Stone Cladding
Stone Cladding is having a major resurgence in the property market, stone blocks or tiles used in masonry can be "dressed" or "rough." Stone cladding utilizing dressed stones is known as ashlar masonry, whereas masonry using irregularly shaped stones is known as rubble masonry. Both rubble and ashlar masonry can be laid in courses (rows of even height) through the careful selection or cutting of stones, but a great deal of stone masonry is uncoursed.
It can be bonded and fixed to most surfaces including metal lath, walled in random or course pattern, the natural beauty of colour variation with veins of yellows and buffs showing through.
Once the stone has been bonded it can be pointed in traditional mortar finishes from 'weather-struck' and 'bucket handle' etc
Stone cladding also offers very good levels of insulation and resistance to the elements, if carried out correctly it will last the lifetime of the building.
We can also face houses in real brick slips of your choice from Imperial re claimed to hand made bricks.
All installations are carried out by our own fitters not sub contractors.
From a feature such as a bay area or a full house or just corners (castle or Quoins)
Sometimes "river rock" (ovate shaped smooth stones) is used as a cladding veneer. This type of material makes an attractive covering but is not favoured for solid masonry as it requires a great amount of mortar and can lack intrinsic structural strength.
The NIST stone cladding test wall is an experiment by the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology to determine how different types of construction stone weather. It includes 2352 samples of natural laminates of stone from 47 different states within the US and 16 different countries. The wall measures approximately 12 m long, 4 m high, 0.6 m thick at the bottom, and 0.3 m at the top.
The wall resurfacing includes varieties of andesite, argillite (slate), basalt, bluestone, breccia, conglomerate, coquina, coral, dacite, diabase, diorite, dolomite, gabbro, gneiss, granite, granodiorite, greenstone, labradorite, limestone, marble, melaphyre, pitchstone, pumice, pyrophyllite, quartz, quartzite, sandstone, schist, serpentine, shellstone, soapstone, syenite, travertine, and tuff.
The wall was built by one mason, Vincent Di Benedeto, in 1948. He used two types of stone-setting mortar on the front. He used both a 1:3 lime mortar, with a high calcium hydrate and a 1:0.4:3 portland cement, whiting, and sand mortar.
The wall was moved from its original location in Washington, DC to Gaithersburg, Maryland in May 1977
Growing in popularity among builders and homeowners are manufactured-stone veneers. Companies pull natural stones from quarries around the world, create molds from them and recreate those stones with crushed reconstituted stone. To the casual observer - and even many masons - there is no visual difference between veneers of natural and manufactured stone.
For the DIY'er We can offer delivery of our products to most of the UK mainland with an experienced fitter who will offer two hours of expert hands on time to get your job started
We do of course have a full installation service available
EWI or (EXTERNAL WALL INSLUTATION)
All our products can be used on timber frame houses with Various systems available in the UK
These vary from Mineral Wool and Polystyrene to PIR Modified Urethane insulating materials
An EWI System may be fixed directly to the building structure or built onto a render carrier rail system we can finish this with a combination of either brick,stone or specialist render
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