This is part of our continuing series on siding materials for your home. In today's post we will talk about natural stone. Natural stone can be an elegantly magnificent choice for a wall system for your home. When natural stone is used for modern building purposes it is often called dimensional stone because the natural material has been processed from the earth and reformed in some manner to be used as a building material. Stone consists of various types of natural rock extracted from the earth; granite, travertine, and limestone are just some of the more popular choices.
A stone wall can be a simple wall system that consists of stones and a mortar to "glue" them together; this is a mass wall system and has been in use since antiquity. Some of the benefits a mass wall has compared to a more modern wall system (discussed further below in this post) is that a mass wall has thermal mass, doesn't require a structural wall to hold the stone, and can be fairly simple to build. Some of the drawbacks to a mass wall is that it can be hard to keep water from infiltrating the system and the wall takes up more space than a conventional wall. In a tight floor plan a mass wall may not be an option unless you are willing to give up space on the interior of your home. Another variation of using this material for a wall would be a Gabion, but I would like to limit our discussion to walls that are intended to create tempered space isolated from the exterior.
The modern use of stone as a siding material would be the use of dimensional stones in a cavity wall. This application is a more recent use of the material than its mass wall ancestor; this wall system is similar to the system used with siding materials we have already discussed (wood, composites, metal, and manufactured stone). In a cavity wall the stone veneer will have to be hung off the backing structural wall. While this will add to the structural requirements of your stud wall, a cavity wall configuration will also provide some increased benefits to water infiltration (due to rainscreen principles) and total insulating value (because you can add rigid insulation in the cavity if you desire) of the wall. If you are going to use a dimensional stone veneer for your siding, then I would highly recommend implementing a rainscreen wall. The benefits will be worth the extremely minor amount of additional work and cost it will take to upgrade. The cost, however, for either wall system is going to be expensive. The amount work it takes to extract, refine, ship, and install stone as a siding material is quite onerous, and your budget will take the brunt of this work.
Now that we know some very basic differences between the types of stone walls, let's talk about aesthetics. Stone has always been one of the more beautiful building materials. There is an intrinsic quality to stone. We understand stone innately. Stone has been used as a building material for thousands of years. When local stone is used it can evoke a sense of place and a timeless nature; a sense of place in that the building that uses the local material literally comes from the place it is built, and this connection is deeply understood and felt. The use of the material in this manner connects with the earth and springs from the earth all at once. When an exotic stone is used (material transported form another place on the planet) the material can seem other worldly, but yet the material stills feel natural and familiar. This duality in feeling I think has helped to create some spectacular civic and residential architecture. These qualities of duality, permanence, familiarity, etc. are what make stone such a desired building material and such an ageless addition to our palette of material and form in architecture.
For more proof, you should click on this link to read about this wonderful project Scotland.
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