Stone.

Dave Plowman (News) · 2017-07-29T13:31:04+00:00

I've got a Victorian semi, and the brick walls go above the roof. On top of those walls is a coping of pre-cast concrete lengths - each one a couple of feet or so long - replaced along with the roof some years ago. At the end of this wall (front of the house) is a typical Victorian cast stone. Which included a short length of this coping stone - but all in one, so would tend to retain the others. This stone is three brick courses high (at the front) and extends about 2.5 ft back into the wall. And is spalling badly. One worse than the other - and of course it's the one between the two houses, on the party wall. When the roof was replaced about 30 years ago, the roofers rendered this stone - and that has all fallen off, bit by bit. Luckily no-one was injured by the falling chunks. The house is scaffolded for painting, so I have reasonable access. But only on my side of this central stone. In an ideal world, I'd remove it. Make up some shuttering and cast up a new one. But I don't fancy doing any damage to next door's roof - and I can't get access to that side from the scaffolding anyway. I've got a load of lime mortar made specifically for fixing this sort of stone. It would be possible to fix shuttering to the existing stone to remake the coping part. But just how well would the lime mortar hold? I'll take some pics and put a link to them if it would help.

Stone.

Jul 29, 2017 43 Replies

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alan_m 8 years ago

formatting link

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Dave Plowman (News) 8 years ago

I now know why a present day builder avoids lime mortar like the plague.

Takes ages to set. Fine in the days of a horse and cart, I suppose.

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Rob Morley 7 years ago

I'm fairly sure most builders who /do/ avoid it like the plague simply don't understand it and don't want to learn.

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Vir Campestris 7 years ago

We've got lime mortar & plaster in parts of our house. It's better against the timber frame, and it fits the age of the building.

But however slow it doesn't take a year (less 6 days) to set!

Andy

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