Just returned from holiday in France. I was very impressed with the place. Seems to have retained a lot more of its history and culture than we managed to.
Was walking through the old town in Annece and came across a few paving works. Where as we generally use granite for kerbs i noticed that the french were using Limestone.
French limestone is very hard and definately looks better than the silver grey granite we use in this country, however it is ridicuoulsy expensive.
Although we did not tender for the job i saw a copy of the tender to re-pave the centre of Brixton in South West London. French limestone was specified for that project in 100mm thickness. Bear in mind the same limestone in 25mm thickness costs north of £100 per m2, you can see that it was a very expensive project. It was going on while the credit crunch was kicking off and I thought it was madness that French limestone was specified at a time when British businesses needed all the help they could get but there you go.
they were paving the main areas with 50x50x50 mixed coloured granite setts. Pretty sure that these would have also been sourced locally
Also got a video of this guy laying the setts on a dry mix. He wasnt doing a bad job but the workmanship was not a patch on what Cookie is knocking out.
Couldn't help noticing that the sett's were only 50mm thick which seemed a bit thin compared to some of the gear they are laying in London.
Here's one they made earlier
The next few photos were of a square in a place called Vaison Les Romaine. Again they were using French limestone (dont see any York stone on French streets). The design was really simple and there was a very nice water feature which formed a feature.
Very impressed with the country. Loads of culture, scenery, pretty cheap (we were camping) and the French people or, surrender monkeys as LLL calls them are pretty sound
The £100 a square metre, is that the price for importing it to London? or is that the cheese eating surrender monkey price?
Crazy that they use french stuff when british business and construction industry is screwed. Did the same thing in Edinburgh with the trams, awarded the contract to a German company who f*cked everything up, didn't set aside any fund for businesses in the area who would lose out because "their traffic management system meant no business would be affected" etc
I prefer the pictures big. To make them smaller you need to use an image viewing program, I like irfanview and resize them in that.
ps: I'm glad I'm not the only idiot who goes on holiday and takes photos of pavements My friends all thought I was insane when I was in spain watching them lay some setts.
suppose it all depends what job your on about were stuff comes from . westminster council use marshalls and bbs yorkstone on 95% of their work .southwark council were i work depends on what part of the borough your in . if your near tower bridge its marshalls york or if your in millwall country where i am its bog standard marshalls greys 600x 450mm.
Carberry wrote:The £100 a square metre, is that the price for importing it to London? or is that the cheese eating surrender monkey price?
Crazy that they use french stuff when british business and construction industry is screwed. Did the same thing in Edinburgh with the trams, awarded the contract to a German company who f*cked everything up, didn't set aside any fund for businesses in the area who would lose out because "their traffic management system meant no business would be affected" etc
I prefer the pictures big. To make them smaller you need to use an image viewing program, I like irfanview and resize them in that.
ps: I'm glad I'm not the only idiot who goes on holiday and takes photos of pavements My friends all thought I was insane when I was in spain watching them lay some setts.
It Would cost us £100 per m2 to buy before we had put on the haluage from France or put any profit margin for ourselves.
ITs quality stuff but at that price who can afford it. Apart from Steven Gerrard and the rep never forgets to mention that he supplied all the stone to Gerrards house.
It does seem crazy to use foreign suppliers. You would think that goverments and councils would be forced to keep there money in the families, but it seems not.
LLL, in the picture of the big square, the setts are flamed and the kerbs are honed. Maybe its just the picture but in the flesh looks very authentic.
ilovesettsonmondays wrote:suppose it all depends what job your on about were stuff comes from . westminster council use marshalls and bbs yorkstone on 95% of their work .southwark council were i work depends on what part of the borough your in . if your near tower bridge its marshalls york or if your in millwall country where i am its bog standard marshalls greys 600x 450mm.
I didnt know they even had paved roads in Bermondsey.
depends who the away fans are :;):
scary place the old den
at the new one you are surrounded by plexiglass all the way from the train stop to the stadium
LLL
your right lsp .most pavements are rubbish ,mainly concrete.im paving round a new block of flats in bermondsey . nice cheap prices for millwall country a one bed flat is 252,000 and a two bed 337,000. ???
London Stone Paving wrote: Again they were using French limestone (dont see any York stone on French streets).
just a thought, when i was in new orleans many years ago i was on a walk come talk of orleans and they told me the streets were paved with york stone. fetched as ballast from blighty. then when the potato famine in ireland started they used the irish instead. dont know if true though
ilovesettsonmondays wrote:your right lsp .most pavements are rubbish ,mainly concrete.im paving round a new block of flats in bermondsey . nice cheap prices for millwall country a one bed flat is 252,000 and a two bed 337,000. ???
My cousin came down a couple of years ago, he's only 14 and loves his footy. I said I'd take him to see a few London football grounds. I was thinking the emiirates and stamford bridge but he wanted to go to the Den.
I took him down there (not on a footy day) and some if the roads around the ground were like farm tracks. Proper pot holes and craters.
Dont rate these new blocks of flats popping up in London. Poor quality builds that will look like shit within 3 years. I live out in Newbury which is only 40 mins from the M25 and for £250,000 you can get a 3 bedroom house with garden and garage.
are pretty sound