Limestone and stone repair in Saint Paul

An old fieldstone foundation wall with its joints repointed

Saint Paul sits inside the half hour or so around White Bear Lake that Don Barger named as his area. His business, Stonecrete Inc, handles stone, new and old, and the city's older neighborhoods have a lot of old stone, much of it limestone foundations set in soft lime mortar under houses that went up in the late 1800s or the early 1900s. Don takes calls and texts at (612) 432-9467.

City: Saint Paul, the state capital
Don works out of: White Bear Lake
Stone work: Setting and repairing stone
Reach Don: (612) 432-9467

Limestone under the old city

Saint Paul built with its own limestone, cut from local quarries and laid all over the old city. On the East Side and the older blocks near downtown, plenty of houses built in that era, the late 1800s into the early 1900s, sit on it.

Those foundations were laid in soft lime mortar. That was normal for the time, and it suits the stone. Lime mortar is softer than the limestone around it and lets damp escape by way of the joints. Every so often the joints wear down and get redone, and the stone around them stays whole.

What hard mortar does to soft stone

Some of the trouble on these walls comes from an old repair. Somebody filled worn joints with a modern cement mix much harder than the original, and it looked tidy for a while.

But now the joint is the hard part and the stone is the soft part. Damp that used to leave through the mortar gets held in the stone, and when it freezes the face of the limestone cracks and falls away around the patch.

Fixing that on an old Saint Paul foundation means taking the hard mortar out where it is doing damage and packing the joints with a mortar that stays softer than the stone. Ask Don what he would use on your wall.

Signs a limestone wall needs work

Look from the basement and from outside. Any of these is worth a photo.

Sand piling up on the basement floor where it meets the wall
Mortar soft enough to scrape out with a house key
A white crust on the stone that rubs off like powder, worse after the spring thaw
Stones whose face is flaking or has fallen off
Gray cement patches with cracked stone around them

When an engineer should see it first

Some of what shows up on an old foundation is past what new joints can fix. A wall that leans inward, or a crack that grows from one year to the next, means the wall itself is moving.

At that point a structural engineer has to look at the wall before anyone starts on the joints. If Don sees signs of it, he will point you there, and the stone work can be planned once you know what is going on. Permits for work on an older house are a question for the city of Saint Paul.

Chimneys and brick on the same houses

Older houses here can have stone or brick chimneys and brick walls above the stone foundation. Stone is the work Don has named. For a chimney or for brick, ask Don before you count on it.

Places in old Saint Paul

Mounds Park Scenic OverlookAn overlook on Mounds Boulevard above the Mississippi, on the East Side
Seventh Street Improvement ArchesA historic stone arch on East 7th Street
Union DepotThe old train station on 4th Street East in Lowertown
Summit Lookout ParkA small park on Summit Avenue

Questions

Should my limestone foundation be repointed with cement mortar?

Not with a hard cement mix. Old limestone was laid in soft lime mortar, and whatever goes back in should be the weaker of the two, so the joint takes the wear and the limestone keeps its face.

Is sand on my basement floor a problem?

It means mortar is coming out of the joints. A little, slowly, is normal wear on an old wall. A lot, or more than last year, means the joints are due. Photos of the wall and the floor along it will show Don how bad it is.

Which photos help Don most with an old foundation?

A picture of the whole wall, a close look at the joints that are in the worst shape, and one of anything that looks patched with gray cement. Add your neighborhood in Saint Paul.

Does Stonecrete take stone work in Saint Paul?

Yes, the city falls in the area Don named: his home base of White Bear Lake plus roughly 30 minutes in any direction. Tell him which part of Saint Paul you live in when you call (612) 432-9467.