H
Howard
Hi Guys.
Myself and my partner live in Ilkley, West Yorkshire and wanted to say how great this forum is.
We have recently bought and now laid some black limestone flags in our garden. After looking for advise on how to lay
these flags on the net we found really helpful advice from threads in your forum. Having read this advise and taken it on board we laid the flags being really careful at all stages. The stone was taken from the packing crate with gloves as not to get grease marks on the stone. The stone was washed and allowed to thoroughly dry out before our builder laid it. The builders were instructed to be very careful. They wore gloves, kept it as clean as possible being very careful to avoid getting any mortar on the surface and if they did to wipe of straight away with a wet cloth.
Once laid and before pointing I oiled the flags believing that this would help reduce the chance of staining should the builder get any grout on the surface. It all looked great after I brushed the oil on. Two days later came a heavy downpour. After the rain we were horrified to find two problems with the flags.
Problem One as seen in pics 1 and 2
There were light patches left on the stone(Picture 1) It looks as though the water has just pooled on top of the oil. I am thinking that I was a little too liberal with the oil when I brushed it on thus creating this problem. When the water was brushed off and the stone dried there was not much evidence that there had been a problem (picture 2).
If there is too much oil on the flags, will we get this problem every time they get wet or can we expect the effect to be reduced in time? Is there a need to somehow get the oil off and start again?
Problem Two seen in pic 3
A few of the flags have got white marks to the edges of the surface. Most of these white marks appear where there is a little mortar on the edge of the flag but the cement is not on the surface. Again this has only just happened after oiling the
stone two days previously. Is this likely to get worse and is it advisable to point ASAP?
Incidentally, we have been in contact with LTP to find out if we should seal the stone before we point and their advise was to oil only. In fact they are now saying just use stone oil as there will be massive problems if we use sealer and it then gets rained on within four days of applying.
I know that Black Limestone problems have really come to light of late and we are sorry for bothering you with yet more problems but any advice will be very much appreciated. We are devastaed that having been so careful that we are still experiencing problem.
Kind regards
Howard
