Importance Of Natural Stone Flooring - you must know.

When you are on a construction project, be it residential or commercial, exterior flooring or paving grab a significant amount of your budget and proportional promises to returns in terms of décor as well as property value in the long run. Backyard Patio is an essential part of most homes. Façade with a porch is an inevitable tradition, which we used to follow in order to improve entrance experiences.

Many households are lucky enough to enjoy luxuries of having a swimming pool, garden around the building, garage and decorative elements such as water feature, fire feature, and sculptures. Therefore, they still need to explore paving options for walkways, driveway, and garden paths with stepping stones.
With the advent of construction technologies and material options, exterior paving becomes a big concern for owners, contractors, masons, and the entire manufacturing to distribution and supply chain. However, it also has increased the level of confusion and decision paralysis to select flooring materials for your exterior applications. So, I have decided to pinpoint the best paving material, which is natural stone, in my eyes for your next project in the current post.

Why Natural Stone Flooring for Exterior Spaces?

Natural stones have captivated the attention of construction industry for centuries and were consider a luxurious material option for flooring. Despite the emergence of manufactured flooring tiles like ceramic for interior applications and porcelain for exterior, natural stones have retained the classic charm intact today.

With the improved scenario of quarrying, finishing, transits, and distribution network across the globe, we can find natural stones like luxurious material at equivalent price tags of other materials including cement-concrete flooring and manufactured tiles.
To expand the vision, I am going to describe to you the pros and cons of natural stone flooring in the next section.

Natural Stone Flooring Pros and Cons

When we go to compare one construction material with others, we must take logical approaches and adopt scientific views. Therefore, I am going to place some stone properties in general, such as

Water Absorption Rate:

It is directly related to the porosity of the material because pores allow water molecules to pass through the material. Therefore, a material with the highest absorption rate renders it useless in any damp environment.
Moreover, porosity also defines the level of strength of material against force, cold-heat cycles, and damages including stains, cracks, and breaks. Based on water absorption properties, we can classify rocks into

Fortunately, natural stones with different polishing& coating treatments become water resistant. So, polished stones absorb the least amount of water compared to honed or cleft rocks. Sandstone is the most porous rocks. Travertine, limestone, and slate rocks fall into the medium absorbency category. Granite is highly waterproof natural stone type.

Coefficient of Friction

It is a measurement of the coarseness of the stone surfaces. Thus, a high coefficient of friction indicates high traction on the surfaces. The majority of stones types have a .6 dryness coefficient. It proves the suitability of natural stones for exterior application to give non-slip surfaces.

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