Pavement resurfacing and basement rooms/ cellar lights

[janieo]

I live in a Georgian terraced street where our houses open directly onto the pavement. Our basement room at the front, by the pavement, was originally a coal room but - as with all our neighbours - has been converted/ tanked and is used as a dining room. Other houses use it for a bathroom or a kitchen. About half of us have cellar lights - others have concreted over the gap where coal used to be poured through.

The pavement in our street is very poor/broken/uneven and it is likely that the Council will consider resurfacing (to dig it up would be too disruptive to our properties and is considered 'too risky' by the Council). However, we are stuck as the current Bitmac option they are considering would require vibration rollering which again could cause damage to our basement rooms/ could disrupt the tanking seal. We have been seeking alternatives that don't require vibration rollering, and could be laid purely using heavy rollering.

We are trying to identify another area with experience of this process - i.e. pavement resurfacing - and what material was used and how it was laid/ compacted by the Council?

If you have any insights/ experience/ advice about this I (and my 59 neighbours) would be very grateful!

 

[MatthewC]

Hi janieo, welcome to the forum. I cannot answer your question but thought I'd bump this one up so it doesn't get lost (as first posts tend to, due to moderation).

One thought: if your house is that old, is it listed or are you in a Conservation Area? If so, I don't think that the council can change the surface of the pavement to tarmac without a good deal of consultation.

I do have one question for you: when you say you have "cellar lights", do you mean some sort of glass set in the pavement itself (usually lots of squares of thick glass in some sort of frame)? So is the problem that the cellars actually are under the pavement? I've seen that sort of thing in London, and never really thought about the legal complications - there must be some sort of inverse of the "flying freehold" principle, but my worry would be that the owners may have more responsibility than you think! Tread carefully (no pun intended!).

Matthew

 

[a twig]

Resin bound wearing course over the top instead of bitmac - doubt they would go for that.

Chip Seal should probably do the job (though very unpopular in this country) and shouldn't need vibration rolling (rollering?) either. Mention that and see what they say.

If they want to stick with their current bitmac solution there's a handy booklet here which tells you more that you'll ever need to know about current gov streetworks efforts and Appendix 2 suggests alternative plant options. There's nothing intrinsically bad about vibrations, it will just be the amplitudes that may be an issue, so just downsizing the plant might be the answer.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploa...ata/file/4382/practicalguidetostreetworks.pdf

 

[janieo]

Hello to both of you who have responded - much appreciated.

To answer Matthew, we are in a conservation area but our properties are not listed. However we are subject to an Article 4 direction for the front of our houses.

Half of the cellar lights in the street are flush with the pavement, whilst the other half (including ours) are raised i.e. with bricks, and the panes of glass secured into the top. Yes, our basements are below street level - the Council has said that, as they were not originally intended for occupation (apart from by coal) then they are not responsible for the increasing damp we are experiencing. However, we don't think that the very cracked and uneven pavements (bits of concrete) help as we have all sorts of vegetation growing in them and they are often green with mould.

Some of us had said, a few years ago, that we would like to do things to the pavement in front of our properties but the Council told us that this was not our property - the pavements belong to them. And we didn't want to be liable for anyone tripping/ falling!

 

[Feltwell]

Has the question of a flagged pavement been raised with Council? They may well be reluctant - uneven paving slabs and subsequent trips and claims, plus I'd bet they cost more to lay than a bitmac pavement and are more prone to vehicle damage - but worth a try none the less?

Compacting the sub-base for that could be done with lighter equipment I would have thought.

 

[janieo]

Thank you Feltwell. Yes, we discussed flagged paving as some residents are particularly fond of York stone, but the Council said that this would require the excavation of the current concrete pavement and they are not willing to excavate due to potential damage to properties ie as most of us have tanking in our basements and the Council think that excavation would break the seal.