kevstar said:
No wonder the dug down the way :oops: id be in there with a mico digger...dive dive dive 🤣 🤣
Click to expand...
"Dive dive dive" would be appropriate. When they came home one day, before all this, they found they had a flood in this room and the kitchen. It had been raining very hard and for a long time. They discovered that the floor was fitted with tiles which had each had a hole drilled in them!!! So the water came through it but then in a short space of time disappeared back through them. I'd love to have seen these tiles and photographed them. Only found this out last night as well! It is mad that the water table is so high. TBH it needs digging right out, (in the summer), the walls underpinning, as there are no foundations, then decent tanking put in place. Totally bonkers. :eek: :eek: :eek:
 
Stanleysteamer said:
Obvs with listed stuff you have to be careful. I have no idea how often anyone inspects anything. One of the really daft things is that they have front windows which are metal, smallish panes almost Crittall except they were individually made to fit the window spaces and THESE flipping things are now listed!!!
They have sliding secondary double glazing on the inside. So really pretty horrible. So they are going to have to have made double glazing units out of metal that look like the "originals", which are hardly original to a 19th century barn conversion as they were probably made in the 1960s. . Don't think it got listed until the 1980s or 90s.
The problem with the wooden uprights is that the bottoms have turned to powder and they don't know how far up the rot has gone. They aren't just two uprights at the ends of the walls, they are spaced across the wall at about 3 to 4 foot intervals. I'll really have to look harder at trying to enhance the rubbish pics I took so you can see what I mean. I don't think they are load bearing, but who knows? Each one is about 3" by 3" so may just be part of the 17th century barn/ bier walls or dividers.
Here is the opposite wall with the space to the left where the big copper had been, the inglenook and the bread oven, which apparently may have been fired from outside, although there ias an obvious hole at the bottom, maybe for ash removal.
View attachment 305315

The floor has now been lowered, I am 5'9" and can stand underneath that lowest beam which is at right angles to the fireplace, but if i put my hand flat on my head it touches, well, hets a bit squashed so you can imagine how much lower it was before the work.

This is the wall I am on about. The verticals with the rotten bottoms are clear. Although I was unable to photograph the bottoms of them. (I hardly ever use my phone as a camera.)
View attachment 305316
The door shows the height of the floor before.

The place is thatched, :rolleyes: and weirdly the roof has at some point been raised so there is more headroom under the gables etc than there is downstairs.
Some people really are gluttons for punishment. Still the extension etc will be much more practical!
Click to expand...
Thay normally request a dwarf wall under the timber wall in brick up to sound oak with a new sole plate bedded and morticed and notched to retain as mutch of the original as possible
 
Stanleysteamer said:
"Dive dive dive" would be appropriate. When they came home one day, before all this, they found they had a flood in this room and the kitchen. It had been raining very hard and for a long time. They discovered that the floor was fitted with tiles which had each had a hole drilled in them!!! So the water came through it but then in a short space of time disappeared back through them. I'd love to have seen these tiles and photographed them. Only found this out last night as well! It is mad that the water table is so high. TBH it needs digging right out, (in the summer), the walls underpinning, as there are no foundations, then decent tanking put in place. Totally bonkers. :eek: :eek: :eek:
Click to expand...
Needs tanking but a bit late if thay have done the floors? ?
 
The house in @Stanleysteamer 's posts sounds very like a number of older properties near me in Wales. The arrangement of a bresummer beam resting on the beam over the fireplace seems to be a fairly common technique to hold up the upper floors until about the end of the 18th century. My own derelict farmhouse came with the remains of these timbers, but they're not reusable. Similarly, in mid Wales a number of properties seem to have the roof raised sometime in the 19th century, as the inhabitants went up in the world, literally and metaphorically. Sometimes this involved propping the new roof up on struts from the existing trusses. or new bits of wall on top of the existing ones, so you can see changes in the style or colour of the masonry if you look carefully.

Personally, I've found the best thing is merely allowing the walls to "breathe", by digging out around where the building is embedded in the ground. Tanking often seems to encourage moisture as much as keep it out. I've often encountered tanked walls that are running with moisture, rusting out the backing boxes of electric sockets and rotting skirting boards. On digging out the earth around buildings I have often found the remains of ancient drains. Culverts made of two rows of vertical stones with flat ones on top, rubble filled french drains and so on. I even found one made out of rather quaint hand made clay pipes which were all a bit different and rather wiggly. Our forebears knew a thing or two about making themselves comfortable with the technology available to them.
 
