A day on the road

[Anonymous]

I spent yesterday delivering windows and doors to two customers. The first was a listed 300+ year old thatched cottage. Walls were stone and mud mortar, maybe with a little lime. The thatch had been removed and is about to be replaced. Many roof timbers are structually beyond their use-by date and the CO has developed a cunning plan to build a set of new roof timbers inside the old to support both the old timbers and the new thatch. The historic fabric is all retained and it will be easy to distinguish the new sawn softwood from the old roundwood poles. It will look rather strange. The alternative of like for like repair was rejected. A new wallplate is to sit on top of the wall inside the original. I arrived just when someone was consolidating the top of the wall with Ordinary Portland cement. This was the structural engineer's idea. Why are structural engineers regarded as demi-gods? No, the CO did not know about this detail (yet).

Second customer has a 200 year old stone and lime-mortar house. Part of the gound floor has been used as a garage for many years and she is converting it back to habitable use. This room has had its walls rendered with OPC. There is a little efflorescence near the floor but the wall feels dry to the touch. A surveyor/salesman, the apple in the my customer's eye from a very well known and large damp company, advised drylining with the thick plastic sheet with bobbles on and a drain at the bottom stuff. Their brochure says it is a treatment for basements and cellars, yet he recommended it for an internal, above ground wall with no apparent dampness. The treatment was to cost £2000. I suppose this is how one gets to be a large and profitable company.

 

[Anonymous]

"A surveyor/salesman, the apple in the my customer's eye from a very well known and large damp company, advised drylining with the thick plastic sheet with bobbles on and a drain at the bottom stuff. Their brochure says it is a treatment for basements and cellars, yet he recommended it for an internal, above ground wall with no apparent dampness. The treatment was to cost £2000. I suppose this is how one gets to be a large and profitable company. "

At least it's reversible, I mean as long as they were using the clear stuff so they hit the mortar beds and not the stone. But I'm sure they were.

Right?

Matt Green

 

[Anonymous]

I'm interested in the fact that your first customer's CO rejected like-for-like repair of the roof structure.
What is the point of retaining the old rafters if they've deteriorated beyond any use? So long as they are replaced on a like-for-like basis, isn't that a proper, honest contribution to the history of the building? After all, what do you do with them when they've finally crumbled to dust?
I'm absolutely in favour of retaining any historic fabric that is still a "working" part of the structure, but this sounds to me as though the CO is turning the building into some kind of museum. Is that really in the spirit of what we're all discussing on this forum?

OK Evelyn - I've got my tin hat on. Fire away!

 

[Anonymous]

[No message]

 

[Anonymous]

No - the CO's stance on this one - to keep the original and possibly rare and important roof structure - along with the new, which will maintain the building in use - is very sound conservation.

The roof structure may be part of why the building is listed.

It's so much about individual buildings and finely balanced judgement really.

 

[Anonymous]

This morning a student asked me about past exam papers on the Web - he's doing the Introduction to Archaeology Module so I had a look at a past paper too.
One of the questions was -
"What is 'Heritage', and if you believe in preserving it, who should pay?"
Off you go, turn your paper over now - you have 45 mins to answer...
It's an interesting question when seen in conjunction with the ideals of this forum.

 

[Anonymous]

Matt - I reckon the message is getting through about the uselessness of chemical injection in solid stone walls. However, these firms still have to make money - so this is a solution which sounds good on paper, doesn't it? Just in case there may be some damp in future?

 

[Anonymous]

I was thinking about this issue this morning.

Are we interested in old buildings because we enjoy the traditional construction and craftsmanship, because we like to live in things that look old and cute or because we wish to preserve all old stuff?

Its probably a mixture - I certainly feel that the buildings we have today are the result of much ongoing repair - using the roof timbers as an example - if they are no use now, why keep them? After all, they have thrown away the thatch? Maybe if they were very rare, they should be preserved no matter what, but otherwise, I tend towards the view that its more honest to keep on repairing just as all the previous owners did (ps - please don’t extrapolate this to suggest I want to install a concrete flat roof or some other modern artifice!).

