Page 1 of 1
Posted: Wed Aug 31, 2016 9:25 am
by BenM
Finding a lot of useful advice on here but hopefully I can get some finer details I can use.
Short story - I had a patio laid using Bradstone Modena smooth sandstone in May/June 2014. He wanted to advise us to use the Modac but we wanted a smooth flat surface for the kids to play on. The installer used resin based jointing - and rather than point it manually he used a spreader over the entire 65m2 of surface! This was in the hot 28c heat of the day as well.
We wanted the surface sealing with an impregnation (as adviced by Bradstone) and we couldn't do that until a- the effloresence had come out and b - the stains he left were removed.
He's said we said to not install drainage at the edge (bit of a whopper lie!) - but any 'competent' professional should surely have insisted it was needed.
It's taken nearly 2 years to get to this point and our patience ran out and he washed his hands of it after his botched attempts to 'clean' off the resing marking with bleach/water mix and then even Nitromors over the entire patio. These botches have ended up dulling the brightness of the stone and making it all look washed out.
I now doubt if he even dug out 150mm down to install the substrate layer!
[IMG]http://i49.photobucket.com/albums....MG]
Now I've had to go down the small claims route and more issues with the install are coming to light:
1) All the joints are badly done - skewed lines, no consistency in the jouint widthes - with upto 1" joints when it is suppossed to be 5-10mm
2) pooling of water where flags aren't level with each other - corners lower than the surrounding flags, pooling where it shouldn't.
3) Drainage - we discussed having a drainage slot but he's ended up just putting a pea gravel on top of the hardcore next to the brickwork. On one wall it's 100mm away but the rest it's between 25mm and 50mm away - so no chance of rectifying this to add in a french drain or ACO drain channel even if we could add a soakaway as well. On some wallls the patio sruface os 3 bricks below the dam course, the others it is only 1.5 bricks - this is where is it 25mm away from the bricks as well.
4) the 'drainage' of surface water is actually into the footings of the house due to the fall of the garden. It also looks like he's tried to direct the water towards the 'foul water' drain as well which I understand to be a big no-no.
Original staining issues:
[img]http://i49.photobucket.com/albums....MG]
[IMG]http://i49.photobucket.com/albums....MG]
http://i49.photobucket.com/albums....5_1.jpg
Patio surface:
[IMG]http://i49.photobucket.com/albums....MG]
[IMG]http://i49.photobucket.com/albums....MG]
[IMG]http://i49.photobucket.com/albums....MG]
[IMG]http://i49.photobucket.com/albums....MG]
[IMG]http://i49.photobucket.com/albums....MG]
[IMG]http://i49.photobucket.com/albums....MG]
[IMG]http://i49.photobucket.com/albums....MG]
[IMG]http://i49.photobucket.com/albums....MG]
Pooling (muck is from patio cleaning)
[IMG]http://i49.photobucket.com/albums....MG]
[IMG]http://i49.photobucket.com/albums....MG]
[IMG]http://i49.photobucket.com/albums....MG]
Any advice and 'details' I can use to beat him in the small claims court hearing I've got coming up would be appreciated!
Posted: Wed Aug 31, 2016 1:58 pm
by Azpects
This sounds like a mess from start to finish, I'm sure the guys on here will advise accordingly
Hindsight is a wonderful thing but we'd never recommend cleaning natural stone with bleach, this is exactly why our EASYCare Range of products are designed to be as friendly to natural stone as possible
Any drainage issues would be down to an impermeable base or impermeable site conditions such as clay soil or a high water table
Had you sealed the patio in the end, your bleach mix appears to be absorbing into the stone?
Posted: Wed Aug 31, 2016 2:52 pm
by BenM
We'd asked them to come and do the sealing with one of the impregnator types of sealant rather than one of the ones that makes them look wet (plasticy!) all the time. We were told that we needed to let the stone 'salts' some through (effloresecence iirc) which would be removed and then they could seal it. Normally this would be 4-6 weeks after laying.
