Historic & Heritage Paving - Online Shop
Heritage Buildings or Areas of Historic importance often have individual and historically important traditionally paved areas around them. Of course these areas have to retain their original appearance, but today they are also frequently required to accommodate modern living and need to be integrated into our modern City infrastructure - particularly around many historic buildings such as our Cathedrals and Churches, Town Halls, Old Market Squares and other types of Conservation Areas.
Paving Jointing Mortars for Heritage and Historic Paved areas can be very important and the jointing can frequently give rise to considerable problems and even damage to the original stone and surrounding area and substructures. This is because many historic areas of traditional stone paving are now in the centre of modern town centre or other public or private commercial developments and are required to be used frequently and often on a daily basis, by modern road traffic.
Therefore, the historic stone paving and its original lime and / or cement based traditional jointing mortar is no longer trafficked by hand or horse and ox drawn carts that they were originally designed and built to accommodate, but much more heavily and frequently by modern traffic including heavy articulated vehicles of up to 40 tonnes. Indeed, the fact that they are generally able to do so, is a credit to the competence of our past British City Architects and Engineers and their structural integrity. However, nowadays they are also exposed to the frequent use of de-icing salts in winter, plus the frequent use of mechanical street cleaning machines and other forms of high-pressure water jet cleaning.
So apart from the old requirements of dealing with exposure to weathering, pedestrian and relatively light wheeled vehicle traffic, these additional demands are imposed on them. The traditional lime and/or cement based paving jointing materials, even the modern polymer modified and pre-batched / prebagged ones, are unable to cope with the new stresses imposed by these additional and severe loading and exposure requirements.
In refurbishment situations brought about by the inevitable breakdown and failure of the cement based jointing mortars the Local Authorities and their professional advisors are faced with some significant problems to replace the deteriorated and broken down jointing i.e. there are different joint depths and varied joint shapes and widths - some very wide where there is often residual water in the joints. Minimal closure periods are possible due to modern access requirements and financial commitments or public vehicles and emergency services requiring access etc.; then there is the additional vibration and abrasion from the increased frequency and load weights of the modern vehicular traffic, plus the aggressive Mechanical Street Cleaning machines, high pressure water jetting and the use of de-icing salts in winter.
Very often there are even more environmental demands in these refurbishment projects, as these areas can be in almost constant use i.e. in Market Squares, Churches, retail or commercial office buildings access and entrances etc. The additional demands in these situations can also require that: the paving jointing mortars are stored, mixed and placed on-site without creating dust to disrupt the occupants; that the jointing mortars are moisture-tolerant during application and hardening, that they are fast to apply and harden rapidly to allow fast reopening of the areas, plus they must be non staining on the traditional stone surfaces. All-in-all a significant specification for the installation and performance in service of a paving jointing mortar, which by their very nature, can NEVER all be met satisfactorily be by ANY type of cement-based materials or products.
Paving Jointing Solutions for Historic Paved Areas
All of these onerous requirements for paving jointing mortars are easily met and many more advantages are provided by the unique GftK vdw range of Paving Joint Mortars, which have been specifically designed to solve all of the problems associated with the replacement or refurbishment of historic natural stone paving in such historic and heritage areas.
Specially developed products such as GftK’s vdw 850 Paving Jointing Mortar are dust-free, very quickly and easily slurry applied with excess water (so residual water in the joints or wet weather is no problem), suitable for variable joint widths and depths, self-compacting into the joints and rapid hardening. Then in service it has the ideal mechanical strength correlation for such small format paving and is fully resistant to de-icing salts, high pressure water jetting and mechanical street cleaning machines and de-icing salts. This unique material provides the ideal solution for the refurbishment of these historic paved areas that have to be which are subject to modern Town Centre demands and exposure.
For details on this unique product please see the Paving Jointing Products page of this website or call us for expert assistance. If you are involved in refurbishment projects and also have to clean or seal areas of such historic paving see our Paving Cleaners or Paving Sealers pages. We can provide systems and solutions to gently remove dirt and grime, or to reliably protect historic stone paving against freeze / thaw damage for example.
To review some examples of specific Historic Pavement Jointing Case Studies follow the link to our case studies pages where you can view or download examples of recent projects completed by our professional paving contractor customers and their clients in PDF format. There are also some videos of historic market Square refurbishment before, during and after the installation of the GftK Paving Jointing Mortar.
For more advice or assistance with your specific paving project, please call 01257 266696 for FREE Expert Advice during normal office hours, or you can email us at any time to: sales@nccstreetscape.co.uk and we will get back to you just as soon as we can. Thank you.