Leaky Lockdown Chaos

Our house has sprung a leak. It’s probably been there for some time, but extended working from home makes these things more noticeable. Extraneous water was first noticed in the tiny cloakroom (and I mean tiny, think the smallest toilet you’ve ever seen on a plane) when a different leak was noticed under the washbasin, running down from the cold tap. The plumber arrived and fixed that, so we took up the vinyl sheet to allow the concrete floor to dry. There was black mould on the underside of the vinyl, which was consigned to the garden. Noticing the dark patch on the concrete extended under the door we pulled back the carpet and underlay in the hallway to reveal that floor was damp too. So were the doorposts, having swelled because they had been sucking up moisture, causing the toilet door to stick.

That was during the November lockdown. Since the washbasin tap was repaired, the doorposts have shrunk and we can close the toilet door. Everything else is still damp and in an attempt to trace this further leak the water to the toilet was turned off for a week, which made no difference. At least we could no longer blame that toilet. Next the panel behind the toilet was taken out to see if the pipework there was the source of the leak. It wasn’t. 

The vinyl in the next-door shower room was peeled back, revealing the chipboard flooring there to be dry by the shower, until we moved around the corner to the second toilet, where damp was suspected. The facts that the plaster was blowing off the walls, there was black mould and and the screws holding the boards down were rusting were a bit of a giveaway.

However even cutting and pulling the vinyl so far back that it ripped and will probably have to be replaced didn’t reveal the source of the leak. Neither did removing the bit of board below the boiler. So next up came the flooring screws, well some of them. The first eight or nine were easy. Why more than fifty screws were deemed necessary to control less than one and a half square metres of flooring is unclear. Most of them were rusty, half a dozen totally immobile. Naturally the flooring ran beneath the skirting so that was all removed too.

Below the chipboard flooring the concrete floor is wet, not merely damp. Below the boiler is a void, which is also wet. The source of the water is still unclear. So while we wait for the plumber the window in the shower room is open to try to dry it out, causing freezing air to flow through to the house. The flooring from the unusable shower room is cluttering the small study/bedroom, the tiny toilet is usable but freezing cold and the hallway carpet and underlay are still rolled back creating multiple trip-hazards on the way to the kitchen.

It’s been snowing for the past two days. The plumber is probably busy.

Sustainable Solutions for Old Windows

Plastic windows are often put into older buildings, to ‘upgrade’ old single glazed wooden windows. They can provide improvement in insulation via double-glazing and improved draft-proofing and so are often viewed as the sustainable solution. This is belied by their limited longevity, the PVC-U they are manufactured from gives them an expected maintenance free life of not much more than 30 years, at the end of which it is more likely that they are discarded and replaced than maintained.  There is a huge carbon footprint created in their manufacture and replacement and waste plastic is an increasing environmental problem.  

Old sash Windows don't have to be as beautiful

and rare as those on this Queen Anne townhouse

to be well worth preserving and restoring.

Listed historic buildings cannot be sympathetically re-fitted with modern plastic windows and the appearance of many otherwise handsome, unlisted buildings has been spoilt by the addition of carelessly chosen replacement windows. The making, rebuilding and repairing of sliding sash windows is now a reviving market which deserves encouragement

Wooden window frames and sashes of whatever age can be easily repaired if they have not been allowed to rot, though sliding sash windows in particular are often seen by the inexperienced as more trouble than they are worth to restore.  However weights, sash cords and other traditional sliding sash accessories are readily available from specialist suppliers and slender, pre-manufactured double glazing units can be used to replace original Victorian glass, which was often especially thick in larger windows. An expertly restored wooden sliding sash should be no harder to open and close than a UPVC replacement and will let in more light than a thicker framed plastic window, as is noted in the Building Regulations.

