# what's wrong here?



## dtsinc (Jan 26, 2009)

Lots of stone work on this house. Probly half that looks like this. Mason with 30 years experience that this job. The stone did not bond to the scratch coat, where the mason used lathe, and did not bond to the cement where he just stuck the stone to the foundation. The mortar is real crumbly. There is no flashing above the ledger, can water infiltration cause this? Maybe just a bad mortar mix?


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## Tscarborough (Feb 25, 2006)

Slick as glass stone. It looks like nearly 100% bedding, but if the mortar is soft he did not use the correct type. I recommend nothing but a high end Laticrete 254 Platinum thinset for that type stone.


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## Darwin (Apr 7, 2009)

Too dry a mix to start with.


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## Rockmonster (Nov 15, 2007)

Wow. If this is what passes for stonework in today's world, we may as well just kiss this trade goodbye. This stuff hasn't made it to the island yet, thankfully, but it looks like virtually _anyone_ can do this, no?


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## Michael Olding (Aug 5, 2008)

yes if the mix is crumbly then likely a bad mix design. 

Odd thing though you'd think the mortar would bond more readily to new and fresh Lick & Stick then to an old, dirty concrete foundation. Something else could be going on here besides what you see at first glance.

With no upper flashing there is a possibility of a de-lamination where water gets locked between the mortar and the facing material and freezes... popping it off. 

The other odd think is the setting bed looks hard and smooth which usually means a high cement content. How could that be if is crumbly? It could require a little further investigation.

Either way someones gonna eat a real problem.


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## stoneman203 (May 17, 2011)

I like to make a slurry mix of portland and water in a bucket and butter up the back to the stones. I've used the recommended fortified spec-mix for these stones and never had a problem. Flashing may have helped. Are there any gutter leaders on that corner?


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## Tscarborough (Feb 25, 2006)

It doesn't matter what the mix design is, the back of that type stone is literally smooth as glass. It is a Chinese product, the little pcs are epoxied together, but the material is some type of quartzite, and when sawn it is slick. The only thing that will hold it is a very good thinset (or epoxy).


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## ohiohomedoctor (Dec 26, 2010)

Looks like a good project for vinyl siding. 

Chinese stone+cheap foreign labor= That.....

http://www.ohiohomedoctorremodeling.com


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## JBM (Mar 31, 2011)

the picture is pretty small but that looks pretty ugly to me. Are those individual stones or larger panels?


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## rock16 (Feb 25, 2010)

JBM said:


> the picture is pretty small but that looks pretty ugly to me. Are those individual stones or larger panels?


Looks like Eldorado stacked stone. They are a small panel.


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## Tscarborough (Feb 25, 2006)

They are small panels of real stone epoxied together. The stone has an absorption of approximately zero-point-zero-zero.


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## Tom Struble (Mar 2, 2007)

that sounds kinda low to me:whistling


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## superseal (Feb 4, 2009)

Yep, the lack of porosity also has the opposite effect in drying out of the substrate - When the substrate absorbs water through jointing, cracks, ect... it's much slower to dry out. That's the recipe of disaster in freezing environments.


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## dtsinc (Jan 26, 2009)

Thanks for all the replies! The stone is ROX PRO Ledgestone Panels. Like Tscarborough said, it's small pieces of real stone epoxied together, and very smooth on the back. 

The mason mixed his own mortar on site, he had never worked with this product before and was under direction of the manufacturer. He has come back once to fix some of it, and used a premix bag of mortar and that seems to be stuck pretty well...

What would the procedure be to use thinset? Would you do lath and scratch coat, and then thinset to it, and thinset straight to the foundation?


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## Michael Olding (Aug 5, 2008)

Tscarborough said:


> It doesn't matter what the mix design is, the back of that type stone is literally smooth as glass. It is a Chinese product, the little pcs are epoxied together, but the material is some type of quartzite, and when sawn it is slick. The only thing that will hold it is a very good thinset (or epoxy).


Ahhh... I see...


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## JD3lta (Nov 22, 2009)

I'd recommend scoring the backs as well.


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