The new stone age

Thin stone panels have made stone affordable and popular again, reopening a market for masonry contractors

By Christine Beall

rchitects have revived their fascination with stone: In the last 10 years, thin stone cladding and interior stone veneers and flooring have been the fastest growing segment of the masonry industry. And the future looks good too. Use of finished marble and travertine has increased more than 800% since 1980, and granite has soared an incredible 2,000%. How natural stone is used has changed a lot since the turn of the century. Traditional load-bearing stone walls were first replaced by load-bearing brick masonry with thick stone facings. Then cast iron, reinforced concrete, and eventually structural steel frames were developed. Unit masonry became infill instead of load-bearing, but it was still faced with stone. Then in the 1960s and 1970s see-through architecture became the fad. To be modern, a building had to be glass, top to bottom. Exterior stone use tapered off drastically. Then the energy crisis came and architects also began to tire of the monotony of the glass box. Now, with new interpretations of classi-

Three stones, granite, bluestone, and sandstone, all from different parts of the United States, create the facade of the Crown American building in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Finished last summer, the building was designed by renowned Princeton, New Jersey, architect Michael Graves. cal designs, more and more buildings are wrapped with stone inside and out. Not because its less expensivestone still costs more than most other building materials. But owners have rediscovered the prestige stone gives buildings. It enhances their property values, attracts preferred clients, and commands premium prices for lease space. New fabricating equipment can cut stone veneer as thin as 138 inches and stone flatwork as thin as 38 inch. The lightweight panels that result have made stone more economical for commercial construction. Stone has even been combined with glass in unitized, aluminum-frame curtainwall systems. But stone is brittle and can break

easily, so thin stone is often attached to a backing system before its installed. The backing may be a steel truss, a metal stud frame, precast concrete, or reinforced masonry. The prefabrication can be done offsite without weather delays. The large panels go up more quickly and economically than setting stone pieces one at a time. Start with good people The biggest up-front expense in entering the stone business is people, says C. DeWitt Brown, Jr., of Dee Brown Masonry, Inc., in Dallas. Dee Brown Masonry has installed more than 5 million square feet of stone in the last 25 years. To enter the stone panel business you dont have to hire a new crew. The same masons who work for you now can quickly learn to dry set stone with mechanical anchors. But you do need estimators who know the stone industry and preferably have some experience setting stone themselves. For instance, your bid needs to include engineering services, shop drawings, procurement, shipping (foreign and domestic), full-scale mockups, rigging and hoisting, joint sealant application, and maybe testing. Engineering services Why does a masonry contractor need to provide engineering services? Because project designers usually dont furnish a completely detailed set of drawings. Little if anything about stone is taught in most engineering and architectural schools. Textbooks that teach stone design dont even exist. So many design professionals consider detailing stone connections beyond the scope of their services. The responsibility for this design and the liabilityfall on the stone contractor. These services arent needed until youve been awarded the

contract, but you do have to know how much they cost to bid the job. Mark Larsen of Thorleif Larsen and Son, Inc., in Itasca, Illinois, says his masonry contracting company, which has been installing stone since the early 1980s, hires an engineer on an as-needed basis. One way to find qualified engineers is to ask the stone industry associations: Marble Institute of America (MIA), Indiana Limestone Institute (ILI), and National Building Granite Quarries Association (NBGQA). But remember, marble, limestone, and granite are different materials. Make sure the engineer you hire has experience with the type of stone on the job youre bidding. If your business becomes large, you may have enough projects on the boards to justify having an inhouse engineer. Expect some training costs, though. Engineers experienced in stone design are rare. And be sure to purchase professional liability (errors and omissions) insurance. Shop drawings All building stone has to be custom cut, shaped, and finished. There are no standard sizes or modular units. The rough stone is taken from the ground in blocks weighing several tons. The quarry may cut these into slabs for shipping to a fabricator, or it may have its own fabricating plant. But like structural steel, nothing is fabricated (except samples) until after shop drawings have been prepared, reviewed, revised, and approved by the architect or engineer. All this takes time, of course, time that must be built into the schedule. If the stone supplier or your engineering consultant doesnt provide shop drawings, then you must prepare them. Brown creates shop drawings using a computer-

aided design and drafting (CADD) system. His company deals directly with fabricators, not with suppliers. Purchasing The architect and owner select the stone for a project, but the contractor purchases it. How you do your buying depends on the time you can spend and the size of your operation. Turner Smith of Masonry and Concrete Consultants, Inc., in Houston recommends that new stone contractors use an established supplier who can get both domestic and imported stone. A supplier can provide singlesource responsibility for the stone, anchors, and accessories, and he can quote prices F.O.B. jobsite. He also may take care of shop drawings and sometimes even engineering. Just be sure that all responsibilities are spelled out clearly so that you get what you need when you need it. Be sure that back stock is available for each stone to take care of breakage during shipping and handling or mistakes in fabrication. If your business uses a lot of stone, consider buying directly from the fabricator. But be aware that this involves more risk and a lot more staff time. You have to spend time at the fabricating plant to select samples and to check the finished stone against those samples. You also need to decide in what order you want the material fabricated. You must agree on how its marked so that each piece can be identified at the jobsite and correctly located. You must tell how you want it grouped and crated, and when you want it shipped. If its coming by rail, who trucks it from railyard to jobsite? Who unloads it at the site? What is the payment schedule? How much back stock do you want for fabricating replacement pieces?

You must determine all these factors whether you work with a fabricator in the United States or in Italy, Greece, Mexico, or Australia. But if you work with a foreign fabricator you must do several other things too: You must arrange a letter of credit with a bank that can handle international transactions. You might even hire an experienced banking attorney to help draft the terms and conditions so that everything is covered and no wording is misinterpreted. And in addition to inland shipping, you must get involved with ocean freight, quarantine, customs, and import taxes. Make sure you know what all these costs are before you submit your bid. If this much involvement is too great, use a reputable, wellestablished import broker-supplier and make sure you have a good contract with him or her. Rigging and hoisting Stone veneer panels are much larger than brick or block and therefore much heavier. Theyre too heavy to be set manually. Some contractors use a crane to lift the

material to workers on scaffolding who jockey it into place. Larsen and others prefer a monorail system for better control in positioning the stone. The stone is hung from chains attached to a trolley that slides along a steel Ibeam placed above the setting area. By cranking the chains up and down and moving the trolley back and forth, masons can set the stone precisely. The first step Stone contracting can require a lot of investment up front before you ever get the first contract. Its a business that usually develops slowly. Both Smith and Brown recommend breaking into the field with flatwork and interior veneers until you feel comfortable working with the materials and understand the labor requirements. Smith suggests at first bidding smaller jobs with some stone flooring and maybe some lobby elevator fronts. Interior stone floors by themselves might be a tremendous market for masonry contractors. Robert Hund of MIA says that

most stone used in the United States today is thin stone tiles. Because theyre called tiles, ceramic tile setters are taking this business away from masons. But stone flooring isnt set like tile. Its set in a full mortar bed. When tile setters dont do the work right, the stone gets a bad reputation. So the next time youre bidding the brick veneer on an office building, look at the interior drawings for any stone on the floors or walls. Bid this to the general contractor too. Enter the stone business with a small investment and risk. Get well acquainted with the technology and the business. Then move on to larger projects with greater profits. Thanks to panelization, analysts predict a growing demand for exterior stone cladding on lowand mid-rise buildings.
Christine Beall is an architect and consultant in Austin, Texas, and a regular contributor to The Magazine of Masonry Construction.

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