first and foremost thanks for the help 🙂
I am in the process of redoing my porch and I have hit a road bump along the way. I am planning on laying real thick stone (as seen here) on the porch floor.
I was going to attempt the job my self when I realized that the porch is not level. Its not sloping away from the house, its more "level and slopes toward the house" Nothing crazy and it varies about .25 – .5 of a inch). This needs to be fixed as the porch should slighty slope away from the house.
After talking to a few contractors I was basically given the following advice:
- Use a self leveling concrete then backbutter with mortar so it slopes away from the house.
- Back butter the mortar (i.e: when laying the stone use the mortar to make up for dips in certain area) and ensure it slopes away. (So do NOT use self leveling conrete, just use extra mortar as needed)
Any advice would help 🙂 Thanks everyone
Best Answer
I like it and it should get rid of that trip hazard door threshold. I'd stay away from the self-leveling anything and you don't want nor should now have level anyway. As you said, you just want to bring the dips up.
Self-leveling concrete/cement would destroy the porch's pitch for water to run away from the house. You just want Flat, which is not the same thing as level...like a stairway handrail is flat, but not level.
Also, new cement doesn't really stick to old with much strength, so either way, you'll need Bonding Agent if you plan on a full-bed mortar job. Since, you don't want things shifting and you don't want people sliding off an edge of loose stone. Yep, I've been to quite a few places that just laid stuff naked or on a sand bed.
I'd go with Type-S mortar and just back buttering for the deep areas, as it's hard as the stone and much better at standing up to weather. Type-N is what a lot of people use, but I've found it to crack easily and even crumble back to a sand quite quickly at a number of places I've visited.