![\"150_IMG_2468\"](\"images\/stories\/Blogs\/Joe_Becker\/Sept_10\/600_IMG_2468.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe stone-floor installation for St Joseph Cathedral had an August like that. If you weren\u2019t watching carefully, you might’ve missed it.<\/p>\n
Al Snowaert, our foreman, kept telling me that once we finished the sanctuary and steps, the nave floor would go quite fast. Container #3 arrived July 20 and the guys literally floored it.<\/p>\n
On average we had a crew of four installers with five helpers. With large open areas, the installers put in hundreds of square feet per day. It was great news for the job balance sheet, but not so good news for supplies; the stone from container #3 was installed before #4 arrived. We slimmed down the crew and then \u2013 when contained #4 arrived Aug. 24, the crew was assembled again and the process began again. <\/p>\n
I\u2019m simplifying this; it\u2019s a difficult and bothersome task to ramp crews up and down. What we have in our favor is a nice backlog of work in the Twin Cities for our installers to take on; the local Sioux Falls helpers remained on the job to grout, or stayed home temporarily. <\/p>\n
Five years ago it might have been difficult to ramp crews like we\u2019re doing now. But, in 2010, most guys are content to stay where they are, even with missing some hours.<\/p>\n
Looking forward, container #5 (which contains the narthex floor and more wainscot) will arrive the first week in September, and container #6 (the massive column bases) is due to arrive in the last week of the month. Container #6 completes phase I shipping; our goal is to complete phase I on site by the end of October. <\/p>\n
Phase II starts with the delivery of the four baldacchino columns. This delivery can\u2019t happen until the quarry yields a block large enough \u2013 and that\u2019s still an issue that needs to have resolution soon.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve talked about the floor for months now, haven\u2019t described our installation. In my past blog (Men at Work<\/a>) I talked about setting the stone in the fresh mud bed, but let\u2019s get technical and go below that.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The existing cathedral floor was one large pattern of 12\u201d X 12\u201d X 1\u201d Mankato limestone quarried 200 miles from the church. The limestone was installed in a fresh mud bed and bonded\/adhered to the concrete slab floor with Portland cement. <\/p>\n From what we\u2019ve seen in old buildings, the mud bed was always bonded to the concrete slab. They didn\u2019t use isolation membranes as we do now; because of this, a crack in the concrete slab often transferred up through the mud bed and cracked the stone paver. The concrete floor, mud bed and stone moved as one. <\/p>\n Sioux Falls Construction began the demolition of the old limestone pavers and found a good bond. The jackhammers made the inside of St. Joseph Cathedral one of the noisiest and dustiest places in eastern South Dakota for three weeks. With the limestone removed and the dust settled, what was left was a rough floor with high and low areas that varied up to 1 1\/2\u201d, which wasn\u2019t what we expected to inherit as a working surface. <\/p>\n In bidding the project, we priced the installation using the TCNA F-111 specification, which has the stone and mud bed isolated from the concrete floor with a cleavage membrane. In our case, we would use tar paper as the membrane. <\/p>\n The theory behind F-111 is that if the floor slab would move or crack, the membrane left a separation that would stop the crack from transferring to the stone. The floor slab and stone can move independently from each other. <\/p>\n However, the rough floor of St. Joseph\u2019s created a problem on several levels. First, there was no way we could work over the floor as moving 2,500-lbs crates with pallet jacks would be impossible. <\/p>\n Second, there would be thousands of air pockets below the tar paper, as it wouldn\u2019t completely conform to fit the rough slab. Air pockets are bad news in a stone floor, as they create hollow sounds when walked upon. Hollow sounds are bad news for the stone contractor. (The sounds do happen from time-to-time, even on the best-laid floors, but that\u2019s a whole separate discussion.)<\/p>\n With a rough floor in front of us, we worked with the people from Custom Building Products to find a solution. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Step one: The floor had to be smoothed out. For three weeks, Al and his crew put down 9,500 ft\u00b2 of a self-leveling product that acted like liquid concrete. With a smooth surface to work on, the installation could begin. <\/p>\n Step two: The mud bed varied from \u00be\u201d to 3\u201d, because the existing floor was out of level. F-111 states the minimum amount of mud bed is 1 1\/4\u201d; since we didn\u2019t have the depth required, we were left with no choice but to bond the floor to the concrete. <\/p>\n With time comes innovation and bonding floors is less risky due to great products that isolate cracks from transferring through to the finished product. The membrane that Custom recommended is a two-part system applied in areas only where we\u2019re working. Once applied, we could go to ….<\/p>\n Step three: Installation of the stone takes place.<\/p>\n Before I wrap it up, I want to say that this job isn\u2019t without its own issues. I\u2019ve talked about some, and we\u2019re working out others as we progress. When you have a project with many colors of stone, there are going to be things that need to be worked out. As we progress through the installation I will share some of these … as they are part of the story. <\/p>\n Thanks for reading.<\/p>\n Joe Becker<\/strong> Joe Becker <\/a>has been in the natural-stone business for 26 years. He started with Cold Spring Granite as a draftsman and spent time in their stone installation and estimating departments. He is currently Vice President of St. Paul, Minn.-based Twin City Tile and Marble Company and oversees their stone operations.<\/p>\n Copyright \u00a92010 Western Business Media Inc.<\/p>\n Get the best in insightful and informed coverage of the stone industry every month with Stone Business <\/strong>magazine. Sign up for a free subscription (or renew your current account) and don\u2019t miss a single issue \u2013 just click here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Editor’s note: Joe Becker continues his report on the natural-stone segment of the St. Joseph Cathedral restoration in Sioux Falls, S.D.<\/em><\/p>\n Have you ever been driving out in the country, with your mind kind of wandering, and … you blink and miss a small town? I use to live near one of those places: Padua, Minn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[4578,1044,4567,3727],"class_list":["post-1526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-setting-in-stone","tag-al-snowaert","tag-joe-becker","tag-st-joseph-cathedral","tag-twin-city-tile-and-marble"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stonebusiness.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stonebusiness.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stonebusiness.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stonebusiness.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stonebusiness.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stonebusiness.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1526\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stonebusiness.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stonebusiness.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stonebusiness.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
Twin City Tile and Marble Company<\/a>
St. Paul, Minn.<\/p>\n