Sustainable Roofing Retrofit Bristol - Traditional Victorian House. Week 3

Week 3 was mostly finishing stripping out the old floor joists, loads of tidying and then starting on the masonry work, of which there was plenty!

Some of the foundations on the ground floor were due to be underpinned soon as the 3 storey extension on the back had dropped somewhat. We knew we had to take down the top of the gable at the extension end and replace the timber lintels with concrete ones. We also had to take down a couple more walls and rebuild where there had been extensive damage and cracking.

One of the main tasks for the weeks was making holes for the padstones for all the steels in the floors. This involved a lot of careful stitch drilling and gentle chiselling. Mostly the masonry was in a good condition for the age of the house, however it is still wise to exercise some caution with these old houses. Too much vibration can dislodge more things!

Cleaning all the old lime mortar off the bricks so they can be put back. A time consuming process but the right thing to do for the building.

We stacked the bricks in piles and regularly watered them. They were so dry that they would suck all the moisture out of the new 5:1:1 sand/lime/cement mortar too quickly.

Cutting out holes for the padstones... A time consuming job and one that should be done with care, especially when on the party wall!

You can see the original timber gallows bracket which supports the soffit. It was let into the wall 2.5 metres! It had still sagged massively on the soffit though as it had no triangulation. I wonder if someone removed the brace at some point. We looked and we couldn't see any evidence of a fixing point in the bath stone at the front.

We got to work removing it anyway as it had rotted out in parts. It was a careful operation of removing little bits at a time and building them back in as the timber spanned the full width of the double skin party wall.

A rotten section removed!

The whole space mid week.

One of the interesting discoveries of the week was found while opening up the wall for one of the padstones in the end of terrace wall. Apparently the terrace was built up to an old stone house, which at some point was demolished. I assume the builders thought it best to leave the outer wall of the old house standing as a buttress to the terraces. We were wondering why that end wall was so thick!

Here you can actually see the original external lime render of the old house that was demolished. Fascinating stuff! It really makes me wonder about the house, it's history and the people that lived there. Now, there are flats at the end of the terrace so at some point this old was demolished to make way for them.

Looking back at the walls. You can clearly see the outer, stone wall and the inner, brick wall.

Here we've already made some masonry repairs where the old gallows bracket has been removed. You can see the hole for the padstone. We've also propped the bath stone end capping as it was very loose!

The original bracket supporting the soffit. It was in okay condition but woodworm had started to get into it. It's amazing there was one on the small side of the soffit but not one between the two houses where the soffit is much longer and unsupported. Surely there must have been one originally and it was removed and the stone patched up perfectly.

We will see if it is salvageable, if so we'll treat it and put it back on, if not then I will remake a perfect match and replace it as was.

A quick glimpse into the neighbours side just before the end of the week. As they share the same deep soffit and are supported off the same rotten gallows bracket we had to take a look and sort the problem properly. I know what's in store for me next week!