Marine Court, St Leonards, a 1930’s work of art made more

ordinary by the later, indiscriminate insertion of randomly

chosen windows and the infilling of balconies in the

apartments to the left. The sustainable solution here

is not obvious

UPVC can now be recycled and one major manufacturer of window profiles and other parts recycles up to 90% of old UPVC windows, including the glass, on their site in Derbyshire, though even this process has a carbon footprint in the energy used. The RecoVinyl Scheme is a European wide initiative to collect and recycle used  PVC building products to support the Vinyl 2010 Voluntary Commitment. The British Plastics Federation claims that, since inception of the scheme, the UK has led the way in the volume of PVC collected and recycled in Europe. The question is, how many discarded UPVC window actually do get recycled? Figures are lacking and it may be that too many still go to landfill and incinerators.

It's Mostly to do with Water! - Picture of the Week 7 February 2014

This may look like an archaeological dig and in a way it is. Archaeology investigates the past by digging holes. Old clay drains under some gardens in Oldham were leaking, it was our job at ArchiFACT job to investigate and determine why they were leaking.

So maybe our company motto should be, dig a hole and the experts will look into it..!

What we found were obviously bricks, water, mud and these old clay chaps...

In fact if it wasn't for water, we wouldn't have much work. Many of our clients come to us because of a problem with water in the wrong place. We have investigated leaking roofs, wet walkways, swimming pools, basements, swimming pools in basements, damp render, dripping doorways, leaky windows, steamy windows, you name it. 

I do just wonder if that pipe was leaking BEFORE he stood on it. They weren't
necessarily designed to take the strain of a large lad, forcefully wielding a big shovel!
 

Current weather conditions in England seem to indicate the flow of jobs isn't likely to dry up any time soon. I just feel so sorry for the folks trying to live on the Somerset levels. Their problems may be beyond our ability to resolve.

Scaffolder On the Job: Picture of the Week, 3 October 2012

I have decided to begin another category of pictures of tradesmen On the Job.

There are reasons why certain jobs require expertise, and not all expertise depends on paper qualifications.

When a 200 year old chimney in the middle of a row of historic buildings needs extensive work, scaffolding is the first essential. And for scaffolding, you need scaffolders.

Spot the scaffolder.

Stony Stratford Historic Roofing, Pictures of the week 13 July 2012

Having missed posting anything at all last week (due to technical problems, honest!) I'm once again posting several. These show some of the reasons why Archifact stays in business. 

Historic Roofscape

Driving through an old English coaching town, you can enjoy the quaint shopfronts, ancient pubs and historic town houses, but what goes on above your eyeline?

The Unpleasantness in the Basement

Our four storey, semi-detached, stone house overlooking Greenhead Park was built in 1880 and has substantial cellars. One is set out as a wine cellar, with stone shelving and a lockable door, another contains four gas meters, a third which previously housed the kitchen range and bread ovens, now just has an old ceramic sink and a plumbed in washing machine belonging to Eva in flat four. This once pretentious, if not quite grand, Victorian residence was converted into flats long ago.

The largest cellar room has, in common with many Victorian basements in Huddersfield, an enormous stone slab table, with several hooks above for hanging the meat butchered on the table. More mundanely, a corner holds Yorkshire Water’s water meter and one entire wall is taken over with electricity meters, switches and fuse boxes for the whole house.

Sadly, as this isn’t a Gothic horror story, the unpleasantness in the basement had nothing to do with the abandoned ovens, or the meat hooks or even that marvellous stone table, begging to become a sacrificial altar. Neither was it related to the complex electrical arrangements, or the gas meters, or even the water supply. The unpleasantness would have happened even if the cellars had been completely empty; it was merely a consequence of them being very deep.

the Curious Case of the Elephant in the Cabin

There are ever so many brands of modular buildings, O Best Beloved Some of them stand on the banks of a great, grey, green, greasy river all set about with olive trees, not to mention elsewhere. For there are very many, all over the place. 

And once upon a summer's day, or so the story goes, an ever so strong and well built steel framed module was being lowered ever so carefully into its desired position by an extremely tall crane, when an ever so enormous crocodile emerged from the grey, green, greasy waters of the great river.

now the enormous, but rather shy crocodile was angry...

