Home improvement and renovations can be hectic and exhaustive along with financially draining. Unfortunately, they are inevitable. Your property is not just meant to look aesthetically appealing, but it also needs to be practical and safe. While most safety standards are usually taken into consideration at the time of construction, buildings do get exposed to various natural and artificial conditions. This exposure often leads to wear and tear of materials used in buildings. The effects of wear and tear may vary from minor cracks to major damages and may require repair works accordingly. Although you might want to delay the repairs to save yourself from all the hassle and expenses, you will need to get it done sooner or later and in case of severe damages, immediately.
Stones are one of the most commonly used materials for structural walls and masonry for their budget friendliness and their resistance to rust, corrosion, wind and fire. However, even stones require repairs and replacement. That being said, stone repairs do not always mean replacing every single stone and ending up investing a fortune for repair works. Minor repair solutions are often enough to tackle the problem. Here are some of the common stone repair solutions that you need to know about.
Natural Stone Replacement
In cases where structural walls are made up of natural stones and have gone major damages such as deep cracks, they should ideally have stones replaced. Under this method, the entire unit of damaged masonry stone is cut our and is replaced by a new natural stone. As simple as it may sound, it must be noted that it important to make sure that the new stone is geologically compatible with the adjacent stones that were previously used. This is because different natural stones have different geological properties and they react differently to environmental conditions, which can possibly accelerate the decay in adjacent walls.
Stone Surface Repair
If the damages in the masonry are surface cracks or moderate level damages that do not require major disruptions, then you can avoid invasive procedures and can stick to stone surface repairs. In this situation, damages on the masonry surface are repaired with cosmetic treatments using stone repair mortar.
Structural Stone Repairs
Structural repairs are mandatory when structural walls are damaged deep enough to threaten the safety and stability of the building structure. These damages may include severe cracking in cavity walls, lintels and canopies above windows and doors. If the damage is specifically due to cracking in lintel, stone lintel repair can help solving the issue. For deeper cracks in other areas, slots are cut into stones and are bonded together using epoxy resin solution and stitching using stainless steel reinforcement. Once cracks are taken care of, the surface can be sealed using stone surface repair solutions.
Cast Stone Repairs
In some cases it is not possible to replace the existing natural stone masonry with a new one, replacements are casted and generated to match the required natural or artificial stones. The new stones that are casted using mortar are dyed so that the repair is not visible.
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