I live in a 200 year old sandstone house. Some of the stone is beginning to weather badly in places and I find little piles of sand at the bottom of the wall as my house is, literally, blowing away, The walls are about 4 feet thick so it is not going to fall down - but it does not look good.
Suggestions please for stabilising the stone work to stop it blowing away - the only obvious products in the diy shop are waterproof PVA and Dulux weathershield primer, would any of them work?
Thanks,
Gil
We used this stuff
I'm told it will need doing again in about two or three years, but if it save the hassle of repairing or replacing the stone, then I'm happy to do it.
Good luck with it
Looks like just the thing - and looks like a good web store too.
Many thanks
Gil
In article , Gil Mck writes
They're a friendly bunch but can be a bit slow (at turning orders around).
What flavour of sandstone is it? Red seems to be a bit longer lasting than blonde round here.
The house was built in pale red sandstone c.1806 and extended in slightly paler stone about 50 years later. It is not as red as a lot of the local building (most of it later built than ours) but I would not call it blonde. The wall facing southwest has already been completely rendered (over the old part) with a cement mix at some time in the past. I'm in the west of scotland so the weather is persistent from that direction. The other walls are weathering at various rates and even some of the blocks are weathering at different rates from others. Another phenomena is the tendency of some of the stones to get dirty whilst others do not and it is hard to figure a reason for that. It is hard to deal with that, of course, because sometimes I think the dirt is holding the blocks together and cleaning would just accelerate the erosion.
The front of the house still has some nice features so it is worth trying to keep the original stone as good as possible. If it did have to be rendered I cannot imagine how you would go about it , either with the corinthian columns (of which there are two) or any of the other rounded twiddly bits.
I'll do my best with trying to look after the original stuff.
Cheers,
Gil
In article , Gil Mck writes
Looking at west of Scotland tenement properties, I've not seen red sandstone go as badly as you describe but it's typical of the failure mode of blonde (or yellow) sandstone there. You've got an extra hundred years of wear on most city tenements of course but still it does seem unusual.
The quick fix normally applied to blonde tenement stuff appears to be a sand/cement coat to bring the surface back flush with coloured sand blinding to make it look like sandstone again but I've always viewed it as a bit of a bodge so was going to suggest avoiding that technique at least.
Stabilising the surface seems like a good idea but I'm not sure what would be appropriate. Silicone type waterproofing (as already suggested) may do the job if it's a case of frost related damage but could cause problems with other kinds of fix if that is not the problem.
An experienced stonemason may be the person to give you advice with at least payment for his time spent looking if you're not going use him to apply the proposed fix.
I know someone in the Cheshire area who owned a house built approx 1860 approx 1/3rd of the front of the property's sandstone blocks were badly weathered (due to it being very exposed on that side of the house.
He had a mason (not the dodgy handshake type!) come in and reface the damaged sandstone blocks, he said it didn't cost as much as he thought it might do and the match is very good, the new blocks were 'weathered in' around their edges and the colour spot on.
Ron
Interesting and useful info & comment - thank you all.
Gil
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