Hi all,
I'm looking for a few areas of advice regarding grouting bluestone. I am relatively new to stone work and welcome all opinions/comments.
Situation:
I am in the midst of a very large bluestone project. One side walkway, a front walkway, and a patio. The walkways are over 4inch 4k psi concrete, the patio over 6inch 4k psi concrete, and I'm wet laying the 1in stones using between 0.5-1in of type S mortar so they end up flush with the driveway/house and are draining the right directions.
I have tried a few different approaches to grouting between the bluestone once they are wet laid: very wet, very dry, and what I'll call semi-wet or crumbly. The very wet is probably operating at 9-10qts of water per 80lb type s bag. The very dry was around 3-3.5qts per 80lb bag. The one I've used most recently is crumbly and that's usually around the minimum recommended on the bag for 5qts per 80lbs. I found very wet to be an incredible mess, though it's entirely possible I'm doing it wrong (I was trying to pipe it and then strike without waiting more than 10 minutes). Very dry is easy to work with, but I'm underwhelmed by both the color of the joint produced as well as the smoothness of the appearance of the joint post-striking. On one joint the grout separated slightly from the side -- I can't tell if that's because the mix is too dry or it's a one-off, but neither end of the spectrums of wetness for the mud give me much hope that the contact against the bluestone sidewall was strong and the PSI reaches spec. Crumbly gives me more confidence because I'm operating within spec for the bagged mix (Pittsburgh winters are not friendly to concrete of any kind) and is almost as easy to work with as dry, and only leaves a little mess for me to sponge up after the fact.
Questions:
1. While crumbly is the simplest to work with and I'm confident the bond/psi will end up solid, many videos I'm seeing have masons working with a very wet mud and piping or using guns to pump it into joints. They appear to move much faster than I can manually putting crumbly material in tuckpointing. Is there a "best practice" for stone work mud wetness? If suggesting very wet, water ratio and advice on when to strike would be really helpful so it doesn't end up a proper mess like I've experienced.
2. Does water content impact bagged type s mortar color? My very wet application came out nearly white, but the other two are a very sandy tan. Is this something that just settles to the same color over time (it's been >2 weeks in all cases but the differences are still apparent).
Things I'm unwilling to do (apologies, call me a purist):
Any other words of advice, especially from anybody who has worked in cold-weather regions are greatly welcomed. I have about 1000 total square feet of bluestone to lay and have only finished the sidewalk (~200sqft) so far. Grouting is taking a lot longer than I predicted so any suggestions to expedite that process would be awesome.
I'm looking for a few areas of advice regarding grouting bluestone. I am relatively new to stone work and welcome all opinions/comments.
Situation:
I am in the midst of a very large bluestone project. One side walkway, a front walkway, and a patio. The walkways are over 4inch 4k psi concrete, the patio over 6inch 4k psi concrete, and I'm wet laying the 1in stones using between 0.5-1in of type S mortar so they end up flush with the driveway/house and are draining the right directions.
I have tried a few different approaches to grouting between the bluestone once they are wet laid: very wet, very dry, and what I'll call semi-wet or crumbly. The very wet is probably operating at 9-10qts of water per 80lb type s bag. The very dry was around 3-3.5qts per 80lb bag. The one I've used most recently is crumbly and that's usually around the minimum recommended on the bag for 5qts per 80lbs. I found very wet to be an incredible mess, though it's entirely possible I'm doing it wrong (I was trying to pipe it and then strike without waiting more than 10 minutes). Very dry is easy to work with, but I'm underwhelmed by both the color of the joint produced as well as the smoothness of the appearance of the joint post-striking. On one joint the grout separated slightly from the side -- I can't tell if that's because the mix is too dry or it's a one-off, but neither end of the spectrums of wetness for the mud give me much hope that the contact against the bluestone sidewall was strong and the PSI reaches spec. Crumbly gives me more confidence because I'm operating within spec for the bagged mix (Pittsburgh winters are not friendly to concrete of any kind) and is almost as easy to work with as dry, and only leaves a little mess for me to sponge up after the fact.
Questions:
1. While crumbly is the simplest to work with and I'm confident the bond/psi will end up solid, many videos I'm seeing have masons working with a very wet mud and piping or using guns to pump it into joints. They appear to move much faster than I can manually putting crumbly material in tuckpointing. Is there a "best practice" for stone work mud wetness? If suggesting very wet, water ratio and advice on when to strike would be really helpful so it doesn't end up a proper mess like I've experienced.
2. Does water content impact bagged type s mortar color? My very wet application came out nearly white, but the other two are a very sandy tan. Is this something that just settles to the same color over time (it's been >2 weeks in all cases but the differences are still apparent).
Things I'm unwilling to do (apologies, call me a purist):
- Use a polysand or some other brush in material
- Use some psychotically wet mix you dump all over the stones and then squeegee into joints
Any other words of advice, especially from anybody who has worked in cold-weather regions are greatly welcomed. I have about 1000 total square feet of bluestone to lay and have only finished the sidewalk (~200sqft) so far. Grouting is taking a lot longer than I predicted so any suggestions to expedite that process would be awesome.