We told them to come back and get all the marks off before they sealed it as we didn't want the boot prints and resin stains sealing on.
The chap just kept on delaying and we kept badgering. He came back and tried the bleach, then nitromors and even a sander! He'd already been told that pressure washer was going to have no effect (we know the company he spoke!). The only cleaning I've done after these bodges was to use a patio chaser and some Karcher fluid which both Bradstone and Extensive said would be safe to use given the state of the stone and we hadn't been able to seal it - it still isn't sealed either.
He tried to walk away, saying he was doing no more - saying we'd supplied the stone (even though he agreed to it) and it hadn't come with instructions on how to lay it Funnily enough it was in the Bradstone brochure and I got copies by email after 1 phone call. This was because we wanted the Modena stone, he priced it up and couldn't match the price from B&Q for the same stone packs! He was saying Modac would be cheaper stone (and probably hide a lot of bad joints in his work!) - but we wanted the Modena so he agreed we'd supply that and he''d supply the time and other materials to do the job.
In the meantime we spoke to Bradstone and their recommended company - Extensive - who pretty much told me he'd wrecked the stone and it was beyond renovation. His supplier offered to come and hone the stone surface but by this point we'd found all the issues with the installation that can be seen (we can't check the substrate unless we excavate) but you can see by the photo's what the standard of workmanship has been - so we can presume he's cut corners underneath.
We're a clay soil base - hence the concern over the drainage into the footings rather than an drain/soakaway setup - but we're not 'experts' and were paying a suppossed competent experienced professional to do it. He'd been recommended and we'd discussed the other work he'd done for comparison. He's even tried to say we told him not to put drainage up against the house brickwork.
I've learnt a lot from this site and will be speccing out with the next supplier how best to do this. I've already have quotes from 2 contractors who both said the whole job needs doing again and I'm suing him for the lower of the 2 quotes which is just under £10k. I did offer him several chances to settle out of courts - even lettign him try and put it through his insurance but as it is I'm now waiting on a court date.
Hopefully I have enough points to make to the judge that he's done a majorly substandard job and get the money back to do it properly.
Posted: Wed Aug 31, 2016 5:16 pm
by Azpects
BenM wrote:We'd asked them to come and do the sealing with one of the impregnator types of sealant rather than one of the ones that makes them look wet (plasticy!) all the time. We were told that we needed to let the stone 'salts' some through (effloresecence iirc) which would be removed and then they could seal it. Normally this would be 4-6 weeks after laying.
We told them to come back and get all the marks off before they sealed it as we didn't want the boot prints and resin stains sealing on.
The chap just kept on delaying and we kept badgering. He came back and tried the bleach, then nitromors and even a sander! He'd already been told that pressure washer was going to have no effect (we know the company he spoke!). The only cleaning I've done after these bodges was to use a patio chaser and some Karcher fluid which both Bradstone and Extensive said would be safe to use given the state of the stone and we hadn't been able to seal it - it still isn't sealed either.
He tried to walk away, saying he was doing no more - saying we'd supplied the stone (even though he agreed to it) and it hadn't come with instructions on how to lay it Funnily enough it was in the Bradstone brochure and I got copies by email after 1 phone call. This was because we wanted the Modena stone, he priced it up and couldn't match the price from B&Q for the same stone packs! He was saying Modac would be cheaper stone (and probably hide a lot of bad joints in his work!) - but we wanted the Modena so he agreed we'd supply that and he''d supply the time and other materials to do the job.
In the meantime we spoke to Bradstone and their recommended company - Extensive - who pretty much told me he'd wrecked the stone and it was beyond renovation. His supplier offered to come and hone the stone surface but by this point we'd found all the issues with the installation that can be seen (we can't check the substrate unless we excavate) but you can see by the photo's what the standard of workmanship has been - so we can presume he's cut corners underneath.