Stone56 said:
Needs tanking but a bit late if thay have done the floors? ?
Click to expand...
I have no idea, it is beggar all to do with me, I just ask what is going on! 🤣 🤣 🤣 I think they have just dug out and laid concrete floors but I'm not sure.
I'm no builder, but I do understand under-pinning, foundations and damp course membrane. and I have no idea if they have done much in the way of them as far as the old part of the house is concerned!
 
Brown said:
The house in @Stanleysteamer 's posts sounds very like a number of older properties near me in Wales. The arrangement of a bresummer beam resting on the beam over the fireplace seems to be a fairly common technique to hold up the upper floors until about the end of the 18th century. My own derelict farmhouse came with the remains of these timbers, but they're not reusable. Similarly, in mid Wales a number of properties seem to have the roof raised sometime in the 19th century, as the inhabitants went up in the world, literally and metaphorically. Sometimes this involved propping the new roof up on struts from the existing trusses. or new bits of wall on top of the existing ones, so you can see changes in the style or colour of the masonry if you look carefully.

Personally, I've found the best thing is merely allowing the walls to "breathe", by digging out around where the building is embedded in the ground. Tanking often seems to encourage moisture as much as keep it out. I've often encountered tanked walls that are running with moisture, rusting out the backing boxes of electric sockets and rotting skirting boards. On digging out the earth around buildings I have often found the remains of ancient drains. Culverts made of two rows of vertical stones with flat ones on top, rubble filled french drains and so on. I even found one made out of rather quaint hand made clay pipes which were all a bit different and rather wiggly. Our forebears knew a thing or two about making themselves comfortable with the technology available to them.
Click to expand...
I've even found hollowed out oak trunks for drainage could still see all the a the tool marks
 
Stone56 said:
If its listed thay won't have a choice .1.2.3 ?
Click to expand...
2,,,I think!
Didn't think there was a 3, thort it was 2A or summat!

As you say, legally they won't have a choice, but if it is going to be covered up and the listing people don't even know about the problem then I think they are just going to go ahead as dottir said, rip the wall out and then rebuild it, what with I dunno!
 
The most obvious example is gateposts. They always go at around the ground level where the microbes and fungi can make a meal of them. The bottoms are three feet down or so, and are often very well preserved, complete with tool marks. Even if they're sitting in the ground water for months at a time. When I put my fancy new gates in on the smallholding I dug up about three or four. Not bad timber either - I've been using it for firewood.
 
I find myself getting more and more like Peter Ward on Youtube. I wouldn't go so far as to make ad hominem attacks on the damp industry like he does, but you can do an awful lot to improve matters by letting building materials breathe, dropping the soil level around the outside, and taking care of plumbing leaks, as well as waste pipes and overflows that are running water down the outside walls.
 
Here's one I did on a friend's house in mid-Wales a few years ago:
3697812869_ed0a76cd35_o.jpg

And from the other side of the building:
3698633850_7b0a8ffb7d_o.jpg


All that shale was very wet, with water in between the layers. You can even see a puddle in the bottom of the trench in the second picture. That was in July, when you'd expect the ground to be less wet. The original ground level corresponded to where the rendering is on the wall. The room inside certainly became a lot more habitable as a result of my efforts. Previously, the sodden rendering, complete with its 'tanking' was bubbling off inside, but with the outside ground reduced to below floor level, things were much better.
 
Brown said:
Here's one I did on a friend's house in mid-Wales a few years ago:
View attachment 305342
And from the other side of the building:
View attachment 305343

All that shale was very wet, with water in between the layers. You can even see a puddle in the bottom of the trench in the second picture. That was in July, when you'd expect the ground to be less wet. The original ground level corresponded to where the rendering is on the wall. The room inside certainly became a lot more habitable as a result of my efforts. Previously, the sodden rendering, complete with its 'tanking' was bubbling off inside, but with the outside ground reduced to below floor level, things were much better.
Click to expand...
Here in Dorset and in Hants a lot of people have "cob cottages" but so many do not realise that they have to be painted with paint that allows the "cob" to breathe!. 🤣 🤣 🤣
 
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