The Basement Of Your House Made Of Stone, How To Veneer The Basement Of A Country House With Stone

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

It has become very common in the construction of private houses that neither the architects-designers, nor the future homeowners themselves pay due attention to how and from what to build or finish the basement of a building under construction. It is believed: the main thing is to build the building itself, but the basement is a secondary matter. In the overwhelming majority of cases, finishing the basement is reduced to plastering and painting it. What is called, cheap and cheerful. Well, in construction, anything that is cheap is usually short-lived.

And such owners have to plaster and tint their mansions every spring. Especially in places where the plinth is in contact with the blind areas. Where moisture is constant, and frost and thaw do their job, causing crackling and decay of your plaster. Whatever manufacturers say about the durability of plaster mixes, you should know that their durability is a maximum of 2-3 years. To avoid all this hassle, use durable building materials in the construction and decoration of the basement. We are talking about natural stones, those stones that lie along river banks, roadsides and just in the fields. They are usually called cobblestones - these are stones of small size and, as a rule, of an irregular rounded shape. There are two ways to finish the base with natural stone. The first way is when the base is made of concrete blocks, and the second is when the base is poured from liquid concrete.

Building plinths from concrete blocks is the most common, so I will tell you in detail how to decorate the plinth of your house with stone. You should start by removing the soil with a shovel around the base, 50-70 cm wide and 10 cm deep. Crushed stone or gravel is poured into the formed trench, spilled abundantly with water and after 1-2 hours they are thoroughly rammed. This so-called slope cushion around your home. The resulting pad should be at ground level. Then stones are carefully selected, primarily stones with a flat surface and no more than 10 cm thick, that is, all stones from 2-3 to 10 cm thick. Why up to 10 cm thick? But because the first row of bricks should protrude on the concrete block by half the length of the brick, that is, 12 cm, and therefore the stone should not protrude from behind the brick. If stones of this thickness are few,then you should prick them yourself. The cobblestone easily pricks if it is struck two or three times with the edge of an ordinary sledgehammer. Typically, cracked surfaces are flat.

In general, one ton of flat stones is enough to cover 7-10 square meters of the basement. Having prepared the stone, proceed to mixing the cement mortar in a proportion to sand 1: 3. The sand should be of medium grain size and preferably river sand. Sand mixed with clay should be washed with water. Dye can be added to the solution. If, for example, the stone is mainly burgundy, then add brown dye. For work you will need: a wheelbarrow, a shovel, a rammer, a mason's hammer, a trowel, a chisel, a sledgehammer, several ten-liter buckets, a container for mortar, a sieve, leather gloves, glasses.

So, we proceed directly to the cladding. In the dry season, the stone and the base itself should be moistened with water. Then, with a trowel, scatter the mortar onto the base over an area corresponding to the size of the stone. After that, we take the stone with a flat surface outward and with the help of a mason's hammer with sharp, not strong, frequent blows, tapping, we drive the stone into the solution on the base. In this case, the lower edge of the stone rests on a crushed stone pillow. Making these manipulations, you continue to support the stone with your left hand for a few more seconds, remembering that its outer surface should be parallel to the plane of the base.

Then carefully, next to the fixed stone, apply the cement mortar and in the same way fix the next stone. And so do along the entire base, thereby you will lay the first row. He, as I said, rests on a pillow. Having made the first row, you need to give time for the solution, as they say, to grab. In summer, it is about a day. The next day, start building the second row. The stones of the second row rest on the stones of the first row, and the solution, in turn, solidifies, firmly fixes them to the wall of the basement. Having laid out, thus, two or three rows, you should carefully fill the resulting voids with a solution. Try not to get the solution on the face of the stone. If this happens, then you need to let it harden a little, and then remove the excess solution with a dry brush and a metal brush,under no circumstances using water.

On the second day, after the next row of stones has hardened, you need to slowly smooth out the solution between the stones with the help of a narrow, metal jointing, which is called "jointing". The seams should be about one centimeter deeper than the face of the stone, this will make the facing deeper and more voluminous. And so continue row after row. Under stones, the thickness of which is less than 10 cm, the pillow from the solution should be made thicker, so that in the end all the stones are in the same plane.

Do not forget that in the summer, you should water the previously laid stones several times a day. After finishing the top row, proceed with the completion of the construction of the slopes. To do this, a cement mortar is placed under the pillow and stones are hammered into the solution in the same way, carefully adjusting to each other, while do not forget that the slope should have a slope of 5-10 degrees from the base for water drainage. The basement can be faced not only with cobblestones, but also with other types of stones, for example, dolomite stone.

Another method of lining the basement with stone is used when the basement itself is poured with liquid concrete. For these purposes, formwork is prepared from the boards. Having set and secured the formwork, we take the stones pre-matched to each other and put them in a row inside the formwork with a flat stone surface on the outer wall of the formwork. In order for the stone to be pressed with the front surface to the formwork, it is fixed with a cement mortar. After the first row of stones has been set, pour concrete to this height and depth of the formwork. It is advisable that the concrete is not too liquid. When the concrete has set a little, that is, after a couple of hours, you can again put a row of stones, carefully adjusting them to each other, and pour concrete again. In this way, during the day, you can fill the basement by 50-60 cm, at the same time revealing it with a stone.

After two or three days, having removed the formwork, you just have to clean the stone from the concrete that has fallen on it. Then prepare a cement mortar with the desired color as described above and carefully trowel the space between the stones, and after 3-4 hours, sew the seams and finally clean the front surface with brushes. The plinth, faced with natural stone, does not require any maintenance, it will stand for centuries, delighting you and your great-grandchildren. Wish you luck!

Sergey Tyunis, Vitebsk