First part of story here.
Thanks for all the advice in the first thread. Very helpful and gave me confidence to proceed. This I now have done and found some interesting things in the process.
Click on the images for larger versions.
The ground level outside of the house was a bit high and there was damp problems with the wall so I started digging.
About 300mm down and I came across an old brick floor which was rather nice to find. According to my neighbour it is the remains of the floor of an old stable which used to be connected to the side of the house. You can just about make out the stable in the old photo.
Unfortunately, the dug out area is a bit like a swimming pool with no drainage for water and yes that is a down pipe from the roof which empties straight into it. Fortunately, it does appear to drain quite well and there was no puddle formed when it rained recently.
Another worry is the paint finish to the outside wall. It is rather cracked and does a good job of letting the wet in but not out again. A job for next summer I think.
Inside I have removed all the old plaster + cement + tanking etc from the wall and returned it to the stone and mud construction it originally had.
In the wall either side of the fireplace, I uncovered a hole in the wall which had been blocked up at either end. I got all excited at finding them, hoping that there would be something inside. Unfortunately there was nothing. I am however completely mystified as to what they are. They would be around 150mm wide by 200mm high and go all the way through the wall (apart from being capped at the far end). The have been deliberately made with nice flat roof made from a couple of large stones. However the bottom and sides are not very well constructed and are basically rubble. I can't see them being used for storage or anything like that as a bit more care would have been put into them when made.
Anybody fancy a guess as to what they are?
The final find was an inglenook fireplace which had been blocked up using some nice old bricks and a couple of concrete blocks.
The lintel for the inglenook appears to be a couple of thin steel(?) plates on top of a narrower but a lot thicker bar. Unfortunately, I think the right hand side has slipped at some stage which has led to cracking in the rock / mud wall above it. This has allowed smoke to escape through the wall as the chimney isn't lined.
I'd love an inglenook fireplace but we also want to have a fire going as well so probably won't open it up. I believe inglenook fireplaces don't draw very well and we don't really need the size. The dropped lintel will need to be fixed and we will probably sort this at the same time we get the chimney lined.
So quite a bit of hard work has been done and a number of finds made. I wish the rewiring was as enjoyable. Something which this job has highlighted though is that trying to stop water coming through a wall is a lot harder than some make it out to be (not on this site though). In some places there were at least 6 layers of material on the walls plus two layers of tanking (at different depths) and quite a few layers of paint. In some places it was 60mm deep in total. It was very obvious that this wall had had damp problems in the past and various attempts had been made to fix them. None had worked and the wall still had damp problems with quite a bit of mold growth which is why I had started the work in the first place.
I'll let the wall dry out over the winter and look into lime plastering for next summer. Hopefully this, together with improvement of the outside wall, will sort the damp problems for good.
Thanks for all the advice in the first thread. Very helpful and gave me confidence to proceed. This I now have done and found some interesting things in the process.
Click on the images for larger versions.
The ground level outside of the house was a bit high and there was damp problems with the wall so I started digging.
About 300mm down and I came across an old brick floor which was rather nice to find. According to my neighbour it is the remains of the floor of an old stable which used to be connected to the side of the house. You can just about make out the stable in the old photo.
Unfortunately, the dug out area is a bit like a swimming pool with no drainage for water and yes that is a down pipe from the roof which empties straight into it. Fortunately, it does appear to drain quite well and there was no puddle formed when it rained recently.
Another worry is the paint finish to the outside wall. It is rather cracked and does a good job of letting the wet in but not out again. A job for next summer I think.
Inside I have removed all the old plaster + cement + tanking etc from the wall and returned it to the stone and mud construction it originally had.
In the wall either side of the fireplace, I uncovered a hole in the wall which had been blocked up at either end. I got all excited at finding them, hoping that there would be something inside. Unfortunately there was nothing. I am however completely mystified as to what they are. They would be around 150mm wide by 200mm high and go all the way through the wall (apart from being capped at the far end). The have been deliberately made with nice flat roof made from a couple of large stones. However the bottom and sides are not very well constructed and are basically rubble. I can't see them being used for storage or anything like that as a bit more care would have been put into them when made.
Anybody fancy a guess as to what they are?
The final find was an inglenook fireplace which had been blocked up using some nice old bricks and a couple of concrete blocks.
The lintel for the inglenook appears to be a couple of thin steel(?) plates on top of a narrower but a lot thicker bar. Unfortunately, I think the right hand side has slipped at some stage which has led to cracking in the rock / mud wall above it. This has allowed smoke to escape through the wall as the chimney isn't lined.
I'd love an inglenook fireplace but we also want to have a fire going as well so probably won't open it up. I believe inglenook fireplaces don't draw very well and we don't really need the size. The dropped lintel will need to be fixed and we will probably sort this at the same time we get the chimney lined.
So quite a bit of hard work has been done and a number of finds made. I wish the rewiring was as enjoyable. Something which this job has highlighted though is that trying to stop water coming through a wall is a lot harder than some make it out to be (not on this site though). In some places there were at least 6 layers of material on the walls plus two layers of tanking (at different depths) and quite a few layers of paint. In some places it was 60mm deep in total. It was very obvious that this wall had had damp problems in the past and various attempts had been made to fix them. None had worked and the wall still had damp problems with quite a bit of mold growth which is why I had started the work in the first place.
I'll let the wall dry out over the winter and look into lime plastering for next summer. Hopefully this, together with improvement of the outside wall, will sort the damp problems for good.