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Building with field stone, and site wood framing

Started by MbfVA, November 14, 2017, 06:54:10 AM

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MbfVA

My wife likes the look of stone and as with trees, we have lots of it, some in big piles, including some really nicely veined/colored limestone & quartz.  Yes, lots of labor involved in collecting & preparing and stone masons don't come cheap, but let's leave all that aside for the moment.  At least we know we have "free" material.

Local rate is about $9/sf for labor on the actual application (might include mortar, not sure).  Funny how that about hits the cost of Superior Wall systems, installed, materials and labor.

How does using stone for veneer affect Timber framing (including our intended mechanically fastened version, post n beam or whatever...) and SIPs?  Would we be advised to consider a different insulation system instead of SIP?  Foam in EPS or other closed cell, right on the stone?  Green on this as must be obvious.

One of our local guys who will be helping with the build mentioned something about leaving a channel at the bottom for ventilation or drainage or both; not clear to me.

Is there any cost synergy that can be achieved (yeah, I dream a lot)?  Any damning considerations to hold over my head, besides cost?  Sorry, I meant danging.
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samandothers

Look forward to answers.  We were planning poured basement walls with walk out portion framed 2x6.  The poured wall would have stone veneer or prepared for it and the walk out Hardie.  A lot of our stone is quartz and not sure they would be good for a foundation wall.

Don P

I imagine you'd need to allow for 6" or so for fieldstone veneer.  Veneer cannot bear load, SIPs, decks, etc, it is carrying itself that is all. I don't see a problem with quartz, what are you seeing as the downside?

Rubblestone is a solid masonry wall of uncoarsed stone a minimum of 16" thick. Which works with our rock pretty well. I've made a plywood back form, laid up stone on the face with mortar and fill the back with rocks and pea gravel concrete. If the wall is of any size you can fit around a rebar grid as you go. This leaves a concrete inside and stone exterior.

Ed the stonemason on that job is hauling up one of our porch timbers. The stone is quartzite fieldstone from the farm piles on site. That is a Superior foundation under the house. It got the 2" thick natural lick and stick veneer stone in a complimentary look.

samandothers

Don, that is a great looking wall.   We plan a poured wall and are checking into prepping for a lick and stick on the face in the future as a way to cut some costs currently.  Seems a lot of the old stone piles here are a white looking quartz.  I ' assumed' the stone would not work well in a load bearing wall.  Either way the pocket book will not allow for that much stone work now.

MbfVA I look forward to feedback on your project.

MbfVA

Nice, and I had not really gotten around to the idea of bearing versus cosmetic.  Lick n stick, quite a name.  Probably thought up by someone who was stoned himself.

I wasn't sure quartz had the same structural capability.

We 2 stone building prospects on this thread will have to consider what you said, Don, always full of good info, thanks.  I want to consider the pea concrete wall idea in more detail.

If we did a structural stone wall option, how would that affect the use of SIPs?  Would we then want to apply foam insulation directly to the inside face of the stones, instead of using SIPs?  Seems like that would avoid any moisture/condensation problem?  Then put drywall against the foam, in between the timber framing?  Layer of Osb or plywood in between?

Can you describe the P gravel pouring in a little more detail when you have time; I think I get it?

I can envision some REEEEAAALLLY wide window stools and frames, with a 16 inch stone wall.  3D problem?  Dangerously Dark Dwelling?  On the other hand stone walls don't shrink, split or crack,  so perhaps the windows could be structured into the stone rather than worrying about what's going to happen to the timber frame.  All that floating talk in the cabin thread was making me seasick.

Talk about your "thermal mass", my gawd.  We've experienced a minor analog of it with the solid masonry block home we now rent out next to our restaurant.  Holds onto its temp.  For a long time; especially nice in the summer.

Waterproofing if used for the basement portion?  Gotta love Superior's 5000+ PSI concrete 25 year warranty.  Probably the old fashion method of "Keep the water away!", mostly, along with some coating, French drains, etc, I would assume?

Footing, just a gravel trench, same as used for Superior, or?

I'm giving myself a bad attack of fear of biting off too much...too heavy a lift, or too many rocks to raise?  But maybe it's simplier that it seems.  Then we can go back to worrying about the cost.

Maybe the best option would be to only do a basement/first floor wall of stone then go veneer above that?  Or Superior or ICF with stone veneer there, too?  Choices.

You're not referring to faux stone when you say lick n stick, are you?  We saw that stuff on an 8000 ft McMansion outside Lexington VA in 2008.  The owners finally gave up trying to sell and turned it into the tackiest of tacky wedding venues.  It was actually photo printed stucco of some sort, or something like that.  I would not want to see what happens when one of their kids crashes his bike into it.  But maybe that image would be like one in the "Son of Flubber" film from the 1950s where in a proposed commercial for the professor's product a couple bounced their baby on the kitchen floor like a basketball.

