The system of off-site manufacture of lightweight stone panels that has been around longer than most is Stone Panels from America, the stone veneer on aluminium honeycombe panel that became StoneLite four years ago but which still tends to get called Stone Panels in the UK. Brick-Works UK Ltd in Newark, Nottinghamshire, represent Stone Panels Inc in the UK and offer cladding solutions through the Stone Consortium.
StoneLite panels consist of a thin (as little as 3mm) natural stone veneer bonded to an aluminum honeycomb substrate. The panels can be produced in virtually any natural stone. They weigh only 16kg/m2, which is about 80% less than most solid stones.
The process of making them was pioneered nearly 40 years ago in a small quarry in Ireland. The system has been used with British stone in the UK, but the stone still has to go to America to be incorporated on to the panels.
StoneLite has been used in the UK recently on the £1.7billion White City shopping development in London, at the time the biggest construction site in Europe. There were 7,600m2 of StoneLite panels used by Westfield Shopping Towns Ltd. The main sub-contractors were Parry Bowen.
The majority of the panels were 1000x500mm in a white oolitic limestone called St Hubert SLG. There were also several hundred square metres of Verde San Francisco Granite.
In the project the plate/angle was fixed to the slab edge to enable the lightweight SFS frame to be pushed out approximately 380-400mm to give more letable space inside. Had a heavyweight stone cladding been used, this distance off the slab would have meant substantial and, therefore, expensive support. There was a Tyvek-type waterproof membrane, vertical aluminium mullions on Helping-hand brackets and then the StoneLite panels.
Numerous areas were installed only to the point where the SFS frame, CPB and membrane were in place. This gave watertight interiors that could be fitted out and the exterior left unclad until site conditions permitted installation.