I’m building a new house which has a covered front porch — 8′ wide by ~70′ long. It sits on about 24″ of compacted fill and 4″ of concrete (reinforced w/fiber not wire). I’m trying to consider what to do to keep expansion joint cracks from telegraphing through to the stone (flag stone) which will be the final covering.
option 1) do nothing — there’s nothing you can do about it.
option 2) cover the entire area with a elastic membrane — like Schluter’s Ditra (about $1.10/sf). Is there anything cheaper that would work?
option 3) cover just the expansion joints w/an elastic membrame.
Any advice sure would be welcome!!
Thanks,
Bob Cooper
Replies
Greetings Bob,
This post, in response to your question, will bump the thread through the 'recent discussion' listing again which will increase it's viewing.
Perhaps it will catch someone's attention that can help you with advice.
Cheers
"being human is a complicated proposition"-DavidxDoud
---Never show a fool a half finished job---Grampsy
I feel like a bunny in a hillbilly meadow at noon..........jjwalters
thanks...no takers yet though.
check out http://www.mer-krete.com, they have a product call fracture guard. my local Dal-Tile used it in their showroom/ city desk area and went right over the expansion joints in the floor and covered it with ceramic tile. Its been about a year now, and there are no cracks.
This is what I have done with good results, is use Ditra
and metal lath , whenever I lay Flag stone or slate
over exp. joints I use a membrane over the joints only
with 6" coverage on both sides of the joint, then I use
metal lath embedded in the mortar bed over the exp.
membrane. You then try to lay out your work so not to
have any rock joints fall directly over the exp. joint,or
have the grain of the rock you are laying, run
parallel with the joint. you really want to have your bigger
pieces of rock bridging over the joints. even then with settleling
you might have some telegraphing of cracks over time but this
seems to minimalise them.