Posting some photos of different rocks we have--limestone and sandstone I think.o I'll get some of the quartz later (some is milky, a little bit is more clear):



 

The one above is typical of a bunch we saw in one of our pine patches.



 

Farm kids pile, above, good ole limestone.  There are many, many such piles.

The several streams going thru our land are filled with stones, as it the river, though those are more brown and rounded, as one might expect.

A local concrete producer bought a nearby historic plantation of over 600 acres, old brick house designed by Jefferson, just before we bought ours which was once part of it.  He hoped to mine sand from the Rivanna River to develop a premium sand concrete mix.  The Board of Supervisors denied his special use permit, and that made him furious.  Our county is kind of protective of Mr Jefferson's favorite stream, and we concur with that.  A few pounds might not be missed, though.

I attended VA Tech, whose entire original main academic quad building complex is built with grey limestone.  That includes Norris Hall, where all but 2 of the 2007 shootings took place.

A heart surgeon built his stone encased home on the large farm next to our restaurant, using the skills of, literally, Indiana stone masons.  They stayed in the area for months doing the work.  20,000 sf home, overlooking the James River.  There's a 28,000 sf manse about a mile in the other direction.  And a 15,000 sf home in between.  It is on the market, 60 ac I think, reduced from $8 MM originally to a mere $4.9 MM now, brick not stone.  Inheriting son & his family dine with us about 3 times a month.  Coal money on that one.

The 28K ft one was offered at $15 MM with 90 acres but did not sell.  I think its stone exterior is fake, but as I recall the stucco underneath has a high R value.  Owner is an engineer who cofounded a Fortune 100 before selling out to Mead Westvaco.

We're going out tomorrow to get away from the TG reservation monster for a while (our biggest day of the year) and will be collecting some stone samples in the Polaris bed (not a powered dump :-\).

Good thing is that there are those big piles where farm kids of old cleared the fields.  We thank them, and being a bicentennial farm, some were kin to me, if distantly.
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Weekend_Sawyer

Here's what I'm doing.

The house I am building in WV will have a stone veneer on the block foundation. We poured the footings a little wider to accommodate a 6" block on the outside of the foundation to act as a shelf for the rock facing to sit on. I am going to use local WV sandstone. Every time I am in the woods I pick up rocks. I am looking for nice flat rocks that are 2 to 4 inches thick. I'll take some pix when I am up this week. In the picture to the left you can see the 6" block ledge and the block ties in the wall as the stone comes up to one of the ties it is bent up to tie in the facing.


 

The 6" block ledge was brought up to grade and waterproofed.

 
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Jon, Appalachian American Wannabe.

Don P

Good pic, hope to see more as you work on it  8).
We just had something similar done on the barn job but with a 4" ledge. the mason laid 12" block stairstepping just below grade then switched to 8" block leaving a 4" ledge to set the stone on, weaving brick ties he'd left dangling out of the block into the stone as it came up.

I've only used rubble stone for uninhabited foundations and crawlspaces. If it were to be an occupied basement I think I'd stand a frame wall a little off the masonry and call in the sprayfoam guys. The insulated rubblestone basement wall is now 20" thick. I'd like to build something in stone up to windowsill height and then timber above but you see the problem. However in this wall system the SIPS on the timberframe can bear on the stone, it is structural to the outer face of the masonry wall.

This is a bad pic but the only one I can find. Superior walls with lick and stick veneer stone broken and layed flatways, a dry ledgestone look. They were set up for 4" veneer and brick ties in those panels from the factory. Ed broke the stone over a length of heavy angle iron and then buttered only the back of the joints, using chips to hold the gap at the front edge until it set. Beautiful but a ladybug condo. Since the stone is veneer the RDP created a bearing by drawing a 2x12 sill flatways that extended out under the SIPs. In a later discussion with an engineer he didn't care for that, he is correct the wood is in tension perp, loaded to split. I suspect the headlocks are doing the heavy lifting on holding the SIPs in place. I also suspect the veneer is structural... you can't fool mother nature  :D



This pic has 2 different kinds of masonry with the same finished appearance. The chimney is block, reinforced and grouted solid with a 6" brick tied wrap of the same fieldstone that is being used in a structural rubble stone foundation supporting the porch. On the chimney the same stone but with a different method is considered veneer. I can bear on the stone on the foundation, I cannot bear on the chimney stone.


Hauling up stone for the chimney. The box o rocks comes up inside a gap in the level of scaffold Ed is hauling from. He spins it 90 when it comes thru the floor and sets it down across planks on either side of the hole. Happily a neighbor dropped off an electric capstan winch soon after this pic was taken. That fellow had worked on the 600' smokestacks back in the day, I can't imagine.


