What's the worst bodging you've had to put right?

[jjj75]

Click here if the image doesn't load, have never tried images here before.
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Hi,

Yes thats the sort of thing, the wall goes from being two bricks deep to three on the foundation course, with half a brick showing either side.

We've just recently been lowering ground levels with a pebble filled drain all the way around the exterior walls to take the damp earth away from the wall.
The attached photo shows where we have worked around one of the exterior chimney breasts (the house was intended to be mid-terrace, but never got beyond a pair of houses).
You can clearly see the details of the foundation at the base of the chimney breast, a pretty typical arrangement as I understand.
If you are lucky round our way the wall will have been built off of a trench of compacted gravel. I guess ours has as it is still standing with no serious subsidence issues (fingers firmly crossed!)

The bit of wall to the right of the foundation is the back of our fireplace (the interior chiney-breast has been removed) and is single skin built off of the soil, the bottom course of bricks is where the soil level used to be. We have since, laid concrete at this low level and built up to those hanging bricks with a damp-proof course. We're hoping the conerete, which is angled to run away from the house, will help keep the foundations stable. Then have guilt the soil back up on top of the concrete, except for the pebble filled drain immediately adjacent to the house.

The line where the pebble-dash stops is where the level of the concrete used to be some 6" above the internal floor!

The concrete was 12" thick and took some serious work to remove with just a bolster and lump hammer i can tell you.

JJ

 

[a twig]

Where to start...

Selective chimney breast removal, removed on ground floor, retained upstairs, and part of stack still in place as well. Haven't dared to check how well it is supported yet. Where hearth from upstairs had been removed, joist extensions held in by 6" nails (no jointing) and at the wall end, resting on a bit of 5" x 1" screwed onto the skirting board either side of the old breast.

Internal floor raised by pouring lots of concrete, then original pammets used for patio in garden, thus raising external levels to still be higher than internal.

80s PVC windows installed that were too small for the apertures, so gaps filled with cement and bits of timber offcuts, all then boxed in with white gloss planks to hide it.

Uphill waste piping all over the shop.

Random old bits of still live wiring. Heating system changed from open vent to closed circuit, but large parts of open vent hardware still left in place (full tank of water in loft not connected to anything for example).

Solid chimney liner fitted upside down, requiring a modified bit of flue to actually allow the liner to connect to the stove.

Unit that held electric cooker not vented properly (some nice scorch marks on the back of it when I ripped it out).

Small world, met a chap who owns the "renovation firm" that did a lot of the above work 20 years. He seemed genuinely surprised that I didn't want him to quote for some of the work that needed doing at present.

I love my house...

 

[Me!]

Uphill waste piping all over the shop.

My next door neighbour at my last house fitted himself a new bathroom. He was a bricklayer and knew nothing about plumbing, but knew lots of people in the building trade so he got a professional plumber friend of his to come and connect up the pipework and drainage for his bath and hand basin. I happened to be there at the time the plumber was fitting the new waste pipe from the bath trap to the soil pipe and I noticed that it was going uphill. I assumed he had accidentally got it wrong and not noticed, so I very tactfully pointed out to the plumber that I didn't think it was quite correct. He replied that it was fine to do it like that if the levels came out that way, and that in effect it was just like having deeper water in the trap.
Although I suppose he is technically correct about the water level, it didn't stop that bit of waste pipe silting up and blocking on many occasions over the next few years!

 

[xanthe]

I'm feeling positively grateful that I've only got cement pointing and plastering to complain about!

 

[MatthewC]

I just remembered another one on this house. I found that a 7"x2" joist in the bathroom floor had been notched - a "notch" that was about 18" long and 5.5" deep. This was prersumably to take the soil pipe, but at some stage this was changed to go between the joists (of course) and they didn't bother to do anything to sort the bodge. You could call that inaction a second bodge. So when I had the floor exposed to the joists and nothing else above or below, I added a length of 5x2 and fixed it with lots of screws to the perfectly good ends of the original joist - you might call that a third bodge but at least mine works as the floor is solid!

 

[88v8]

Previous owners, who were not very practical, tried to keep wind and water from coming under the west door by squirting a can of builders foam underneath it.
Then they sealed up the inside by tacking a duvet over the frame with staples and drawing pins.

We had the classic concrete floor + dpm in the sitting room, that made the walls damp so had to be got rid of, now we have limecrete. An unscheduled job before we moved in, bit of a nightmare at the time. Three tons out, three tons in.

The wiring in the east attic was 'professionally' done.... all draped any old where under the thatch, nothing in conduit.

Thankfully the previous owners did pretty much b - all during the 19 years they lived here.

Ivor

 

[Penners]

wind and water

If you think these are a problem now, wait until you're my age.

 

[Lindyboo]

wind and water

If you think these are a problem now, wait until you're my age.

Apply builder's foam and staple a duvet to the affected areas ...

 

[mattice]

Prepping a window for interior decorating and it fell out, seems it was only secured by the aged sealant that failed with some light sanding - as were the eight other windows which I quickly secured

 

[Penners]

That reminds me of a Suffolk timber-frame house that Mrs P and I looked at many years ago, when we were house-hunting. The balusters were wedged in position (one fell out while I was climbing the stairs!) and most of the window frames were held in place by panel pins driven into the beams that surrounded them. There appeared to be two panel pins on the inside and two on the outside of each frame! The owner (boasting that he'd done everything himself) apologised that he hadn't had time to fix them properly yet, but assured me that everything would be properly secured by the time we bought the house.

