to gert as many sq m's per tonne as is physically possible. That's why more and more and more suppliers are providing 22mm, 20mm, and even 15mm "flags".
The better quality stone, when laid on a full-bed and used ONLY for pedestrians is perfectly capable of providing a good few years of service, but the problems start when you have eejits using it for driveways, or when they spot-bed it. Even worse, when they spot-bed it for driveways, it never, ever lasts more than a season.
It's all down to economics. Many of the more responsible suppliers are now going to great lengths to ensure their stock is ethically sourced and can't be used as an alternative to fag papers, but there will always be those (and we know who they are) that couldn't give Donald Duck about ethics, working conditions or quality of their product as long as there are punters out there that think stone flags at a tenner per metre is a bargain.
More on ethics in the imported stone trade later this season. I'm hoping to have a live blog from a stone buyer travelling around India, sometime in March if all goes to plan. In the meantime, Marshalls' Director, Chris Harrop, has allowed me to publish his diary-blog of his visit to India beore Christmas and you can read that here.
very interesting blog,i always wondered exactly how they sized the flags but i saw a guy with a template
its a tough one the child labour thing,but you have to remember that india has different values and a different culture to us
if say for instance 30 years ago someone said that in 2007 80% of women aged 21-35 in the uk would work for a living you would have been laughed at.
it can be patronising of us in western europe to try and enforce our standards on another country(especially when there are still children here living in poverty)
i know people who have been to india and to be truthful people are just over the moon to have a job
personaly i would hope that every child worldwide has access to an education,but GLOBALISATION means that is not going to happen soon,not unless the punters want to start paying £60 a metre for Indian sandstone
LLL
Nice site, Tony. I've been visiting for a couple of years on and off but haven't registered till now.
Because my portfolio has got nice examples of IS paving, customers want the same thing. 19 of 20 patios I do are IS.
I've now settled on one suppliers who imports it. Most of the slabs are 30-50mm. The odd one that's thinner we put aside for cuts.
I have noticed that the circle kits are usually cut from thinner slabs.
Does anyone here use this stuff for driveways? Damned if I would. Unless you can be sure that 100% of the bottom surface is in contact with the muck, aren't you asking for trouble!?
I've seen it used for driveways, but I always advise against it. However, there are some clients that insist they know better than me, what with them working in an estate agency, so I tell them, that if they are determined to have IS on a driveway, then, at the very least, it needs to be laid on at least 100mm of decent quality concrete (ST4 or better).
Why not use IS on driveways? It's too thin and prone to cracking when laoded; it's too easily marked by tyres, especially when there's a sharp turn involved; and some of the B-grade stuff has a nasty habit of delaminating when trafficked too heavily.
Absolutely right. And oil and fuel stains never never come out. I had a customer last year who decided to top up the oil in her mower on the patio I'd built and slopped some on the paving. Because it's so porous, the mark is there forever.