Lick and stick can go over felt wrapped and expanded lath applied frame or SIP construction. I'm not sold on that.

I had forgotten, some mockernut hickory wainscot and trim inside.


A little muriatic acid poured on a rock will tell you if it is calcerous. Ed and I had a bet going, I was sure this was some kind of limestone, there are caves, limestone and sinkholes all around there. He was right, we were up on the old beach  :D

MbfVA

Nice trim work w hickory, Don.  Is the finish natural or has it been stained?

  I'm looking to use some of the "less popular" wood in our woods for trim as well. We have Hickory Ashe beach etc.   even Hackberry, never know what we're going to get until we cut into it and see the grain.  Waste not, want not.  Afford yes.
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MbfVA

 I  Think I get the old beach comment (given the elevation of Grayson), but what kind of rock was it?
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MbfVA

 I think it seems less like real work if you divide the job up, pick up a few rocks here and there, never come back from the fields/woods empty-handed, or empty back of Polaris in my case.
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landscraper

Quote from: MbfVA on November 15, 2017, 03:01:28 AM




 

The one above is typical of a bunch we saw in one of our pine patches.

I would bet that the stone pictured there is not limestone, but instead Catoctin Greenstone, a granite.  The pile of rocks shown below that picture looks like more of the same mixed in a vein of Quartz.
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MbfVA

Very interesting Mr Landscraper (where in VA?).  I will post more photos of different ones from piles I find, perhaps scraping off the lichen for visibility.

The first photo was of a rock that seemed softer than granite, but I'll take a hammer & chisel with me tomorrow and see what it's really like.
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landscraper

Quote from: MbfVA on November 15, 2017, 11:09:59 PM
Very interesting Mr Landscraper (where in VA?).

The first photo was of a rock that seemed softer than granite, but I'll take a hammer & chisel with me tomorrow and see what it's really like.

North side of Charlottesville.

Greenstone weathers heavily over time (eons) - eventually becoming a silty clay.  Surface rocks would likely be softer than the bedrock buried below.

It is quarried in Shadwell, and it is found all over Central Va.  If you take 64 West over Afton you will see a large face of it on North cut slope near the top of the mountain, the color is a giveaway. 
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MbfVA

We are not that far from Shadwell, 3 mi S of Palmyra (for those not into VA geography, near Charlottesville).  I see your point on the stones in the pile, think they are granite and I am now not so sure VT is built with limestone.  Wondering about the stone in the first photo, though.  It almost resembles sandstone.  I'll test it with a chisel soon.
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Don P


MbfVA

hmmm, is it still sedimentary or is it metamorphic--certainly will read more.  The photo of the Norris lower door in Wikipedia almost got me, Don. 
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Don P

This is a good website on VA geology;
http://csmgeo.csm.jmu.edu/geollab/vageol/vahist/PhysProv.html

And on greenstone;
http://geology.wm.edu/bailey/CatoctinFormation.pdf

You're northeast of me, our basement rock is Cranberry Gneiss, a metamorphosed granite formed from plutonic magma... underground lava. Mt Rogers and Whitetop are also that gneiss, I believe Grandfather is as well. That dome runs up as far as Sylvatus. There is all manner of stone layered above it, or variously worn through or tumbled down. South of it is the Roan Mt gneiss, I believe the oldest in the Blue Ridge. From the back porch as I look N I'm looking at the beginning of the Valley and Ridge country (basically the long valleys along 81) with limestone and dolostones... the beach. The New river was the Teas back then, there was no Mississippi, the Teas drained the heartland into an inland sea, that was the shore that formed those sedimentary, later metamorphosed, rocks. Along that NE to SW line just over the mountain from me is where Saltville, Leadmines, multiple iron furnaces are all lined up, the heavy or concentrated stuff flowing off the Blue Ridge. Our topsoil ran on down from Ohio to the Delta.

The sandstone in my previous pics I believe is quartzite, sandstone after heat and pressure from the border between those zones.  It was a resistant capstone that collapsed and laid on the surface of that mountain. I was sure we'd have to blast but we didn't hit any rock underground. It had apparently all ridden the surface as the mountain crumbled. In that neighborhood are iron mines and furnaces and a deep red sandstone. I've been told that shows that the sand was rich in iron, in a warm shallow oxygen rich pool, life had begun. Our gneiss on my side of that hill is quite a bit before that. My understanding is the dolomites are metamorphosed limestone with manganese.  It eventually metamorphoses to marble under heat and pressure. The limestone here runs between the gneiss and the dolomite and is softer than either, that is where the caves are. When you cross into the third, youngest, mountain building zone in the Appalachians you're into the coalfields. My understanding is they went through the temperature range that would leave oil, that got cooked and the coal made it through. Recognizable fossils show up in the coal and shales. Nothing is neat here though. I can climb above the house and be in foliated quartzite, mudstone and shale overburden and are included in the gneiss in places on the property.

