Report : Hard landscaping
The decline in stone imports for hard landscaping continued last year, although at a slower rate than in 2008. China and India still supply most of what is used, although clients are starting to take a second look at low-carbon indigenous stone.
The import of stone setts, kerbs and flags returned to a more normal monthly distribution last year from the downward curve seen after April 2008. But the scales are different. Imports in April 2008 topped £5million. No month last year reached even half that level.
Overall, this snapshot of imports of stone used for hard landscaping shows demand continued to fall last year, although not as steeply as it had in 2008.
Also, in 2008 volumes fell more sharply than value, reflecting the weakness of stirling that had increased the price of the stone. Last year, volumes fell less than value, showing buyers and suppliers had sharpened up their acts to bring the price of imported stone back down.
Anecdotally, suppliers have moved allegiance from China to India, but the figures do not support this. China’s share of imports increased from 20% to 28% by (stirling) value and from 21% to 31% by volume, while India’s fell from 69% to 62% by value and from 72% to 66% by volume.
The anecdotal (and mythical) shift from China to India was supposed to be because Chinese stone is priced in US dollars (and so became more expensive due to the weakness of stirling) and Indian stone in pounds. Certainly at the start of last year the gap between the prices of Chinese and Indian stone was widening (see graph ‘Monthly average price of imports from China and India’) but that was quickly corrected. And although the Indians were pricing in pounds, the weakness of stirling was still reducing their income, which, in the course of the year, they managed to correct.
There are no reliable figures for any dimensional stone production in the UK, let alone production of stone for hard landscaping. If there were, they might just be showing the use of more British stone.
As we have seen above, anecdotes are not always supported by the figures, but anecdotally British suppliers have been doing better than might have been expected in a recession – just take a look at some of the reports on these pages or turn to page 34 for the latest on Forest of Dean Stone Firms.
It seems that councils increasingly understand the importance of local stones in creating a sense of place, as well as taking into account the carbon footprint of the materials they are using. A report commissioned from Powell Dobson Urbanists by the five Heads of the Valleys local authorities in Wales makes a point that councils are increasingly accepting: town planning is less about traffic management these days than it is about tourism.
“It is now more important than ever that they [urban landscapes] look good, feel distinctive [and are] comfortable and inviting,” says the report.
The small carbon footprint of locally produced stone helps councils reach their decision about which products to use. The British stone suppliers themselves might not have done much to establish and promote their green credentials, but a new report produced for Historic Scotland called Embodied Carbon in Natural Building Stone in Scotland (although it does not just relate to Scotland) adds to the growing body of evidence from research such as the University of Bath’s Inventory of Carbon & Energy (ICE) survey and the BRE’s Green Guide that show how environmentally friendly using stone as a building material is.
There is just one awkward hurdle for British quarry companies to overcome. As Arup’s Richard Hunt told NSS for the environment report (see the February issue of this magazine): “We’re looking to use British stone first, from a carbon point of view. The problems we have come up against are cost and… well, cost is the big issue.”
When Indian sandstone paving can be a quarter the price of British stone, customers can quickly forget their environmental or ethical concerns, possibly deciding on a few British stone conscience salving features in a sea of imported granite, sandstone or porphyry.
Nevertheless, many companies supplying stone for hard landscaping have been pleasantly surprised by the level of demand. At least, they were until March. The new financial year has brought caution to councils nervous about how much of the post-election spending cuts are going to fall on them. Suppliers report a good level of enquiries but slim order books.
And a reality check on the state of the hard landscaping market is provided by Marshalls’ annual report. They shut down two smaller quarries and a concrete product plant last year, laying off 420 of the 3,000 people they employed. Sales were still above £300million but Chairman Mike Davies said they had fallen 22.6% in the past two years.
Marshalls remain cautious about the short term outlook, especially with a further decline in the market predicted this year. They see signs of increased confidence among consumers but say order flow from the public sector and commercial markets remains subdued.
Poetic art for Sheffield
With porosity typically 0.48%, Kilkenny limestone – the famous Irish Blue limestone – makes ideal paving and street furniture. A lot of it goes to Belgium, where its density earns it the name of Petit Granit.
In the UK, it has most famously been used for 14,000m2 of paving and 600m3 of steps, balustrades, cladding, seating and water features around London’s City Hall on the south bank of the Thames between London Bridge and Tower Bridge.
Among the current projects it is being used for is a street scheme in Sheffield being carried out by hard landscaping specialists CED, based in Grays, Essex. The street furniture is being made at McKeon’s works in Stradbally, Co Laois, and shipped over to Cumbria for the poems of Matt Black to be hand cut on to it and illustrated by Pip Hall before going to Sheffield. The contrast that can be achieved by different finishes on the stone makes it ideal for decorative work such as this and Pip told NSS: “It is a marvellous stone to carve – not too hard on the whole, though it does vary. The fossils are a joy. I quite like the smell of it, too!”
