Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2011 8:27 pm
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
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