Marble & Stone Restoration

---Your Complete Stone, Tile & Grout Care Professionals---

Engineered Stone

Engineered stone (also known as reconstituted, quantum quartz, re-composed agglomerated and synthetic stone) is manufactured from a mix of stone aggregate chips (most commonly quartz or marble, but also igneous rocks such as granite and basalt); mineral fillers (generally the ground aggregate); a resin binder (typically an unsaturated polyester); pigments and additives. Tiles are typically formed using a vibrocompaction process, where applied vacuum minimises any porosity, usually reducing the water absorption to much less than 0.4%. There are many different kinds of polyester resins, with different viscosity, colour and hardening time. Tile curing may be accelerated by using ovens or steam. Some tiles are given post-curing heating treatments to increase the degree of cure.

Since there are no standards for adhesive fixing of engineered stone tiles, they tend to be fixed according to ceramic tiling standards, using adhesives designed for fixing ceramic tiles. Tiling codes of practice have evolved from an empirical basis, where what was found to work was adopted, and attempts were made to eliminate those practices that were associated with failures.