This prestige holiday home overlooks the beautiful River Avon estuary in South Devon, and it underwent a major refurbishment in 2018, including repointing the extensive original natural slate pathways, patios and terraces, which were repointed using traditional cement-based pointing by the builders.
Unfortunately, this feature paving continued to need more repairs and repointing in some areas every year, to the extent that by summer 2025, it was also becoming unsightly, with the patches and more areas of cracked, failing pointing, breaking up in the joints.
As well as unsightly, it had also become dangerous and was potentially a hazard for guests, so the owners turned to Gorah Stone, specialist stone restoration contractors, and asked them for a more durable and permanent solution.
This original slate paving was laid with random sized, shaped, and thickness of slate slabs, and the work had to be done quickly in October 2025, with a high risk of wet conditions in this exposed coastal location, which together presented critical issues for successful paving jointing:
- Firstly, the joints between the slabs were not uniform and extremely varied in both width and depth, plus for most of the joint lengths, the joint arrises (edges) and sides were also varied, not parallel. Paving joint dimensions of this nature have a very high risk of failure, especially for cement-based mortars, due to the unavoidably high levels of differential shrinkage stress created during the cement hydration and hardening process, leading to initial cracking, as well as to further stress cracking from thermal movement in service.
- Secondly, as the property is always heavily booked for guests, the repointing works had to be carried out and completed quickly during a short closure in October 2025, ready for new guests arriving the next week. This meant that during the pointing works, wet weather conditions were almost inevitable in this location, but all cement-based materials and ‘resin’-based jointing compounds, must be applied in dry conditions, with no residual water in the joints. They must then then be allowed to harden before exposure to any rainfall, or run-off, otherwise, shrinkage cracking and premature failure is once again inevitable.
To find a solution for all these issues, Gorah Stone contacted NCC Streetscape, the leading paving jointing specialists, for expert advice and fortunately, they had the answer.
This was to use GftK vdw 850 plus, a unique, 2nd-generation, epoxy jointing mortar, which is reaction hardening, free of physical shrinkage, and the only truly wet-weather paving jointing.
Variable joint dimensions are therefore also no problem, and it can be used in wet conditions, even in the rain.
NCC Streetscape’s Technical Service manager also arranged to support Gorah on site with their first use of GftK vdw 850 plus, and they quickly and efficiently completed all the necessary preparation and repointing, despite the weather, and it is now good for many years to come.