Marshalls make life easier for landscapers with their on-line Paving Planner
Hard landscaping specialists Marshalls have introduced a Paving Planner to give installers a helping hand when it comes to measuring up and pricing for the products they need to carry out clients’ garden projects.
New for 2010, the Paving Planner makes planning a project easy. With access to a wide range of design opportunities from the Marshalls library of laying patterns, the Paving Planner calculates exact paving quantities, which reduces wastage and gives installers a better estimate of the costs.
With the Paving Planner, a wide range of project sizes can be input, including irregular shapes and curves. Flag sizes can be selected to suit the layout and the software gives access to the entire Marshalls domestic range of paving. Edgings and kerbs can also be included in the calculations.
By following the step by step instructions, installers can use the Marshalls software to produce a full laying pattern and list of quantities along with colour swatches of any chosen paving.
For those who want to promote the environmental friendliness of their work, Marshalls have incorporated their carbon calculations into the Paving Planner so it also calculates the carbon footprint of the entire project.
Elsewhere, the website includes a calculator that presents the carbon footprint in terms of tree equivalents, so if customers want to offset the embedded carbon in the project by planting trees, they know how many it will take.
An innovative contractor might even offer to plant that number of trees of the customer’s choice in their garden to offset the carbon in the hard landscaping. With this information at hand, it has never been easier for customers to fully understand the environmental impact of the products they are buying.
Once the design has been produced and the paving, extras and carbon footprint calculated, an A4 printout of the project gives an immediate summary for the customer to keep and refer to.
The new Paving Planner is available to all Marshalls’ merchant customers and Marshalls Registered Installers. You can see it at the web address below and if there is anything you can’t work out for yourself about the Paving Planner, you can call for help on Tel: 0870 9907541.
www.marshalls.co.uk/pavingplanner
It’s a vintage year for Kirkstone hard landscaping
Although Kirkstone Quarries enjoy supplying their own Cumbrian slate bollards, benches and feature paving for enhancement schemes such as the one in Windemere pictured here (left) showing their bollards with porphyry paving and Chinese granite kerbs, they also supply a wide range of stone paving and other hard landscaping that is used on projects at home and abroad.
Projects they have been sourcing various stones for lately have included a Gustafson Porter landscape at Chateau Labegorce of Bordeaux wine fame.
Kirkstone have supplied a variety of stones to main contractors SEG Fayat, including 440m2 of 50mm and 20mm Brathay Blue Black slate, average size 880 x 550mm, with a combination of flame textured and honed surfaces. It was used to clad a 50m long water mirror and form adjacent rill edgings, borders and base.
There were also 560m2 of 450 x 150 x 85mm Gascogne Blue bushammered limestone for vehicular and pedestrian paving and solid section treads, as well as 250m2 of 1200 x 600 x 50mm bushammered Florac limestone paving, treads and rill capping and base and 120m of cubic benches 2400 x 630 x 400mm in size, all with rebated detail and a bead blasted finish to the top and front faces. They weighed more than 1,500kg each. To complete the order there were 16m2 of 75mm Buckingham Virginia riven black slate plinths. The total weight of the stone delivered to site was around 320tonnes.
Kirkstone have previously supplied hard landscaping to Liverpool One, the massive shopping centre built for Liverpool’s year as Europe’s City of Culture. Their contribution was 1,000m of 100mm thick Kirkstone Silver Green flame textured feature paving bands that were inset between granite pavers at the entrance to the development from Albert Dock.
Another significant project they supplied was Manors Campus, University of Northumberland, where 300m of Kirkstone Silver Green and Brathay Blue Black slate with a honed finish were cut to fit around five diminishing elliptical granite seats. Every piece was individually cut on Kirkstone’s CNC machinery to fit the different ellipses.
They have also supplied stone for private gardens and are heavily involved in The Victorian Avery Garden at this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show.
Street masonry workshop kicks off hard landscaping training at the National Stone Centre
There has been a significant growth of interest in stone paving in our towns and cities over the past decade or so, whether in new schemes or maintaining our existing fabric. But there is not always a great understanding of stone or its application.
It is a mistake to think stone setts and kerbs can be laid as if they were precast concrete. Yet no formal stone courses have been offered in the UK for street works – until now.
The National Stone Centre (NSC) is planning to bring together those who have professional responsibility for street surfaces and furniture involving stone at an innovatory workshop at the NSC in Wirksworth, Derbyshire, on 27 May. It is intended to develop from this workshop a series of training courses covering various aspects of stone use in hard landscaping.
The careful work of specialist contractors, who are often reliant on foreign skills, can be undermined by subsequent poor work by the utilities, for example.
