italiafile

Tufo is an amazing thing. It's used for everything here, buildings, roads and pavements. The most desirable form of this stone is the Vesuvian, which comes from just down the road. In recent years the commune has preferred to import tufo from Etna, but ours is not to reason why... merely assume that organised crime has something to do with the awarding of the contracts.
Here its been raining for two days, and yet a mere half an hour after the rain stops, the roads are bone dry. Tufo is like a sponge, a highly porous but incredibly strong and durable stone, that soaks up any moisture. It means that the problem in the Uk of run-off, when millions of litres slides off impermeable tarmac and straight into the rivers, doesn't exist here. The rain simply soaks straight through the tufo and out the other side. Which explains the damage done when alot of water washes away the substrata of sand and earth, leading to huge craters in the roads.

There are more problems when using tufo to build houses, as my wringingly damp flat will testify. The water soaks straight through the stone and come out on the inside... the problem of damp flats in Naples is so endemic it is a rarity for anyone not to have damp patches in winter time.