We're a clay soil base - hence the concern over the drainage into the footings rather than an drain/soakaway setup - but we're not 'experts' and were paying a suppossed competent experienced professional to do it. He'd been recommended and we'd discussed the other work he'd done for comparison. He's even tried to say we told him not to put drainage up against the house brickwork.
I've learnt a lot from this site and will be speccing out with the next supplier how best to do this. I've already have quotes from 2 contractors who both said the whole job needs doing again and I'm suing him for the lower of the 2 quotes which is just under £10k. I did offer him several chances to settle out of courts - even lettign him try and put it through his insurance but as it is I'm now waiting on a court date.
Hopefully I have enough points to make to the judge that he's done a majorly substandard job and get the money back to do it properly.
Ah okay, impregnators are excellent sealers but because they absorb into the top layer of the paving they stop efflorescence coming through, hence the need to let the stone settle before sealing
We make impregnators along with water based breathable sealers which are almost invisible and crucially allow items such as efflorescence to come through even after sealing
The EASYSeal range
Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2016 10:56 pm
by williams
When you say resin do you mean like gtfk jointing compound?
The residue does weather off and is a side effect, we have done loads of patios with this and yes it does leave a residue and it does go, that's not to say I haven't been questioned about it before though.
The seller/distributor recomended using nitromors on the surface to remove residue, this isn't nice IMO. I have had to do it twice on black stone. I now refuse to lay any black stone at all as not only is it crap but any marks or residue stands out like a sore thumb.
Did he clean it at your request? How long had it been down for before you asked or he started trying to remove residue?
With regard to the drains. No argument. That's bad and just silly.
With regard to joint widths.
All sandstone and to an extent any cut or sawn natural stone has slight size variations. This makes it hard to lay and achieve a straight uniform joint, infact with normal sandstone it's pretty much impossible as a couple of mm here and there adds up.
The way to avoid this is IMO to lay the slabs in a random strecher bond which 'loses' a lot of this inconsistency. Laying in a random pattern like that with perfect sawn stone like that just makes it look rough, with normal sandstone par for the course.
Edited By williams on 1473285418
Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2016 11:37 pm
by lutonlagerlout
^^ pretty much what Williams said ,theres advice from a man who has laid award winning patios 
LLL
Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2016 10:19 am
by BenM
williams wrote:When you say resin do you mean like gtfk jointing compound?
The residue does weather off and is a side effect, we have done loads of patios with this and yes it does leave a residue and it does go, that's not to say I haven't been questioned about it before though.
The seller/distributor recomended using nitromors on the surface to remove residue, this isn't nice IMO. I have had to do it twice on black stone. I now refuse to lay any black stone at all as not only is it crap but any marks or residue stands out like a sore thumb.
Did he clean it at your request? How long had it been down for before you asked or he started trying to remove residue?
With regard to the drains. No argument. That's bad and just silly.
With regard to joint widths.
All sandstone and to an extent any cut or sawn natural stone has slight size variations. This makes it hard to lay and achieve a straight uniform joint, infact with normal sandstone it's pretty much impossible as a couple of mm here and there adds up.
The way to avoid this is IMO to lay the slabs in a random strecher bond which 'loses' a lot of this inconsistency. Laying in a random pattern like that with perfect sawn stone like that just makes it look rough, with normal sandstone par for the course.
Thanks for your input.
He's used a resin based jointing compund which whilst it can be used on sandstone- it all depends on how you apply it. If he had jointed it by hand and trowelled it into each joint then it may not have been such a detrimental effect on the complete surface
The staining was caused by a couple of issues in his application method - 1) it was way too hot on the days he did - we had temps of 30c at the time! 2) he mixed a massive pile of the compound and 'squeeged' it across the entire surface which wasn't kept wet.
I've been through this with Bradstone and their recommended renovation specialist - Extensive. Both of them said it was a pretty poor job he'd done. Ideally he should have used a mortar mix for the joints on this stone.
He was asked to get the marks off as soon as we spotted them - ie the day after he'd jointed the patio. He was suppossed to be coming back to seal the patio and we were suppossed to wait for the effloresance to come out and we could then get the patio sealed.
