As town centres and market squares around the country begin to get ready for the annual Christmas markets again, the story of the historic Hitchin Market Square that was featured in the last edition of LAPU will be of interest to the responsible Local Authorities, their professional advisors and contractors.
In 2017 a detailed eight-year durability evaluation of the Granite Sett Paving was carried out with site inspections by the team from PavingExpert.com.
The Historic Hitchin Market paving refurbishment and repointing in 2010 was carried out using GftK’s vdw 850 plus Paving Joint Mortar, following extensive evaluations, trials of all available products for 12 months by the responsible engineers, and now in 2019, just as in the inspection two years ago, after 10 years in full service, it is still look good, performing in all weather conditions and under frequent heavy trafficking in this busy market square!
“After 8 years it looks like it was jointed yesterday,” were the words from www.PavingExpert.com when they visited to inspect the paving refurbishment eight years on.
“The paving had been patched and pointed, re-pointed and grouted, glued and all sorts over the years, but nothing lasted long. They might get a couple of years, but before you knew it, the setts were a rocking and rolling all over again. Faced with the prospect of having to lift and re-lay the whole square, at huge cost, the Local Authority and their Consultants undertook some tests and decided to have one last roll of the dice with what looked like a very promising product: VDW 850 resin jointing mortar by NCC Streetscape.”
The work could continue and be completed using the GftK’s unique vdw 850 paving joint mortar, even in the cold, wet and unpredictable November weather. This unique product is based on ideally graded, water dispersed, epoxy resin coated and bound, alluvial, no-fines quartz sand. No-fines means no-dust produced in mixing either, very important for occupied streets with people and businesses continuing to work. Also, the contractor could continue to work with no disruption to the weather and minimal disruption to local business and their customers.
Any traditional or prepacked cement based, or single-pack paving pointing mortar would be useless and doomed to failure. As a result, this month after 10 years in service, the historic granite sett paving is still looking great, a valuable asset to the town; most importantly it will also continue to do so.
