Quarries

Sorry - my blogging has got behind - this is post-dated to 3rd May (when it took place) but is actually being written on 15th !

The builder has proposed two possible local quarries as the source of the stone for our build. Both are within 10 miles of us and he suggested that we pay them a visit, so today we did.

The first is proposed as a source for the cut quoins to be used on the corners. They also do regular building stone, but we were told that it is very hard, with crystals and fossils that will make it difficult to dress to match in with our existing house. Also the building stone is cut then tumbled to rough it up a bit which gives an appearance that is probably a bit too regular for our needs.

The quarry is locally owned (rather than part of a big group) with just a couple of portacabins. Down in the base are the working sheds, including an 8 foot diameter water cooled circular saw that was busy slicing through a massive slab of oolitic limestone ! A very helpful quarryman showed us what was what and we came out happy with the proposed quoins (Light Shelley, apparently).

The second quarry is proposed for the building stone so we paid that a visit too. Again we spoke to someone who was very helpful. They do no cutting here, so the stone is termed "random" as it is guillotined into a rough shape and finished by hand. The big advantage at this quarry is that they have used their own stone everywhere in demonstration buildings and walls around the site. You can therefore get a very good idea what it is going to be like. One concern we had was that the stone comes in large builders bags with random sizing. Looking at the bags they had on site it looked like a lot of it might be too small for our project. The coursing of our current house varies and we don't want to spend money on stone with a high degree of wastage. However, on returning home later we concluded that it perhaps wasn't as bad as we thought. We will still mention it to the builder though. The quarryman said they weren't keen on sorting the bags to give customers the sizes that they want, though it's not what their brochure says !

Colour matching the stone is proving quite difficult. Our house is quite grey and mellow, yet it is reputedly made of the stone dug from our own quarry in the garden (makes sense) which is nearly white ! The effect of years of weathering has to be discounted. What we want to avoid is stone that is too yellow. There are buildings around that use a yellow stone from the North Cotswolds, and it simply doesn't look right.