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Posted: Tue Nov 19, 2013 8:53 am
by Tony McC
For the first time in years, I had occasion to use a bag of grano yesterday as a small fillet was needed on a project to ease a pronounced lip between new paving and a dropped section of mass concrete on the public footpath.
I hardly recognised what was in the bag. What happened to the crushed, 6mm-to-dust bluey-greeny limestone from Carnforth? What's this murky, wet, dark grey limestone with added brick dust?
I know we have to be more cautious with primary aggregates, but wasn't "proper" grano a quarry waste produyct anyway and used in such relativelyt small quantities (benching MHs, fillet repairs, etc.) that more was generated each year than could be sold.
I'll go out later this week and see how it has turned out. The freshly mixed stuff looked similar and floated-up OK-ish, but will it cure to that hard steel-grey finish?
Posted: Tue Nov 19, 2013 9:23 am
by GB_Groundworks
weve got two bags of bluey grey grano at the mo, 1 has gone so hard you have to lift the bulk bag and drop it to shovel it.
seen some horrible grano! though in a bulk bag was more like dust/mud had an inch of moss on the top but looked like it had been outside a good year or two
Posted: Tue Nov 19, 2013 2:43 pm
by msh paving
My supplier hear in Norfolk has 6000t of grano dust 6mm down, it came from washing crushed track ballast for clean 20mm stone, i use it all the time for laying paving and backing up and bedding edge course and slab laying hard as a rock MSH 
Posted: Wed Nov 20, 2013 6:15 am
by cookiewales
How much you paying for that msh .i have just been using some reclaimed rail ballast 20 ton £260 delivered very good better than some type 1 out there 
Posted: Wed Nov 20, 2013 6:38 am
by msh paving
type1 crushed rail ballast £17+vat and the dust is £14+vat
MSH
Posted: Wed Nov 20, 2013 10:13 am
by Tony McC
GB_Groundworks wrote:weve got two bags of bluey grey grano at the mo, 1 has gone so hard you have to lift the bulk bag and drop it to shovel it.
That sounds like the proper stuff - almost a self-binding aggregate in its natural state.
Can you get me some close-up photies with a tape in shot to show the scale?
Posted: Wed Nov 20, 2013 7:49 pm
by GB_Groundworks
i'll do it in the morning, ill take a macro lens as well
Edited By GB_Groundworks on 1384987942
Posted: Wed Nov 20, 2013 10:46 pm
by lemoncurd1702
Never heard of grano before but guess its what we in S.Wales refer to as dust or 6mm to dust but usually just dust. In Swansea it's black. Where I am, between Cardiff and Swansea (M4 corridor) sometimes light grey almost white (limestone) but quite often pink, and yeah it sets pink and looks shite, almost blushes for you.
Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2013 10:33 am
by Tony McC
I know it varies from region to region, which is part of the reason I've never done much about it on the main website, as one man's grano is another man's shite, but with not a hint of regional favouritism, the blue-green 4-0mm Carnforth limestone quarry waste used throughout NW England and SW Scotland is the best stuff for benching I've ever encountered.
The client on this particular job had some of the black stuff we see in the Midlands and S. Wales, purchased via a DIY shed who must have had a national distribution agreement. I rejected it for two reasons:
1 - it had almost no dust so would give too coarse a finsih with almost no 'fat' to float
2 - he had a plant pot full of it!
I'd be very, very interested to see photies of what passess for grano in the various regions. The stuff I see in the SE of England and that London seems to be mostly crushed recycled concrete!
Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2013 3:25 pm
by ilovesettsonmondays
Never seen grano in the dirty old smoke . Plenty of it in the channel isles . Lay all their block paving on it over there . Was that Kennedy's old quarry in carnforth boss
Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2013 4:25 pm
by lutonlagerlout
special order down here
never seen it in a merchant
we normally use 2:1 pratts yard (sharp as in plastering) sand : cement for benching
LLL
Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2013 8:07 pm
by rab1
Common as muck up here. dark blue in colour...
Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2013 10:28 pm
by GB_Groundworks
grano pics
this bag is from jewsons but its an old bag been on site for a few years there are 6 more of them but i had a travis back that was more green, but the lads had used it, ill try to get a few different ones.
Edited By GB_Groundworks on 1385073177