In the heart of London, Covent Garden is one of the city’s best known tourist attractions, drawing thousands of visitors from all over the world each year. 

Once a lively marketplace, Covent Garden has now become an essential tourist destination with a vast array of gift shops, boutiques and restaurants and housing its infamous street entertainers.

After two years of planning for the redevelopment of Covent Garden plans were passed to renovate and restore the area, to recreate its former beauty.

Ultrascape’s mortar paving products were specified for the redevelopment of Covent Garden’s paved areas. Pro-Bed HS Fine Bedding Concrete, Pro-Prime Slurry Primer and Flowpoint Rapid Setting Flowable Grout were put through a 3 year extensive trial and approval process by English Heritage and Westminster City Council to ensure they fulfilled requirements of and had full compliance to British Standard BS7533.

These works needed to be undertaken with minimal disruption to the public and local businesses, resulting in small sections of the street being closed off at a time and the work more quickly completed.

For the Covent Garden’s worst affected areas Ultrascape Pro-Bed HS fine bedding concrete was used to re-lay the granite setts previously taken up, as it is specifically formulated to meet and exceed the strict demands of BS7533, as with all Ultrascape materials. Ultrascape Pro-Prime slurry primer was then used in conjunction with Ultrascape Pro-Bed HS to provide a more durable bond between the stones’ surface and the bedding mortar, promoting an adhesion of greater than 2N/mm². The use of the two products together ensured the Council had a robust and reliable system that would withstand the everyday heavy foot traffic the paving is under.

Ultrascape Flowpoint was then used to grout the re-laid area of paving, as well as for the re-grouting of paving that was not replaced. Flowpoint is a rapid setting flowable grout that is formulated to meet the strict demands of BS7533 for rigid construction where a fluid consistency and early trafficking are essential. With the simple addition of water on site, Flowpoint can be applied using a pouring vessel with spout for small sections, or for larger sections, slurried over the area and worked into the joints with a squeegee. Flowpoint is able to reach a bond strength of >1.5N/mm² and compressive strength of 49.6N/mm² - exceeding the requirements of BS7533.

Ultrascape Flowpoint will also fill joint widths from 5mm–50mm and joint depths of up to 200mm in one pour, filling the full depth of the joint void free. This was ideal for the contractors as Flowpoint provides a rigid void-free joint and a continuous level surface.

With only small sections of paving being completed at any one time the contractors had to think smart with the amount of material and tools they could have on site. They found the contractor-friendly sized packaging (25kg bags) of Ultrascape products easy to store and use, meaning the workforce could complete the project on time with minimal disruption.

By using Ultrascape Products VGC Construction were able to complete the first series of planned maintenance regimes on time and within budget. All parties are extremely pleased with the performance of Ultrascape Products and plans are in place for further work to take place in Covent Garden.

For further information on Ultrascape’s Mortar Paving System contact the Instarmac® Group plc, Birch Coppice Business Park, Dordon Tamworth, B78 1SE, United Kingdom. Tel: +44 (0)1827 871871. Fax: +44 (0)1827 874466. Email: enquiries@instarmac.co.uk Website: www.ultrascape.co.uk Or for further information on VGC Construction Limited call: +44 (0) 1895 671 800 or email: enquiries@vgcgroup.co.uk