Repair methods for stone facades

The dimension stone industry has made significant progress in the last 40 years toward improving the quality and longevity of stone cladding. Material standards have been updated, new tests have been developed, design guides have been published, and a myriad of technical papers have been written discussing everything from connection design to full panel mock-up testing. Despite all of this new information, buildings still get built with, or develop, dimension stone cladding problems. This paper discusses practical methods for addressing some of the more common repair issues. The repair methods presented were developed by the authors for application on a variety of consulting projects, primarily involving marble and granite. Repair methods are discussed for addressing minor chips, spalls, partial missing pieces, cracks, and defective or ineffective anchorages. Guiding concepts behind the repairs are presented, and photographs of actual installations are used for demonstrative purposes.