He was always putting us off and we had to chase him repeatedly to come and do these finishing stages of cleaning off his marks and then sealing as we'd asked him to!
When he eventually came back to us he tried the nitromors of his own choice, as well as sanding (just one of the stones as there's no way he'd havd donethe entire surface with a hand sander) and then also a bleach/water mix. Even the landscape supplies who he got the jointing materials have told me that they'd told him he'd messed up. I spoke to them recently when preparing my case and they had even offered to come and hone the surface back again as an option to clean the stone - he never told us this had been offered. They agreed when I spoke to them that even with honing the surface again it wouldn't then disguise the fact of the poor standard of the actual laying of the flags.
the flags are all honed and calibrated and speaking with Bradstone and the other landscapers who have been to look at re-doing the job - all have agreed that maybe a slight minor difference might be needed - but not the massively varying joint widths we've ended up with given the non standard laying he did which wasn't even a pattern. e.g. all slabs have different joint widths to their neighbouring slab - 1 stone can have 4 different joint widths! It should have been laid a lot better
Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2016 9:42 pm
by lemoncurd1702
The residue will weather off eventually, though if not applied correctly it can take a little longer.
You've put the contractor under pressure to seal it whilst probably holding a retaining payment. He's wrongly trying anything so that he can seal your paving to be paid when realistically the sealing is probably now best left till the spring.
Yep some of the joints could be more consistent and the pattern, well there isn't one, too many crosses. Far from the worst installation I've ever seen though.
Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2016 8:25 am
by BenM
lemoncurd1702 wrote:The residue will weather off eventually, though if not applied correctly it can take a little longer.
You've put the contractor under pressure to seal it whilst probably holding a retaining payment. He's wrongly trying anything so that he can seal your paving to be paid when realistically the sealing is probably now best left till the spring.
Yep some of the joints could be more consistent and the pattern, well there isn't one, too many crosses. Far from the worst installation I've ever seen though.
Actually we hadn't held any payment back - he'd been paid in full upto this point for the 'work' he'd done.
Due to a lot of things going on at the time we paid him in full as we hadn't discovered all the issues we now know about. This has been a lesson learnt now and will be to the detriment of us trusting or dealing with any future contractors and how we make payment.
The patio laying was completed in June 2014, we had to keep chasing him until he finally came to try and clean off the marks in early 2015! He tried the methods as mentioned coming back when we had to keep chasing him through 2015 and then said he was washing his hands of it. This is why I ended up getting alternate advice from Bradstone and other contractors who highlighted all the issues.
The builder who built the orangery we did as part of this work wasn't at all impressed with the fact the patio had a gap of 100mm on one edge, 25mm on another and 40mm on the other, with drainage into the footings...
My BiL who is a tiler by trade can't believe how bad the jointing is as he's measured the slabs and can;t see how me made such a hash-job of the joints.
Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2016 11:48 am
by BenM
Well just had the letter from the County Court - looks like I'll be seeing him again in front of a Judge on the 30th September.
I'll be taking photo's of all the issues with the job and stating the problems that have been identified by several independent experts. Hopefully I can make a good case to the court to get our money back.
Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2016 1:23 pm
by BenM
Little update - defendent agreed to have an 'independent expert report' done as directed by the court.
Report has been commissioned and is being written by an agreed party. Got to handover all my documents to the court and him on monday 14th November ready for my hearing on the 22nd December!
Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2017 5:44 pm
by BenM
Following an expert witness report being written by a certain Tony McCormack, there were a number of issues highlighted with the job.
The end result is that the case has been found in my favour.
I now need to plan to get this all ripped up back to the soil base and re-done properly.
Given this experience and what I've now learnt about how the job should be done, would it be a bad thing to try and agree a fairly detailed list of how this needs to be done with a new contractor?
I don't want to be a pain in the arse client but given what Tony has taken me through I'd like to ensure that an agreed methodology and plan is in place. Would that put contractors off if we have a well defined idea and criteria to work to?
Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2017 12:20 pm
by Tony McC
I've not been able to comment in this thread, for obvious reasons, but now it's all done and dusted, I have a little more freedom.
A well written and properly detailed specification and design detail will scare the bejaysus out of the cowboys, but any decent, competent contractor will appreciate the fact that you understand quality and know how to identify a job done properly.
The key is to use the spec and detail to document what you expect the completed job to be, and then leave enough wriggle-room for the contractor to reach that desired end in the way that best suits their own working methods.
So, f'rinstance, I never stipulate that the edge courses be installed before the body paving. I want the edge courses to be tight to the body, and to consist of straight lines, true arcs and sweet curves, but I'll leave it to the contractor whether he lays them first or last. As long as the end result is correct, I'm not really bothered how they got there.
Sorry I've not responded to your emails yet, Ben - I was at a funeral in Ireland for far longer than was sensible and now I'm desperatly running about playing 'catch up', but I *will* reply to you later this week....or maybe next week! :p
Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2017 5:37 pm
by lutonlagerlout
anyone any good will be happy to work to a spec sheet,we are working in central london on a mansion block
today was spent picking up 1 tonne of type 1 at a time for the subbase 150mm thick in 75mm layers
8 tonnes
a guy doing a patio 3 gardens up ,stopped amazed and asked what this grey stuff was and what was the white sheet (terram)
as we left he was raking dry sand and cement around ready for riven injun stone
theres plenty out there
LLL
![[IMG]http://i49.photobucket.com/albums....MG]](http://s49.photobucket.com/user/benmmellor/media/Patio/DSC_0198.jpg.html){kind=link}
![[img]http://i49.photobucket.com/albums....MG]](http://s49.photobucket.com/user/benmmellor/media/Patio/Original%20Staining%20by%20Nick.jpg.html){kind=link}
![[IMG]http://i49.photobucket.com/albums....MG]](http://s49.photobucket.com/user/benmmellor/media/Patio/Paving%2015_1.jpg.html){kind=link}
![[IMG]http://i49.photobucket.com/albums....MG]](http://s49.photobucket.com/user/benmmellor/media/Patio/Paving%2010.jpg.html){kind=link}
![[IMG]http://i49.photobucket.com/albums....MG]](http://s49.photobucket.com/user/benmmellor/media/Patio/Paving%206.jpg.html){kind=link}
![[IMG]http://i49.photobucket.com/albums....MG]](http://s49.photobucket.com/user/benmmellor/media/Patio/Paving%204.jpg.html){kind=link}
![[IMG]http://i49.photobucket.com/albums....MG]](http://s49.photobucket.com/user/benmmellor/media/Patio/Paving%2017.jpg.html){kind=link}
![[IMG]http://i49.photobucket.com/albums....MG]](http://s49.photobucket.com/user/benmmellor/media/Patio/Paving%2013_1.jpg.html){kind=link}
![[IMG]http://i49.photobucket.com/albums....MG]](http://s49.photobucket.com/user/benmmellor/media/Patio/Paving%2011.jpg.html){kind=link}
![[IMG]http://i49.photobucket.com/albums....MG]](http://s49.photobucket.com/user/benmmellor/media/Patio/Paving%2016.jpg.html){kind=link}
![[IMG]http://i49.photobucket.com/albums....MG]](http://s49.photobucket.com/user/benmmellor/media/DSC_1655.jpg.html){kind=link}
![[IMG]http://i49.photobucket.com/albums....MG]](http://s49.photobucket.com/user/benmmellor/media/DSC_1543.jpg.html){kind=link}
![[IMG]http://i49.photobucket.com/albums....MG]](http://s49.photobucket.com/user/benmmellor/media/DSC_1532.jpg.html){kind=link}
![[IMG]http://i49.photobucket.com/albums....MG]](http://s49.photobucket.com/user/benmmellor/media/DSC_1657.jpg.html){kind=link}