We didn't.

Although the work still needed on the balusters and staircase was relatively straightforward I reasoned that, if these were the problems we could see, how bad would be those that we couldn't see!

 

[Breamer]

A supporting wall in our double fronted stone-built terrace had been knocked out in 1961 (to turn the property into the local Spar) and the “support” maintained by two 9” x 4” softwood beams across a span of 12 feet and the beams only about 4” into the wall on one side. It gets worse – the thickness of the wall was 22” so 14” was effectively unsupported between the beams and the wall up to the roof ridge (about 13 feet higher) is between 22” and 16” thick so many tons of random rubble and a significant portion of the roof weight bearing down on those beams. Across the 12 foot span there was a 1½” deflection. I gently eased the whole mass up about ½” on Acros, built an 18” wall out of 6” blocks on a deep foundation and had my first good night’s sleep since discovering the problem!

 

[plasticpigeon]

I've got nothing on some of the horrors here, but when I first bought my place i got some conservation builders in to do various bits of brickwork. On one wall they couldn't follow the brick bond properly, and in fact on the 4th wrong attempt i gave up and just told them to build the window sill so I could put the window in and have a decent nights sleep knowing there wasn't a 4 foot hole in a downstairs wall. The blue brick sill they built featured one particularly dark brick that I realised was actually very sooty stock red brick from when they were rebuilding the chimney. I have re done all the work these builders did apart from one chimney.

 

[CliffordPope]

All houses have been bodged down the years, many were built bodged in the first place.

Before getting all sanctimonious about other people's shortcomings, just remember that they have all done you the inestimable service of helping the house to survive often over centuries, until the day when you, its true saviour, step self-righteously onto the scene.

 

[MatthewC]

All houses have been bodged down the years, many were built bodged in the first place.

Before getting all sanctimonious about other people's shortcomings, just remember that they have all done you the inestimable service of helping the house to survive often over centuries, until the day when you, its true saviour, step self-righteously onto the scene.

Well, I don't quite agree. We're just doing work on our Grade I listed church to fix a quatrefoil decorated parapet wall (about 50 feet long) which was leaning and eroded. They've just found out that the relatively thin wall (about 4" to 5" thick, standing 30" high with coping stone on top) was once attacked by nasty roofers. When fitting the copper roof covering they have chased the exterior lip of the gully into the limestone by 2" (with a grinder) which is why it is leaning and probably also why the frieze has deteriorated so much. They also then used cement mortar to cover up their shortcomings!

The wall is very probably totally unrepairable and so will be replaced almost like for like, using our large grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (for which we are very grateful!). I say "almost like for like" as the new one will be thicker and more stable, so should last better. Given that this work was probably done in the last 50 years, and that part of the church is 13th C, I think they were vandals (as opposed to the people who did the original construction, who were brilliant).

 

[kreyszig]

I can't believe I only noticed this yesterday.. we have a two level garage - one end of an old coach house. I haven't measured it exactly but it's about 6m wide. The floor of the upper level is just floorboards on top of beams which I think must be about 12"x2". The whole thing is open from below, i.e. the floorboards form the ceiling of the first level.

Anyway the beam closest to the garage door is rotten at both ends. Unbelievably (to me) there is a small shelf connected to the wooden lintel (above the garage door opening) via 3 small angle shelving brackets, and a single 1" square by about 1 foot long piece of wood connects the shelf to the beam above it. Those brackets are completely supporting the whole beam! The floor isn't attached to the beam at all (all the nails have rusted through), as it is I can lift either end of the beam with my hands, with little effort (thanks to the shelving brackets, I presume).

My immediate thought was to get some acrow props post haste in order to stop the thing killing either me or my car, which is currently undergoing surgery beneath it, and then replace it. But as I google and I'm seeing more and more methods for repair, bolting some kind of steel section to the beam to support it is looking quite attractive.

 

[CliffordPope]

Given that this work was probably done in the last 50 years, and that part of the church is 13th C, I think they were vandals .

I don't know the circumstances of course, but perhaps fifty years ago an impoverished parish faced with a deteriorating wall might have said knock it down, or can you do a cheap bodge for us?
They chose the bodge, and so the wall survived long enough to be the lucky recipient of some real funding. The design and craftsmanship will now survive for another few centuries, when it could easily have been lost forever like so many others.

Just speculating one possible scenario.

 

[formerly known as]

I was always taught:

'one cannot criticise the work of others unless one is aware of the brief that was set'

this is equally applicable to architecture, as it is to anything else.

 

[Penners]

'one cannot criticise the work of others unless one is aware of the brief that was set'

Well said, on the eve of Polling Day!

 

[Zebra]

One's briefs should never be set. They should be left flexible. Otherwise they get rather uncomfortable when one puts them on.

Sorry for the poor joke. I'm grouting, and rather bored.

 

[formerly known as]

especially if one is not careful with ones grout.