The reason for thinking about this this morning was looking at the bricks and mortar on my street.

The brickwork is washed with soot and is black. Blackened mortar was used and then tuck pointed with white lime. As the years go by, the soot is washing off (acid rain!) and so the yellow stock is showing. In some cases, the mellow brickwork looks very nice - in others, there is a very odd black mortar showing.

Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to re-apply the soot? After all, wouldn’t the original builder think the current look is an awful and shows I am not keeping the building properly decorated? But to do would remove the patina that is so desirable. Surely therefore, this means I am just interested in living in a building that looks old, rather than one built and maintained using appropriate crafts and skills?

But, I cannot preserve this patination – surely its my responsibility to reapply at the appropriate time so that a future owner can enjoy the property just as I did?

I restore old motorbikes and all the same arguments apply. Should I build a perfect restoration, preserve the original patina? Should it be a museum piece or should I put an old race bike back on the track and race it as it was meant to be (even though I may destroy it)?

I suspect the answer lies in between and in the natural tension between these different needs.

 

[Anonymous]

All right Miss. Is it OK if my mum helps me?

 

[Anonymous]

That's nothing. On Saturday I told my wife that I thought her hairstyle wasn't very flattering.

Now THAT'S brave!

 

[Anonymous]

But even if the roof structure is part of why the building is listed, if it's rotted away and is replaced strictly like-for-like, what have we lost? In generations to come people can still look at it and see how the structure was originally created.
I should confess that - emotionally speaking - I do not subscribe to my own argument. However, I do find myself wondering why.

 

[Anonymous]

I don't know but am guessing that in this particular case the balnce of the arguement was for conserving all the historic fabric, museum-wise, because it was of particular interest. The 'rafters' were a motly collection of sticks, some of which I would have hesitated to climb a runner bean up, others were quite substantial. The building technique of using whatever is within wheelbarrow range is a lesson that history can usefully teach us, so I think I'll side with the CO on this one.
I was pleased to get a message from the owner this morning saying that events have moved on and the brickie has now been instructed to remove the OPC and replace with lime. A little success story

 

[Anonymous]

[No message]

 

[Anonymous]

Absolutely.

If they use the clear stuff and only drill into mortar, then there's not much to say really. The clients gets to live in a dry plastic box and the wall gets to breath. At any point the stuff can be removed, the wall re-pointed and you're back to square one.

Not the worst way to keep people happy. We only ever specify clear membrane, incidently. Can't see why you wouldn't given it's not that much more expensive. If you use something like Delta-PT lath (clear plastic egg-crate stuff with a nylon plaster key mesh stuck to one side) you can plaster straight onto it and not have it sound to badly like it's been dry lined.

Matt Green

 

[Anonymous]

The point was not that this treatment was going to do any damage to the historic fabric but that it was quite unnecessary. Basically, a woman who didn't know a great deal about buildings was going to be ripped off to the tune of £2000 by one of the most 'reputable' companies in the business.

 

[Anonymous]

This is a more pressing question with antique electronics. While lime mortar can practically be made to the original recipe, components mostly cant. While a house can be inhabited with several faults, electronics is unusable with just one.

But I may be getting off topic.

NT

 

[Anonymous]

But how do you turn that into 45 minutes?

Heritage: that which we have inherited

Who should pay: there is really no 'should' about it, no particularly sound basis on which to decide on a 'should' option.

We can consider all the options and decide whichever one we want. Government will therefore decide it is the owner who should pay, since that is clearly in the government's self interest. Thus who 'should' becomes somewhat moot.

44 minutes to go...

Maybe one could add that it is best to spend time discussing useful questions rather than ones with no result, and launch into something else!

NT

 

[Anonymous]

D'you know - that's exactly what Mrs P. said.

 

[Anonymous]

If people want to give their money to commissioned salesmen because they are ill-informed, then the salesman in question gets to feed his kids this month and doesn't lose his job for failing to meet his quota?

All we can do is educate.

Matt.

 

[Anonymous]

No, I agree - my 1950's Prestcold fridge has packed up... I am devastated!