Impossible to save?

[Keithj]

Exactly so!

If you have the original tiles (or slates, or whatever), and replace rotten wood in the roof structure, add reinforcement where necessary, and then refit the original tiles etc - then that's repair. You may or may not need LBC depending, but on the whole COs are very sympathetic to "pure " repair that leaves it as it was only stronger/less likely to fall down. Tell the Building Regs chap to MYOB.

Celotex and Quinn Therm are solid foam insulation with metallised foil surfaces. They come in various thicknesses - we used lots of 100mm - and are the thermal insulation of first resort these days for walls, floors, and ceilings. It's good stuff, but it's expensive - like, £40 to £50 retail for a sheet of 1220 x 2440 x 100mm. You can get it a lot cheaper if you know where to go. Our builder paid £12 a sheet for the stuff he used here - but still charged us full price!

I can't remember the name of it, but there's another, much more flexible, roof insulation material which is like two sheets of metallised foil, with fibreglass or similar in between. The thickness is probably 5 to 10mm. It's good stuff to put up to reduce heat loss through the tiles, even if not mandated. If you need to know the name, I'll dig out our planning papers and look it up.

 

[Flyfisher]

Middi and Ivor, thank you both. This is what I was wondering, whether I could do such extensive structural repairs without BC involvement, and your encouragement is very..... encouraging. So, I shall have a go. I shall work unseen from the inside, keeping the outer shell erect and the roof propped up. I'm not listed or mortgaged. And of course, using reclaimed timber - who's to know....
I'll keep you posted. Please expect panicked/distraught pleas in the months to come...

We are listed and have three sections of roof. All were in bad condition and leaking in many places, though they were not in imminent danger of collapse. I obtained LBC to strip, repair, add a breather membrane and fit boarding and insulation above the rafters on the roof containing attic rooms. I used multifoil insulation to minimise the 'lift' of the roof to about 60mm. Multifoil insulation seems to have a certain amount of controversy around it in terms of its actual thermal performance but in our GII* case, minimising the roof lift was the overriding factor and some insulation is certainly better than none. Since we were not working to any particular thermal performance regulations it didn't really matter.

The repairs involved the replacement of a few completely rotted softwood rafters of one roof and one oak rafter of another roof. Otherwise, the repairs were mainly additions of new oak to strengthen the original structure in a few places. I didn't use reclaimed timbers, even for the new oak in the attic rooms where all the roof timbers remain visible.

I used Spax screws and a cordless driver throughout because I found that hammering caused a lot of damage to the reed and crumbly lime mortar 'sarking' on one of the roofs. I suppose a nail gun might cause less vibration but I've never tried to use one so can't really comment.

It was all done under the guidance of the CO but without building control being involved.

 

[Zebra]

to strip, repair, add a breather membrane and fit boarding and insulation above the rafters on the roof ......... was all done under the guidance of the CO but without building control being involved.

Oh great! So you were able to remove all the tiles, do all those repairs, insulate etc, put the roof back on..... still without building control being involved!
Keith, I haven't heard of the flexible insulation stuff that you mention, but I'm sure I can find out, thanks for offering to look it up!

 

[Flyfisher]

Yes. I used Tri-Iso Super 10 for the insulation but, as I said before, the limiting factor was to minimise the roof lift and thus retain the character of the listed building rather than meet any specific thermal performance regulations.

 

[stuart45]

Tri-iso super 10 is one type.

 

[Zebra]

Oh, I thought Keithj was talking about something different, something with a fibreglass layer. Is that what Tri-Iso Super 10 is? I thought Tri-Iso was just foil layers.

 

[Flyfisher]

Not just foil:

Product description
19 components: Number of reflective foils: 8
- 2 external reflective foils with reinforcing mesh Surface weight: 600g/m2
- 3 wadding layers Thickness: 30mm approx.
- 8 foam layers
- 6 internal reflective foils

from: http://buildingmaterials.co.uk/Foil-Insulation/p~423~108_108_004-Tri-Iso-Super-10-Foil-Insulation-30mm-1.6m--X-12.5m--20m.html

 

[Keithj]

Tri-ISO sounds like what we have. I don't know if it's fibreglass inside - that's what it felt like when I examined this stuff they were putting in my roof. I didn't see it cut, to know what's actually in there.

