Builders In Nottingham And Their Use Of Local Sand Stone

Builders in Nottingham have had a long tradition of constructing homes from locally quarried yellow sand stone. This is not because sand stone is particularly strong or weatherproof, it's because it has always been in plentiful supply, a cheap local natural resource for many generations. The sand stone is very soft and easy to work with, leaving a neat finish because of its regularly spaced grains.

As you travel across the East Midlands many of the great surrounding walls that builders in and around Nottingham have built over the centuries are made from local sand stone. In fact there are miles of this dressed soft yellow sand stone walling that still remain today.

Millions of tonnes have been used to prop up our gardens in the form of rockeries, its every where you care to look. A lot of the oldest houses in Nottingham have been built using nothing else but timber and locally quarried sand stone.

In more recent times it has become a far more scarce commodity, sand stone of building grade is not easy to come by.

I only know of one working quarry today that is readily supplying yellow sand stone of a high quality to builders in Nottingham. If you took a trip to the local sand quarry today, you would notice the strikingly small pit that the stone is quarried from. As you drive up to the pit you'll also notice an empty worked out pit, that leaves you wondering how long before the other one runs out too.

Sand stone masonry is likely to be some of the oldest brickwork around, so it's hardly surprising at all that a lot of it is in need of some repair and restoration, the most common job of which being re-pointing of exposed garden walls. With the old nature of the stone work it is recommended to hire a bricklayer for the job. Understandably though, as a lot of this kind of walling is found in gardens or other inconspicuous areas of the home, it may be something you would like to try and repair yourself.

Preparing your sand stone walling for re-pointing is a simple enough job. First you start to remove the existing perished mortar between the joints, I find a worn pointing iron does the job quite well, or an old screw driver will also suffice. Starting at the top of the coping, work your way down the walling removing all the loose pointing, taking extra care not to mark the stone. Once this is done its now time to grab a brush and have a good clean up.

Now that the area is clean, and all the loose mortar has been removed, using a household pressure washer and nothing but tap water, give the wall a quick clean this will bring the stone back to its former glory and the wetting of the wall will stop your nice new pointing from cracking after it's been applied.

When applying the new mortar to the wall be bold, it is better to over fill the joint than under fill it. Don't fiddle with it get it on and get all the joints well filled.

After you've filled all the joints, you can go to the end of the wall that you started the pointing at and from the top down with a clean pointing trowel start to cut off any overfill. You will note that now the mortar is starting to stiffen that the excess just falls to the floor leaving a nice clean line. Move along the wall repeating the process to the end then with a soft brush lightly brush along the entire wall remembering to start always at the top.

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