Mechanical Stone Cladding Fixing Installation with Stoneclip

I was approached by Mr Ben Kerr (director) of Eco Outdoor, who has started marketing a new line of product to run in his outlets around Australia (7 in total) to demonstrate to him the Eco-Stoneclip system as he saw the need for something of a need for some type of restraint to help, support and restrain this type of cladding product, which weight's in at approx 90 kgs/ m2 and is normally secured to the substrate with a cement based adhesive. The photo's show the installation being installed and fully finished at his outlet in Nunawading in Melbourne @ 9 Metropolitan Ave. The installation was undertaken by Discovery Landscapes (Mr Andrew Kavangh).

The product is a sawn back, mixed course height (300 mm and 400 mm) running length 30 mm bed width Sandstone, called Berrimah. A good dense Sandstone that has been tool worked and is in the good soft pastel shades of soft browns to whites and pinks. Pieces range in size from 300mm to 700mm long and weigh from 10 kgs -28 kgs.

The installation of such material, which when in the 300 deep format is 10 times as high as is wide in the bed and in the 400 mm courses is 13 times as high - thus the need to secure the panels so that there is no downloading and turning on the panel below while moving upward with the coursing - you can easily lay 5 to 6 courses high in a day (depending on the length of runs you are installing) and then you have the problem of the glue not being set and hard as you go upwards and then failure can occur with the downloading on the panels below.

By using the ECO-Stoneclip method of installation (installing 1 x 20 mm set size clip in the top LHS of the panel being installed, you then give the panel a fixing in the top LHS and the bottom RHS, but you only purchase 1 clip/ panel. Using this method, you use approx 4.5 clips/ m2.

Which on a product that sells in excess of $130/ m2, is only an outlay of approx. $25/ m2 for secure mechanical fixing. You are able to view this on our website under the heading - The Project Guide.

This type of fixing installation does not slow the installer down, in actual fact it speeds it up for him as there is no stoppage waiting for clues to dry to carry going upwards AND ONCE THE CLIP IS INSTALLED INTO THE TOP OF THE PANEL, it is ready to accept and carry the load of the one above being installed.