Hannaford Supermarkets, Augusta, Maine
The masonry contractor says he wasn’t concerned about going that high on the exterior with a full veneer.
“The way Champlain cuts the South Bay Quartzite provides nice, tailored, square-edged stones with a lot of flat surfaces that seat real well,” he says. “This provides greater stability for use in multi-story applications.”
The design also incorporates a high-performance, environmentally friendly water-tight membrane on the exterior of the building, in conjunction with MTI‘s Sure Cavity® drainage system and self-drilling Posi-Tie® rod-style veneer anchors from Heckmann Building Products Inc.
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“We hadn’t used it on a high-wall system like this, but it worked really well,” says Zegouros. “I suppose if we’d gone a lot higher we might have wanted to put some redundant ties in.”
The interior is done in approximately 1,500 ft² of a thin-sawn veneer version of the same stone, which goes up to the same height in the full veneer on the interior of the atrium.
“The inside corner matches the adjacent outside wall, spanning both sides of the storefront and divided by glass that goes almost floor to ceiling,” says Zegouros. “When you come from the outside to the inside, only a trained eye could tell that the interior is a thin veneer because the cuts are so good.”
And, Champlain’s Haynes says the job was done almost entirely from that company’s standard product line.
“The majority was standard product with a small percentage of oversized pieces,” Haynes says. “We did do some extra-long thin ledge pieces.”
Despite his other input on the stone, the mason says he didn’t suggest that the designers go with a thin veneer on the exterior.
“That component was for a full veneer,” he says. “That’s the way they designed it and drew it, and we didn’t offer any advice in that regard.”
However, he did have other input on the aesthetics of the masonry side of the job.
“There are some spots in the building where the stone is low-wall veneer beneath an upper wall of brick,” he explains. “We suggested putting in some rough-face precast stone (from MGA Cast Stone, also of New Gloucester, Maine) as a transitional material between the two to break it up, and colored it to match the buff of the Champlain stone. It worked very well.”
As a final touch, Phoenix Associates sealed the stone to bring out the color, using a water-based sealant on the interior to conform to LEED guidelines, and a Masonry Lusta® from SILPRO on the exterior.
“When we did the dry mockup, we had shown them a couple variants of what it would look like in its natural state and treated with a couple different sealers,” Zegouros explains. “They brought out the color a little more, and especially on the exterior it helps protect the lower levels from the de-icers they use.”