 

[Zebra]

I've dug out the concrete slab, and I've found a very old shoe underneath! A child's shoe. With some bottles and an animal's tooth. I know people used to put shoes in buildings - there was a link on here recently: http://www.apotropaios.co.uk/concealed_shoes.htm.
I've just emailed the guy from that website, I wonder if it will help with dating the house...

 

[middi]

You may find out how old is the shoe, not necessarely the age of the building.

Middi

 

[Zebra]

Yes but the shoe can't be older than the house!

 

[Keithj]

Yes but the shoe can't be older than the house!

Er ... it can't be younger than the house that it was buried in, that's for sure.

 

[Baron de Gynes]

At the risk of sounding utterly pedantic, if the shoe was buried beneath the house while the house was being built, then one could surmise that the shoe was indeed made before the house, and therefore is older than the house it was buried in. The same applies if it had been moved from somewhere. From what I gather, shoes were very rarely new when buried, often they were old cast-offs.

Equally, if the she was inserted into the building during works within the last goodness-knows-how-many years (perhaps when the concrete was laid), then it woludn't take a leap of faith to suggest that the shoe could be younger than the house. After all, the carpets in our houses will be younger than the fabric of the buildings...

So in short, you cannot use shoes to accurately date a building any more than you can use tin cans. It's an interesting science, but an inexact one.

Sorry. Feel much better now. Carry on.

 

[JohnB]

So in short, you cannot use shoes to accurately date a building any more than you can use tin cans. It's an interesting science, but an inexact one.

Tin cans are probably more accurate, as some people keep shoes for years, but very few keep tin cans for long! Maybe I should hide a shoe behind my new lime plaster. That would confuse people more than finding it in something modern like concrete .

 

[middi]

No need for embarassement Baron De Gynes, you are absolutely right. The only certainty of age would only apply to the shoe. If the correct age of a building cannot be ascertained through any kept records channels, an approximation of age can only be established by making a closer study to it's fabric and method of construction.

One also has to assume that as the shoe was found under a floor cement layer it may have been placed there when the cementing was done ( or was it !!!). An older style cottage would not have had cement floor, therefore the shoe could have been " dropped" in the ground ( or placed there) before any cementing was done or even before the house was built . Difficult to establish the actual age of the building

Middi

 

[Penners]

I think the important thing is to ascertain which way up the shoe is. If it's the right way up, all is well. But if it's upside down, it may be advisable to keep digging, in order to discover whether there's a foot inside it, then a bit deeper a tibia and fibula, then a femur.....

 

[Zebra]

Ha ha. No, no body attached. I had assumed that the shoe was in its original location, although clearly the slab was laid later, because of the other items nearby, the animal's tooth and the broken bottles, which led to the guess that these object were deliberately concealed within the building. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it but I understand that there are documented cases of single shoes being hidden within the fabric of buildings, often near windows and doors to prevent evil from coming inside. Dried cats and witch bottles are also said to have been concealed within buildings. That is why I thought that this could be a deliberate concealment of these objects, and that therefore the building existed before the shoe was hidden in it. Although, clearly, maybe the shoe wearer dropped their ale, kicked the cat which lost a tooth, and it all means nothing!
I hadn't thought of the idea that it could have been lost in the ground when the building was constructed.

 

[Feltwell]

One day, when someone knocks some bridges down on the M6, they'll find buried in the concrete several period tape measures with "Geoff" written on them. And a walkie-talkie if I remember correctly.

Maybe they'll think it was an offering to the God of clumsy site engineers. Geoff seems an odd name for him though.

 

[Penners]

Not so odd, actually. Geoffrey is an ancient name meaning "God's peace". So maybe God's closest friends do use it as a nickname.

 

[Feltwell]

As ever, it's disputed Penners. What you say may well be true, but is accepted only if you accept that Geoffrey and Godfrey are from the same source, which is far from clear.
The second element seems undisputed and is the Germanic frid "peace", but the first element may apparently be either gawia "territory", walah "stranger" or gisil "hostage", although quite how you get those to "Geoff" is another matter.

Much simpler if you're just called "Dave".