Now the crocodile was angry, because he wanted the river to himself, so he could bask on the green, grey, gritty sandbanks and catch the multitudes of fishes which swam in the grey, green waters, without being stared at, especially by the numerous people who would come and work in all the modular buildings. For an ever so enormous crocodile, he was rather shy.

So, because he was rather shy, taking care not to be seen by the crane operator, or the ground crew, or the foreman, or even the baby elephant who had crept into the module for his afternoon nap, the ever so enormous crocodile opened up his ever so powerful jaws. He grabbed the nearest corner of the suspended module and he began to pull.

Now every wise, wise man, not to mention every even wiser woman, who has access to libraries full of wise, wise books, knows that if you unexpectedly apply a heavy weight to one corner of a suspended object, something just might unexpectedly give.

And so the ever so powerful jaws of the enormous, but rather shy crocodile made a weld in the corner of the suspended module go PING! And the baby elephant, who we shall call Jimbo, because he is too small to be a true Jumbo, woke up with a start at the sound of the PING! Jimbo found that his once safe and peaceful cabin was swaying ever so scarily and tilting even more scarily. Jimbo called it a cabin because he couldn't spell the word module.

Now when Jimbo stretched out his baby elephant trunk to brace himself against the swaying and the tilting, he noticed that the lowermost corner of the no longer safe and peaceful cabin smelled ever so slightly of crocodile. Elephants notice these things and besides, his gigantic uncle Alphonse had warned him about crocodiles. Jimbo was therefore in a great hurry to reach the opposite, uppermost corner of the cabin, away from the smell of crocodile.

Jimbo

As Jimbo scrambled upwards, the weight on the ever so well welded corners of the steel frame of the cabin became less unequal and the cabin began to tilt back towards the horizontal. The crocodile, who couldn't spell horizontal, unexpectedly found himself lifted vertically, straight up out of the grey, green, greasy water of the great river and he didn't like it. He liked to be horizontal, even though he couldn't spell it. So he let go and with a great big splash (you must never say 'great big', O best beloved, because it is otiose) he fell back into the grey, green, greasy waters and submerged. 

Of course this was when the cabin unexpectedly tilted in the opposite direction, sending poor Jimbo rolling and tumbling unexpectedly into what had once been the uppermost corner, far faster than he had intended. And as every wise, wise man, not to mention every even wiser woman knows, if you unexpectedly apply a heavy weight to one corner of a suspended object, something just might unexpectedly give. And as poor Jimbo unexpectedly reached the formerly but no longer uppermost corner at high speed, the weld in the corner went PING!

The crane driver could tell something had gone wrong, by the swaying. The ground crew could tell something had gone wrong by the tilting. The foreman could tell something had gone wrong by the swaying and the tilting and they had all heard the PINGS! So they lowered the now ever so slightly wonky module as quickly as possible into its desired position and they went to have a refreshing beverage, or two, and discuss their next course of action. Funnily enough, none of them had heard the great big splash, as the ever so enormous crocodile plunged back into the river, not to mention the rumbling as Jimbo tumbled unexpectedly across the cabin floor.

Gigantic Uncle Alphonse

Now poor Jimbo, who was a little bit bashed up but much more scared than hurt, decided that the cabin was no longer the safe, peaceful place he thought it was when he had crept in for his afternoon nap. As you know, O Best Beloved, all babies need an afternoon nap, even baby elephants. So Jimbo left the cabin, through the now ever so slightly wonky door and he went in search of his gigantic uncle Alphonse, to tell him all about the cabin that swayed and smelled of crocodile and went PING! in all the corners.

And the crane driver and the ground crew and the foreman all spoke to the owners. And the owners called in lots of brilliant expertise. There were the wise, wise men, with their wise, wise books, not to mention the even wiser women. And then there were the strict, strict officials, with their sensible, sensible rules, not to mention the clever, clever councillors with their deep deep legal knowledge. The trouble was, O Best Beloved, none of them could agree exactly what had happened, or whose fault it was. But we know, don't we?!
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                                                                                                                 (photos from ms clipart)