On 18/06/2020 08:35, Jeff Layman wrote:
On 17/06/20 23:19, TimW wrote:
A small stone outbuilding I am fixing up to be reasonably warm and dry
as a workshop / office / store. The floor is concrete poured onto a
polythene sheet onto the earth floor. I am going to fix 2x1 battens to
the concrete with some polystyrene or something between them and lay
softwood t&G floorboards onto the battens. about 40-45mm in total
height. I want to have a hearth in the corner for a possible
woodburner if the space is used as an office.
I can do wood but I am not so good with sand and cement, so how do I
make an attractive 4' x 4' hearth? Stone paving slabs? tiles? old
bricks? they would all do, but how do I do it? Do I start with a
timber frame around the area? Can I put any insulation in?
vermiculite? Thermawrap? What do I put under the slabs or quarry tiles
to make up the height? What do I bed them down on? and how do I make
the joins? The heat from a stove - will it crack stone? or cause other
distortions?
Advice appreciated
The woodburner in our lounge - already fitted when we bought the place -
sits on imitation York stone paving 50 mm thick, with mortar between the
stones. It is about 1500 x 800 mm overall. One of the joins has a narrow
crack along just about all its 1500 mm length. I must say that although
it serves a purpose, I've never thought the stones were particularly
attractive.
I wondered if for your purposes, to avoid mortar, you could build a
wooden frame to hold block paving (as used for drives and patios), and
if you needed to use fine, kiln-dried sand to hold them in place.
http://www.larksrise.com/Project%20P...m/DSC_0003.JPG
Quarry tiles lain in fact on a mixture of blockwork and wood with a nice
oak surround.
Tile cement and sand and cement grout.
Lay the tiles first, then build a frame with a gap so you can infill
everything with grout or sand and cement.
Tiling is a matter of tapping the tiles down onto a cement bed nice and
level using a level, with a regular gap, and keeping cement off the
face, then when set and the surround is built, using sand and cement or
grout to fill between everything with lots of wet rinsed sponge to
remove excess grout/cement.
--
It is hard to imagine a more stupid decision or more dangerous way of
making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people
who pay no price for being wrong.
Thomas Sowell