Dear Potential Quality Assurance Client,                                         References

Interpretation is everything. When planning a phase for an effective conservation or sustainable building campaign it is essential to get qualified guidance to ensure that what is recommended is in fact what is required for the applications. Equally important is that what really is required is what actually gets done by the contractor. 
 
Too many times specifications are written without proper guidance for the interpretation of what is needed. The project is executed by the lowest "qualified" bidder who may have a hard time interpreting the specification then many times simply does whatever they think best while the project is in motion. It happens over and over and serves no one well especially when there are failures.
 
I've been in the masonry restoration business for over 25 years. I have heard stories of architects, building owners and contractors disillusioned with lime mortar, lime putty and magic proprietary mixes that have all failed. The bad rap gets pinned on the use of "traditional historic and hybrid mixes" by the contractor and the manufacturer often blames the installer for the error. I believe they are both right. There is in fact many application errors in the industry because of incompatible materials used to make repair mortars, which when blended together using the wrong lime or when a Portland cement gauging is used to improve the wrong lime, fails due to the incompatibility of the repair materials to the substrate and the installer has an error which can't be avoided.  
 
The use of pure lime based materials is not rocket science and has worked for millennium. However, there will always be failures if care is not administered throughout the project. This should start with the specification of the right material for the corresponding application. If caring guidance does not start and end with the project then an unwanted outcome is going to be the result. In the end it is the owner who finds they have to live with less than what they anticipated or they must fight a huge uphill battle to get what they paid for after the insult has occurred. The architect may then want to shy away from the future use of "difficult" materials or using the innocent contractors who didn't generate the intended outcome. The contractor is always glad to go back to what they used to use since it served them well for at least what is their window of experience. No one wants trouble and no one can blame anyone for having these natural reactions. 
 
Natural Hydraulic Lime, which is the basis for the repair material line of St. Astier mortars, have many appropriate applications that will yield an excellent service life for their respective applications if adequate diagnosis of where the application will be rendered and adequate training and follow up for their installations is engineered into the project. In the end the contractor will find out exactly how "user friendly" the products really are. The architect and owner will be glad for the timeless beauty that will follow with the correct installation of the right product for the right application.
 
Please call me to schedule a consultation visit and to design a quality assurance program for your application to ensure its success.  
 
Sincerely,

 
Andrew L. deGruchy
Owner/Consultant
Lime Works.US
P.O. Box 151
Milford Square, PA 18935
www.limeworks.us
Technical help phone 215-536-6706
e-mail: begreen@limeworks.us

 

The following are examples of training work we have done. We have provided training for volunteers of non-profit run historic sites and for contractors as specified by preservation architects for other projects.

Here's an example of an all volunteer workshop lead by Andy deGruchy over a two week period. The group saved the little historic bridge and did it for no cost to the Weisel International Youth Hostel and the Bucks County and Nockamixon Park Systems. deGruchy Masonry, Inc. contacted the Heritage Conservation Organization in Boulder, CO who put the word out and organized the workshop. Andy deGruchy has a philosophy that a workshop for masonry restoration should not be done inside a building where work is practiced only "In theory" and then the work is torn down and material and labor wasted. Instead, Andy believes that using the labor and material to accomplish a needed work for an ailing structure serves many purposed simultaneously. One purpose is to accomplish some needed intervention immediately rather than talking about it and letting the historical object fall down while well-intended plans are being made. Andy was the "fearless leader" and worked along side everyone to coach and encourage all the participants until the final completion. Oddly the work began on a September 11 morning, a poignant date that counters the painful legacy it conjures up by instead having a group of committed people choose to start saving, healing, helping and rebuilding.

Before		  
After

An small historic country bridge in Bucks County, PA was stabilized with NHL lime/sand/casein grout and then repointed after laying up all the fallen stonework using Pure Natural Hydraulic Lime mortar throughout.
 
In 2006 we coached a crew of masons in mixing up St. Astier Natural Hydraulic Lime #3.5 with black slag
inclusions to reproduce a similar mixture tooled to an inverted-V style joint on the Burgess Foulke House Museum in Quakertown, PA.
Previous Portland cement patches held water into the bedding mortar so that after the Portland cement was removed we took moisture meter readings to see that the levels of moisture in the wall dropped prior to repointing. This workshop was done at no additional cost to the Historic Society that owns the building after they awarded the bid to the lowest qualified bidder at a fixed, quoted cost.
 

We demonstrated to local crews the use of St.Astier Lithomex and Natural Hydraulic Limes for applications on the St. John the Divine Church in New York City.

 
deGruchy Masonry, Inc trained a local crew in Atlanta, GA to use deGruchy's Ecologic™ DGM 50 colored mortar for repointing work at the historic Fox Theater.
 
deGruchy's Ecologic™ DGM 50 colored mortar was used by another contractor that we trained in the correct application of the mortar to fully repoint the Eldridge Synagogue in Manhattan (pictured below).

We provided training for another set of contractors who did the repointing work performed at the Ephesus Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Harlem, NY who also utilized deGruchy's Ecologic™ DGM 50 colored mortar and St. Astier Lithomex stone repair material to repair the damaged brownstone on the church. (Below)
 
The National Park Service hired deGruchy Masonry, Inc. to train and inspect work done by a contractor to the new Visitor's Pavillion at Grey Towers, the home of the founder of the National Forest Service. They used St. Astier Natural Hydraulic Lime for interior and exterior plaster and for building stone walls.

  

 

Drop-in Training Language

1.4       Quality Assurance

               C.       Consultant

                          1.       For each new phase of a lime mortar application in (Name: bedding, pointing, grouting,
                                    external stucco renders, internal finish plaster, lime concrete, consolidation work,
                                    limewash, colorwash, brick repair, stone repair, and the use of specialty equipment for
                                    joint removal, suction control of background, spraying plasters, pumping grouts and
                                    mortars, cleaning, and material storage), contact vendor for designing:

1. A custom on-site, hands-on basic tutorial program for all listed phases. (Cost is a $1500 minimum)

2. A custom on-site, hands-on and in-depth tutorial with "Specialized and Monitored Incremental Work Reviews with Recorded Approvals" for a thorough Quality Assurance Program. (Cost is a $25,000 minimum where the manufacturer's representative is involved in designing the mortars, color matching, the application procedures, the monitoring and archival systems that will be used. It will require the placement of a technician on site for the duration of the application to guide and record the events and enforce proper work conditions and quality controls).

.....as described in detail within this specification from:

                                    deGruchy Masonry, Inc.
                                    266 Rockhill Road
                                    Quakertown, PA 18951
                                    Phone: 215-536-4482
                                    Fax: 215-536-2281
                                    e-mail: helpme@repointing.com
Close Window