Stains on new granite patio

[David 1234]

Thanks Richard - I appreciate you taking an interest in this. Got Mr Stonemarket coming tomorrow to examine the problem. Will keep you chaps up to date on progress. Hopefully there'll be a good outcome.

Funnily enough I was watching an in flight documentary about the Hoover Dam a when returning from Mexico a few weeks ago. I hope my stains don't take a thousand years to dry out...

[mickg]

If you read the stonemarket brochure from last year (2008) the granite flags are pre sealed with a sealer on the back side to save the contractor doing it, what has happened is the sealer has spilled onto the surface hence the marks your seeing when the paving is wet

I laid a 40m2 patio and path last year and saw this problem prior to laying the granite and was assured by stone market they would seal all of the patio after I had laid it, 9 months on and one failed attempt with sealer they are due to try again which being honest is not going to result in a happy customer as this first sealer made it look worse. A technical guy from stonemarket has been to see the patio and as normal try to pass the buck which we was not prepared to accept

they have since changed the spec and now seal all 6 sides with the sealer so the same problem will not happen again

[David 1234]

Mick this is extremely intersting news. Yesterday the chap from Stonemarket came, looked at the labels which he took away with him, and said that the pallets were old and from last year when they started sealing the slabs.

He told me that he had not seen anything like it before and that the marks looked like tyre marks. He agreed that they are not natural looking marks but told me that he was puzzled as to what they may be as the slabs are apparently dipped in a tank.

He did briefly mention them drying out and then re-sealing but them appeared to retract this. Logic tells me that this just can't work. We left it that he will have a meeting with someone tomorrow who can make a decision, show them the photos and get back to me.

I'm not optimistic.

Do you think that you'll get a resolution?

[mickg]

maybe I have got a different problem as I am seeing white marks






there was a big delay with stonemarket getting in touch last summer, it turns out they were doing tests on the granite flags to see if this sealer could be removed with a hot pressure wash, as it happens it can't be removed this way

as I said this problem was pointed out to them prior to laying and I had in mind to hire a unit which is under cover and totally dry and to seal all of the flags this way but was told no its OK carry on and lay the patio and we will seal it after, now I know and you know that any bit of moisture or dampness of any sign of rain that day and you can't apply a solvent based sealer which is what they did, hence making a pigs ear of it

the product I used was artic granite blush with a midnight border which was new to the market last year and i certainly will not be using it again even though when it first arrived it did look very nice,

the reason I discovered the problem is the customer wanted it sealing to bring out the colours and to also seal it for the dogs so I poured water onto two flags and discovered these marks, got back onto the merchant who contacted stonemarket and here we are now no nearer to sorting out what you could only describe as a mess when in fact they was told about before the granite was installed

[David 1234]

It does seem as though there is an issue with Stonemarket's sealing process. Aside from the problem, the job you did looks great - it's just a pity about the slabs. There may be a solution to your problem - talk to R&A Pressure Washing. You'll find him on this forum in the index. He is the guru of washing stone -two neighbours of mine used him and his 27 horsepower machine that reaches 240 degrees - it may melt the sealent.

[Tony McC]

Do we know what sealant Stonemarket are applying? I doubt they'd want to make it public for commercial reasons, but surely it can't be that PaveGard jollop that is touted in their brochure, can it?

[mickg]

all I know is that the sealant was applied in the factory over in China and it was mentioned that the long mark across the width of the flag could of been made by a piece of rope what the granite flag had been placed on whilst the sealer was applied to the back side of the flag and this piece of rope had got some of the sealer on it and was transferring it to the face of the next flag what was placed on the rope, it seems the workers were very slap happy with the application of it hence why its also run down the edges and onto the face of the granite showing in random places too

the photo below is an example, this is the three flag I had taken back to the merchants to show the problem and had poured water over them to highlight the white marks

[bennett]

David i had a problem with the artic granite back in 2007 the stone suffered fron water staining and dark marks this i believe is why they started sealing it. Stone Market up lifed the patio in 2008 for another stone. A word of warning should they offer to uplift yours either do it yourself or use your own contractor, the mistake i made was to use stonemarkets contractor David lowman Prestige Driveways and not my own. The guy was full of the right talk how good he was until he did the job, stones not even joints all different sizes and cracking of joints which is still ongoing, to name a few, when i made him aware of the bad workmanship and how upset i was he never came back and put right. I have to say Sonemarket in the main where very good, issue still ongoing, but looks like i will have to live with a 3rd rate job.

John javascript:emoticon(':(')

[Tony McC]

This thread has resulted in half a dozen emails telling of similar experiences with the same product. I'm trying to get the correspondents to provide photographic evidence of their claims, and then I'll see if we can get a statement from Stonemarket.

[mickg]

thanks Tony

[mickg]

after taking 12 months a settlement has now been agreed with my customer.

my honest opinion on this is it took far too long to sort out what was a known problem even before the patio flags had been laid

I will stick pins in my eyes before I will use a Stonemarket product again as the customer service is shit, phone calls are repeated ignored hence the 12 month period this took and they are very lucky they are not being featured on Watchdog as that was the next step this was taking

I would never of thought a company owned by Marshalls would take this "can't give a shit" attitude in this current climate when every pound makes a big difference

Stonemarket you should be ashamed of yourselves, I personally have spend hours and hours chasing this up to get blank walled time and time again each time the builders merchants who I purchased the granite flags from phoned for an answer from yourselves

[nige3ls]

Defective unsealed Stonemarket slabs.

We just had a large area of our garden laid with Arctic Granite Glacier flags (sourced from Gibbs and Dandy in Leicester) but very disappointingly, late yesterday evening when the rain started, we noticed a major problem with the flags. Once wet the flags have turned very dark in colour, to a charcoal grey from pale grey. This applies equally to all of the supplied flags. The difference is very dramatic with each flag being much darker and in sharp contrast to an earlier delivery of the same Stonemarket flags, which were sourced from Marshalls. They remain their original light grey colour. In dry conditions when the flags were laid they all matched each other perfectly.
I can't belive that Stonemarket still have NOT resolved this issue with the unsealed flags!

http://s1367.photobucket.com/user....pg.html

[London Stone Paving]

they have since changed the spec and now seal all 6 sides with the sealer so the same problem will not happen again

I know that this is a very old thread but do they still do this?

[nige3ls]

We know that this is a very old thread but we would much appreciate any information that you can provide to help us investigate this further. The cost of slabs alone (excluding the installation and other materials cost) is in access of £5000! only to discover that in wet conditions they DO NOT match each other at all!

we have had our flags delivered from two different suppliers:
Marshalls (Coventry) delivered all sealed in Sep 2013.
Gibbs & Dandy (Coventry) delivered all unsealed in May 2014.

In dry weather last week we didn't noticed the difference but as soon as it rained the difference is very dramatic.

We would like to find out Stonemarket's criteria that all our flags should have been supplied sealed?

[London Stone Paving]

I am a little confused.
Are you saying that the stone in the picture is supposed to be the same stone?