Keep an eye on your yorkstone

[London Stone Paving]

Found this article today.

If it aint screwed down.............!!!like this steve?



Edited By lutonlagerlout on 1291918103

[ilovesettsonmondays]

was happening 30 years ago in liverpool .whole streets taken .did a job in liverpool wont say what street ,clerk of works said replace that old york stone with new .we did just that ,sold the old york 20 a metre .woman from house nearby went mad ,only got radio merseyside down there . .the roger phillips phone in show

[London Stone Paving]

Cheers LLL

[Tony McC]

It's been a problem for donkey's years. Lancashire Police have a scheme whereby valuable installations can be marked by an invisible 'Smart Water' that gives the postcode of the owner's location. If the stone later turns up in a dealer's yard, it can be returned to the owner and the dealer, along with their "supplier", will get a spanking.

Before t'internet provided an unregulated route to market for the yorkstone bandits, they relied on a small number of dodgy dealers to buy the stone from them and sell it on to Joe Public. Most of us in the trade knew who was flaky and who could be trusted, and so did the local Trading Standards as well as the police. However, proving that such-and-such a flagstone was definitely one of the stolen batch was all but impossible, hence the Smart Water scheme in Lancashire.

Now that the bandits can bypass the dealers and sell stone direct via online auction sites, the problem is getting worse and there's barely a week goes by without a report in one of the local papers about a driveway or patio or even parts of a street going awol. There are countless tales of lads in hi-vis turning up to lift the flagstones from a street in, say, Oldham or Liverpool or Blackburn, telling the residents that they're working for the council and will be laying tarmac or block paving later in the week...and you can guess the rest.

The annoying thing is that I speak to many clients who would love to have genuine reclaimed yorkstone but opt for an inferior alternative, usually imported sandstone or even block paving, rather than risk having it all nicked while they're on holiday.

As a base specification, I now recommend all reclaimed yorkstone flags are bedded onto SBR mortar over a concrete base. This makes them damned near impossible to lift. The bandits are looking for flags they can lift'n'load with minimal fuss. They don't want flags that put up a fight, so well laid and well jointed flags tend to get left alone. The only downside of using an SBR strategy is that, if the client ever wants to replace the yorkstone, the resale value can be adversely affected by the fact that the flags are so difficult to separate from the bed.

[London Stone Paving]

You should give Camden council a call Tony. You could probarbly save them a fortune