samandothers

Don thank you for the links!  This is very interesting.  I need to do more reading on the Valley and the Blue Ridge sections.

landscraper

Quote from: MbfVA on November 16, 2017, 10:37:26 PM
We are not that far from Shadwell, 3 mi S of Palmyra (for those not into VA geography, near Charlottesville).  I see your point on the stones in the pile, think they are granite and I am now not so sure VT is built with limestone.  Wondering about the stone in the first photo, though.  It almost resembles sandstone.  I'll test it with a chisel soon.

I know that area - I had a contract job in the quarry down in New Canton, used to take 15 South to get there.

There is a Dept. of Mines, Minerals & Energy office on Fontaine Ave. in Charlottesville, they have a wealth of info about the geology of the area.

Fun fact - if I'm not mistaken there was widespread gold mining from North of Fork Union down into Buckingham and Goochland in the 1800's.  Let me know if you strike it rich.
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MbfVA

You're right, there's a Goldmine Road in our county.  And there were gold mines in western Goochland County.  In fact one was reopened many years ago while I was on the board of supervisors. We had to give them a conditional use permit.

I went and picked up some rocks today, and one striking fact, no pun intended, was that almost all of them have some sort of flint like quality because as it was getting dark I saw sparks as I tossed them in together.   Gee, I wonder if that will affect my fire insurance  :P
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MbfVA


Is there anyway to waterproof a rubble stone foundation below grade?   It looks like the front part of our planned basement on the hillside will be below ground but walk-out at the rear.  From the preceding discussion I get that rubblestone can be a good supportive foundation "material" & definitely has a nice rustic appearance;  possibly there will even be material savings, rebar and concrete  smiley_thumbsup

I am also curious as to whether or not this use of rubble stone would be compatible with ICF, or would dropping in large stones tend to tear up the insulating material?   I have little working or technical knowledge of ICFs.
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Don P

Incompatible with ICF, that needs a strong pumped mix that can flow within the cells and around the considerable rebar grid. It is tough enough to get them to fill.
You can slip form rubblestone below grade or where it isn't seen then parge and dampproof or just dampproof if the finish is good.

MbfVA

Thanks Don, I am checking out some googled links on slip forming.  I'll have some thoughts and questions to post soon.   Definitely my first time hearing of that.

First one I found is this one:
http://www.hollowtop.com/cls_html/Rehl_Stone_House.htm

Working through that one will take time to take in all it has to offer!  Lots of OJT and out of the box thinking in it, so far.  That is definitely one "extreme" stone project.

If you have any other good links, happy to have them.  Thanks again.
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badger1

Quote from: MbfVA on December 02, 2017, 03:15:28 PM
Thanks Don, I am checking out some googled links on slip forming.  I'll have some thoughts and questions to post soon.   Definitely my first time hearing of that.

First one I found is this one:
http://www.hollowtop.com/cls_html/Rehl_Stone_House.htm

Working through that one will take time to take in all it has to offer!  Lots of OJT and out of the box thinking in it, so far.  That is definitely one "extreme" stone project.

If you have any other good links, happy to have them.  Thanks again.

Check out the books by Scott Nehring and his wife, they lived a simple life and wrote several interesting books...they were huge proponents for slip form building. The house was done this way, several very high garden fences etc. Some interesting info in their books regarding building, sustainability and life in general, interesting good reads, you can find them on Amazon.

I like the aesthetic look of slip form, however I've always figured if I went through the trouble of building plywood forms I'd just fill the entire thing with concrete, much quicker. It would save a little money and you could do smaller sections rather than one complete pour, some advantages, but depending on where you build I don't know how an inspector would feel about it. My guess is if they were sticklers, it would probably be a no go.

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MbfVA

 Thanks for the thoughts and for ref on the slip form proponents.   I suppose one advantage over conventional forms & pours is the slip form can be reused, and is not as large to build.

One thing I think I see in all this is that slipforming requires mixing one's own concrete, since it would be hard to justify having the truck sitting around for the time it takes to do slipforming.  I knew there be a use for that mixer I own!   However I'll have to consult my orthopedist about me vs a bunch of 80 pound bags, or even 60 pound bags.

As far as saving time versus saving materials, sort of like sawmilling your entire framing lumber set.  Assuming of course that grading doesn't get in the way.  How much is your time worth?

Also, I suppose that we are at another one of those engineer versus building inspector turning points.  If our (proposed) engineer likes it, I think it will pass since the building inspector & he have worked together a lot.  We shall see.
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