Frequently we see street surfaces in older town centres dug up and unsympathetically reinstated. But how do we develop a skilled workforce? How do we source appropriate materials for such projects ethically?
This month’s workshop will seek to develop a response to such questions by establishing longer term training provision and advisory services at the NSC as a result of the leads arising on the day.
The morning of the workshop will be based on-site, and after lunch there will be a tour of a local town as a case study.
For further details contact: Ian Thomas, Director of the National Stone Centre, on Tel: 01629 824833 or by email: ian@nationalstonecentre.org.uk.
www.nationalstonecentre.org.uk
A greener way from Instarmac
As pressure grows on businesses to increase their sustainability performance, Instarmac Group, headquartered at Tamworth, Staffordshire, have developed an ECO range as part of their Ultrascape brand.
Instarmac say they see caring for the environment as one of their key objectives and in the last few years have been working hard to analyse and quantify their performance, and then find ways of reducing their environmental impact.
With this in mind, Ultrascape’s ECO range is expanding to ensure they are supporting their customers’ own sustainability targets without compromising product quality or performance.
Their fine bedding concrete, Pro-Bed HS ECO, containing recycled glass aggregate, is now available in bulk, alongside their standard Pro-Bed HS. Flowpoint ECO is getting its own identity, too – and even its packaging is made from recycled materials.
Large scale public realm projects are now turning to dry mortar silos for supply of British Standard bedding mortars for labour saving and easy storage as well as a response to sustainability and environmental issues. Silos reduce dust, disposal of packaging and haulage while increasing productivity. One silo holds 30tonnes, and every time the ECO product is used to fill it, that is 6tonnes of glass that is being recycled and 6tonnes of freshly quarried aggregate that does not have to be extracted.
An ever increasing number of local authorities are turning to the Ultrascape range of BS 7533 compliant mortar paving products. Civil engineering clients, architects and contractors can now choose Ultrascape’s ECO alternatives to help them achieve CEEQUAL accreditation. CEEQUAL (Civil Engineering Environmental Quality Assessment & Award Scheme) has become the accepted UK industry scheme for assessing environmental and sustainability performance in civil engineering and public realm projects.
Modular landscaping in Islington
Brymas, based in Oldham, introduced Urb Concept, a modular granite hard landscaping system, at the latest Natural Stone Show in ExCeL London. At the show they were approached by architects J & L Gibbons and the results of that meeting will be unveiled in the summer at the Angel, Islington.
The Urb Concept system comes from Portugal. It offers architects, planners and landscapers high quality integrated elements of hard landscaping in contemporary global designs. Those elements include paving, kerbs, gutters, walling, steps, planters, benches, waste bins, even bicycle racks, that all fit together for ease of installation and combine to create coherent urban spaces. In large scale projects especially, such as the one in Islington, such harmony assumes a fundamental role.
Brymas, who already have an established reputation for manufacturing and supplying masonry products in natural stone from quarries worldwide as well as man-made products, say their stand at the Stone Show created an incredible level of interest from a broad range of potential clients, especially landscape architects.
Various contracts have resulted but the £175,000 hard landscaping element of the £75million Angel Building Scheme in Islington that includes new headquarters for Cancer Research UK is a gem.
Brymas were invited to submit samples and proposals for the extensive use of granite to landscape an area around mature trees and create a new public realm. The area will bring activity to this important frontage in the heart of Islington.
One of the conditions was that the dimensional tolerance of the granite components could be met. Most of the area uses 60x60x60mm sawn setts with just 6mm joints. That meant the EN1341/01 standard ±3mm joints had to be substituted for millimetre accuracy.
Brymas produced sample areas demonstrating their control of production and were awarded the contract to supply a range of kerbs, setts, paving and granite furniture for the project, working in conjunction with J Browne Construction of Enfield.
Easipoint answer all the questions
The Forestry Commission’s new Grizedale Forest Visitor Centre, near Ambleside, features high quality hard landscaping using 850m2 of Westmorland Green Lakeland slate slips at a visitor centre that provides a café, shop and access to recreational facilities.
Supplied by Burlington, the 30mm thick 150 x 150mm tumbled slate slips, together with bands of larger, elongated blue riven slate used to break up the visual mass, required an all-round bedding and jointing solution capable of withstanding visitor movements, regular authorised vehicular traffic and the local climate.
To provide a lasting solution, Kendal-based consulting engineers Burgess Roughton specified a system comprising three specialist BS7533-compliant Easipoint mortars, which were used throughout the project by main contractors Team Northern Construction of Milnthorpe.
There were 120 tonnes of Easipoint Fine Bedding Concrete (FBC) used to lay the slips at the required gradient of 1:100 to prevent water ponding on the finished surface. In order to strengthen the bond, Easipoint Bond Plus, a high strength polymer-enriched mortar, was brush-applied before the stones were laid.
