How do we understand a stone's performance?

What kind of stone is that?

Sometimes in the showrooms we hear people ask ”What kind of stone is that?” to which sometimes the response from one of our staff might be “Oh it’s made up of gneiss

stone primarily. . .

It can feel like when someone’s talking about a far out trekking trip and they name some small remote Indian village and we the listener, having never been to India ask “Oh where is that?”, hoping the answer will somehow be meaningful to us in some way. The speaker replies “It’s north east of Bangalore … ” to which we then stare blankly back at them trying to register this small detail and then wondering what to do with it.

Understanding a stone’s geological basis

Sometimes we can get caught up in the geological details and ask about a type of stone or its origins when what we’re really trying to understand is:

1. How will that stone will perform?
2. Will it be strong and tough like a granite?
3. Will it be softer like some sandstones?
4. Will it have low water absorption like a porphyry?

The other point is that within each stone type there is a spectrum and each product can be technically quite different. At what point does a limestone become a marble? For the majority of people, talking about a stone’s properties and performance is ultimately more helpful than its geological basis.

Take our dry stone range as an example > Alpine, one of our most popular dry stones is a dense, hard wearing natural stone that will perform like a granite so you’ll see very little change to the stone over many years. The fact that it’s a gneiss stone means very little in most conversations.  Its performance is what people really want to know about.

Selecting the best stone for a project

Another thing we do to ensure that we can help you make the best choice possible is to ensure that we test our stones extensively. You can find our technical testing results in the Architectural Resources on our website.

We test our stone extensively for:

1. Slip testing
2. Water Absorption
3. Strength Testing
4. Salt Resistance
5. Flexural Strength

Here at Eco Outdoor we really try to frame our stone knowledge in a way that our clients can relate to. We want people to feel well informed and involved when specifying our stone but we also want to highlight that we understand what’s important when it comes to stone selection and we understand that performance is really a key driver behind these kinds of questions.

So when you come to look at stone in our showroom; we’re going to talk to you about how a stone will perform because that’s just as important as what kind of geological stone it is.