My lovely wonky wall, this is why its wonky.

[robgil]

No i dont think it would be a good idea to Middi,the house probably wont fall down but i also dont want to remove things unnecessarily. The clay below the floors in these old houses could also be classed as historic fabric if you think about it, it was after all the original floor and could have an old open hearth down there. If i was going to do that i think i would get an archaeologist to have a dig through first providing i could afford one. I know this one has probably already been dug out but you never know what is down there, witch bottles, bodies, the odd clay pipe or coin or perhaps something really important like the holy grail. right then , where's me spade.

I have to agree with using modern materials to help preserve the old house within, providing you take nothing away unless absolutely necessary, its not unheard of to use insulating and weatherboarding to protect the old house underneath. I do know though that in some cases that historical fabric of old houses can be mistaken for original when in fact it might have been added hundreds of years later, i guess you just have to look for the tell tale signs to try and distinguish original from later additions.

 

[middi]

I am sure you ( and probably many other mamy other members of this forum) have noticed " repaired " and " restored " houses, cottages and barns with brick plinths featuring a lead flushing under render or lap boards overlapping most of the first brick course.
If these old dwellings have undergone complete restorations the chances are that modern floors with insulation and dpm ovelapping dpc have been incorporated therefore making the complete "boots" or ground floors damp proof. The walls probably incorporate insulation breatheable membranes and air gaps under an outer finish that ensures no penetration of water that can have an access to the sole plate.
I have all simpathy with anybody that want to "restore" ground floors to it's original state, and, quite right, they are of historical value and should be left undisturbed where they are. In many of these old buildings though, most of the damage has already been done and it is usually up to the CO to determine if the introduced " damage" also forms part of it's history and worth preserving. Again, in most of these cases ( and usually with CO consent) the opportunity is there to do what is best for the building or the owner.
It must be remembered also that restoring these cottages to it's original " floor" would entail living on mud and straw with a central open fires and P*$$*ng in the corner.
To live in total "originality" in these cottages to suit individual taste is not possible, just a compromise or an adaptation for individual taste fuelled ( most of the time) by romantic notion. The end product should really be conservation of historical fabric even if hidden from view
Middi

 

[robgil]

If i had a time machine i would love to go back and see this house evolve through time , it would answer so many questions to which i can only speculate the answers, but just as the people in 1670 something rebuilt the living room in order to keep the house standing and the roofers who put a new roof on it around the same time i too will do what it takes to keep it standing. Probably with very little money just as they did.
They didnt worry too much about preservation but they also didnt over do it either , they didnt fix what wasnt broken. I do worry about preservation , possible too much and definitely more than if it were listed, ive seen listed buildings with things done to them that i wouldnt dream of doing here, its hard to know where to draw the line between a home and a museum.

 

[robgil]

Done! I put two coarses of brick under the half rotten sill plate. The heart of the plate was still good and solid so i left it alone. I did have to put a new bit of oak in where a section of the plate was missing but apart from that all was fine. I did it a few feet at a time and had to rely on air hooks at stages but slowly and carefully was my approach.
My brick work isnt the best but most will be buried and the rest plastered, the wall was far from straight but i think it looks fine and the wall structure remained untouched although it did move a tiny wee bit , enough for a few cracks to appear in the daub but nothing that couldnt be repaired.

Here are some photos of how it went.

So , hopefully now this plate will stop deteriorating and be good for another 400 years.

 

[Penners]

two coarses

Er........ :evil:

Well done, Rob. It's excellent that you've been able to stitch in a repair with so little disturbance of the original fabric. Did you tie the new piece of plate to the old pieces in any way?

 

[robgil]

No i didnt Penners, the plate looks like it was put in in two completely different sections, most likely at different periods in the houses history. The gap that i filled with new timber i assume was cut out for a door at one stage (the daub has tell tale signs of modification) and to the right of that there was an old stairs (the ceiling joists and joist support beam confirm this) so there was possibly an earlier door to gain access to the stairs. The only reason i put a timber in there was to help spread any load from a stud that had been left dangling however this probably wasnt really needed but i think it is better than filling the gap with brick.

When i first started the job i thought there was a deteriorated brick plinth in there, there wasnt. The wall was originally built on earth with the odd piece of flint rammed into it. What happened then was when the concrete slab floors were laid the builder excavated the floor out and went right up close to the wall, it look as though they had to stuff broken bricks i8n there to help stabilize it. On one side of the wall they dug down so deep they had to render the clay face under the wall to try and tidy it up, so basically the wall was resting on an elevated clay plinth, not an ideal situation.

 

[tobydog]

robgil - you probably saw from my recent post about insulating a thatched roof that I was going to post about rotten sole plates, cement and stuff. It turns out I don't need to because your story is identical. Reading your various posts was as though you were actually talking about my house. Really spooky.

Tried uploading some pictures but they were too big. Need to do something with them. Bottom line is I started chipping away at cement render (appeared decorative!) running under the sole plate after seeing a damp line along the bottom and top of the cement. The timber above the cement was also very soft in several places. Couldn't believe what I found and didn't find. The bricks and lime morter were saturated and had all but crumbled away in many places and in some areas didn't even exist. It was as though the sole plate was just floating there. Oddly, a considerable part of the plate had clearly disappeared a long time ago because old bricks and lime morter had been laid to fill the gap left by the rotted away timber. The cement had literally sealed their fate. The further I chipped away the more apparent it became that the 'decorative' cement was possibly structual even though not intended to be. At that point (about 1.5m along) I decided to stop chipping. I could reach behind the cement at least up to my elbow and what I pulled out was top quality compost!!

Our house is part timber framed in that the whole of the front is timber, all the other walls downstairs are brick with timber above. Please please give me a time machine! The house was 'renovated' to a typical standard in 1983 with a new thatch over a new roof. To be fair I think the roof was probably quite bad because I can see some old bits that they didn't take out.

The floors in the house are concrete and the render on the outside is cement. Nightmare. Oddly, again, the cement render on the outside goes right into the ground. I stopped digging at just shy of 60-70cm. The house has clearly moved over the years and at one end of the house the sole plate is at least 30cm about the current floor level but in the old kitchen where we have the obvious problem it comes down to floor level.

We moved there in March 2009 and had a Building Survey at the time. All it told me was what I could obviously see and made no mention about the horrendous damp in the old kitchen and utility which was clearly longstanding. I can't say too much more because I'm taking action against the surveyor. Whilst what we have found so far is in the old kitchen, the same cement render has been applied to the length of the sole plate. There is a good chance the same problem exists and clearly something we would have taken into account when we bought the house had we been told more. I can't do anymore work at this time for obvious reasons.

Nothing like a challenge.

 

[robgil]

How old is your house? 60 to 70 cms sounds quite deep for an old timber framed house
photos would really help. I use a photo bucket account. Open the account (its free), load up your photos then copy and paste the 'Img code' below the loaded photo into your post.

www.photobucket.com

 

[tobydog]

We've been told it's 1640. The cement just runs into the ground like a large bell drip where it's solid concrete at least that far down. Will try and get photos but will be offline this weekend. Our broadband is down at home at the moment. Doing this at work and need to run for train. Thanks and I'll be in touch.