This was followed by final jointing of the 10-12mm gaps between the slips using Easipoint Granatech high strength mortar, which was slurry-applied, followed by final belt cleaning.
John Taylor, of Burgess Roughton commented: “The shallow depth of the slips that were used over such large areas presented a challenge to achieve both a robustness and consistency. By using Easipoint we identified a system that could provide an overall solution to bedding and jointing.”
Gwrhyd stone at Cabot Circus
There are 5,000m2 of 50mm and 60mm thick riven Welsh Blue Pennant paving from Gwrhyd Quarry, near Swansea, in Bristol’s new £500million Cabot Circus shopping development under its central, shell-shaped glass roof the size of one-and-a-half football pitches. The Pennant paving (pictured right) was part of the stone paving package installed by Cawdor Stone Group based in Woolmer Green, Hertfordshire.
They also laid 550m2 of 50mm thick sand blasted Massangis French limestone, 1,200m2 of 50mm sand blasted Chandor French Limestone, 1,000m2 of 50mm flamed Chinese Black Granite, 3,600m2 of 80mm thick, flame finished red/brown Chinese granite, and 100m2 of 50mm, waterjet finished Zimbabwe Black Granite.
French Chandor sets the scene at Brixton’s new square
A new square in the heart of Brixton with its Chandor hard French limestone paving provides a focal point for the town, enhancing the fine architecture of the town hall, public library and imposing parish church.
The new public space is called Windrush Square, a name chosen by the residents to commemorate the landing of SS Empire Windrush in June 1947 with the first 500 Caribbean migrants to arrive in London after World War II.
Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, and Tessa Jowell, Minister for London, were at the opening of the square earlier this year. Both praised the initiative of Transport for London, who, in partnership with Lambeth Council, Design for London and the London Development Agency, transformed the square.
Hundreds of people celebrated the square’s opening. There was live music, dance demonstrations, family art workshops and stalls. The event concluded with a lantern-lit procession led by local school children and a magnificent phoenix.
Project architects were Gross Max of Edinburgh, who have several similar projects to their credit, and the main contractors were FM Conway, based in Dartford, Kent.
Michael Conway, managing director of FM Conway, said during the opening celebrations: “We are delighted to be part of such an ambitious scheme and seeing everyone enjoying the square during the opening celebrations is particularly rewarding.”
The architects’ choice of Chandor hard limestone paving from Burgundy follows its selection for the paving at London’s Paddington railway station some years ago. It has also been used successfully in New World Square, Lyric Square, Hammersmith, Bristol city centre and Horsham Forum since then.
The great advantage of this fully recrystallised metamorphic stone is its low porosity – less than 1%. It makes it easy to clean because little dirt penetrates the surface. Burgundy hard limestones are even used for kitchen worktops.
The whole of Burgundy is rich in usable limestones. Softer Beauvillon, Farges, Buffon, St Marc and Lanvignes exist side-by-side with hard limestones such as Villebois, St Beaudille, Hauteville and Chandor, to name a few. All are found along the Baujolais trail.
The factories that process the stones provide good technical employment in this rural setting. They are equipped with state of the art CNC saws, polishing plants and tile lines.
The paving for Brixton was produced at the factory of Euromarbles at Porcieu, 30km east of Lyon along the River Rhone.
Euromarbles belong to a consortium of quarries and factories throughout Burgundy represented in the UK by Anglo European Stone, with offices in Bath and Perouges near Lyon.
The architect’s drawings for Windrush Square were sent by email to the factory and were transposed directly on to CNC machines for manufacture without the need for templates or moulds. “What you send is what you get” is the factory motto.
The rate of production, including a complicated layout of curved steps in the solid and variant levels, alongside the fast installation programme, saw the work completed in only six months – and just as well. France, as well as England, had its worst January in 30 years this year with temperatures at -16ºC, which shut the factories and made roads impassable.
Those involved in the Windrush Square project, including the stone suppliers, were among the crowds who assembled for the opening celebrations to share the sense of achievement and camaraderie among the people of various ethnicity.
BBS supply ethical Chinese granite
As well as the French limestone, the Transport for London project in Brixton includes Chinese G654 mid grey granite paving with G603 silver grey kerbs in areas such as Cold Harbour Lane. It was supplied by one of the few Ethical Trading Initiative members from the stone industry, BBS Granite Concepts of Frolesworth, Leicestershire.
They also supplied the focal point in the new square at the heart of the project (see main story). It is an intriguingly designed curved bench weighing more than 60tons. It is a masterpiece of hand produced granite sourced by BBS according to Ethical Trading Initiative principles.
As they normally do on projects with which they are involved, BBS researched and checked the quality control of the factories producing the Brixton products. They worked closely with the architects and clients and regularly supplied photographs of the production processes taken during visits to China for the Ethical Trading Initiative monitoring.