I recently looked at a flagstonejob in my neighborhood and once again came across a really bad work. Time and time again I see stone masonry projects that people are not qualified to handle. They don’t even have the basic idea of what there masonry base should be constructed of. This particular job was done but some fly by night contractors who took the money and ran.

They set indoor slate on the outside of the steps and walkways. They used bar sand to set the slate tile on top of the concrete. They didn’t even have the thought to use some bonding agent against the concrete. If they did it probably wouldn’t of work because they didn’t clean off the original concrete steps to begin with. Bonding agents can only be applied after a proper cleaning has been accomplished. Even if they did everything I mentioned it was still doomed to fail. Slate is not the most porous stone, but if you have to use it at least mix up some cement and water paste. If you paste the backs of each stone then maybe you could get a decent bond.

But not to worry they didn’t use any anyway. At least they came off pretty easy. In the walkway they again used the existing concrete but wanted to extend it from three to four and an half feet wide. So instead of tamping down the earth and setting crushed stone. Then adding a four inch slab of concrete for the new slate walkway. They decided to just throw some dirt and debris on top of the earth and call it tight. They however, put down a little mortar on top of the debris to level things up.

I feel bad for these people, they just spent thousands of dollars for a walkway that looks terrible and is falling apart. Should of went to help with masonry .com and got some input. Look for an article on how some bozo used stacking block and natural stone together on a porch. John the mason out.

Tags: slate walkway nightmare

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 at 2:31 am and is filed under Job of the Week. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.