James Allan Stone Company Ltd

Checking Your Masonry For Defects

Every home will run into problems at some point during its lifespan. A lot of the time, these problems arise from your masonry. Over time, things can happen to the structure of your home – or any surrounding stone structures – causing them to have defects.

As you can imagine, this isn’t something you want to leave unattended for too long, as it may end up leading to permanent structural damage that costs a fortune to fix!

Plus, masonry defects can just look a bit ugly and cause your home to lose some of its aesthetic appeal. So, the best thing to do is check your masonry for any problems, and here’s some advice on how to do that:

Look For Crumbling Stones
Inspect the outside of your property and be on the lookout for any crumbling pieces of stone. This is a fairly good indication that a problem has occurred, and is in need of fixing.

Stone shouldn’t crumble, so if yours has, then it could be down to shoddy workmanship in the past. This is also a telltale sign of frost damage, which may well have happened during the cold winter months.

This should be a very easy thing to spot, as it looks like pieces of stone have been eroded, and you may even see powdered residue on other stones below and around it.

Check For Cracks
One of the most common masonry defects is when cracks appear in pieces of stone. This can be because of general wear and tear, bad workmanship, or possibly just an old piece of stone losing some of its strength.

Small cracks may not seem serious, but they can quickly widen to become much bigger problems. So, it pays when you spot the defect early on and get it seen to as soon as possible.

Feel For Loose Stones
Another thing to look for is a stone that’s become loose and can almost be pulled out of its structure. This can commonly happen in walls, patio, or even on the side of your home. Test stone masonry regularly by pushing any pieces that look a bit out of place, or attempting to pull them out.

What To Do When You Find Defects
Checking your masonry for defects is only one part of the battle. The next step is ensuring you find a professional stonemason to handle your problems. At James Allan Stone Company Ltd, we can help with all masonry repairs – regardless of how simple or difficult they may be.

Typically, we have two different approaches to our repair service. We either try and chisel away at a damaged piece of stone until the sound stone is exposed. From here, we can insert stainless steel fixings and apply a specially formulated repair mortar.

This gives the appearance that a brand new stone has been fitted, without us actually needing to fit it. If your masonry damage is very extreme, then we opt for our second approach, which is to simply cut out the stone and replace it with an entirely new piece.

If you want to keep your masonry in good shape, then you should check it for defects on a fairly regular basis. As soon as you spot a problem, give us a call, and we’ll help fix it as soon as can be.

Why Does James Allan Stone Company Ltd Only Use Lime Mortars for Lime Pointing?

Any building or structure built more than 100 years ago in Edinburgh would have almost certainly been built using a lime mortar for lime pointing. Lime has been used as a binder back to Roman times and this is for good reason. To say it is a time proven product would be something of an understatement.

Many or most of our historical structures have very little in the way of foundations unlike today. Foundations of yesteryear where typically large flat stones laid directly onto the earth and pointed with a lime mortar. As you might imagine, this could lead to a fair wee bit of settlement within the masonry pieces and this is where the use of lime mortar and lime pointing becomes important as the lime mortar is very flexible and can withstand this movement.

Lime mortar used for pointing is also very much more stone-like in the way it behaves in freeze-thaw cycles, and very much moves with the host masonry. It also has a great deal of breathability that cement does not, allowing moisture to exit through the mortar as the building was designed to do.

Properly selected mortar for lime pointing should be slightly softer than the masonry to be pointed, so as in the cases of the pointing being forced out by very extreme temperatures etc, it will not damage the stone as it does so. Cement mixes are far too hard for this purpose, among many other reasons not to use it.

It is sad to see many fine buildings in Edinburgh, Fife and the Lothians and beyond pointed in unsightly, brittle cement mortars. This will in time adversely affect the structure, possibly beyond repair.

The only reason I can think of for the continued use of cement is one of cost. At the time of writing a bag of cement costs around £5, while a bag of lime costs around £20. The cost of lime mortar material is only a slight consideration for say a pointing job, and is surely worth the cost of upgrading to lime. We Only Ever Use Lime Mortars For Building Works, Pointing and Stone Repair.