The standard report is a good document,
with enough flexibility for a proper range of dwelling types and ages. The
surveyor (60s, like me, tweed jacket, brown brogues, red Alfa Romeo 156) was at
the house for perhaps three hours and his report, passed on by the purchasers, included
lots of useful information, some of which came from questions during the
inspection. The purchasers asked if we would be prepared to install a
chimney cowl, some additional air bricks and to re-bed and re-point the copings
to the boundary wall. The time of year is not ideal for such works but I agreed
that we would do them, rather than risk a reduction of the price at greater cost;
had already having taken nine months to secure a buyer, partly as a result of
the European Union Referendum.
Chimney Cowl
The chimney was most easily dealt with: I ordered a sturdy
cowl from the rather charmingly Victorian-sounding Nonfumo Flue Systems Limited
of Stokenchurch, Bucks. The Internet saves an awful lot of chasing or phoning
round. Access to the chimney was more difficult because it is necessarily the
highest point of the house so as to dispel smoke effectively. My triple stage
ladder is not quite long enough for access via the gable end but by roping a
cat ladder to the roof on a dry, sunny morning, I was able to reach the chimney
by ladder from the rear elevation. The cowl is designed to be secured by hook
bolts, whose own weight drops them down inside the chimney, to be tightened in
place by external wing nuts.
Wall copings
The garden wall, which forms the northern boundary, was
originally the boundary of the kitchen garden at Elswick Lodge, opposite. This is
the large, detached, late-Victorian house built by John Smalley, owner of the
adjacent Elswick Mill. Grace’s Guide to UK industrial heritage lists cotton
mills in Blackburn in 1891 and the Elswick Mill is stated as having 792 looms,
more than the majority of individual mills in Blackburn at the time. The mill
produced ‘fancys’, the name given to more complex, textured fabrics of a fancy
weave, which required more complex looms.
The garden wall was built using a hard, dark red
Accrington-type brick from a Blackburn brickworks, capped with a hollow,
triangular-section glazed fire clay coping. Our side of the wall was pointed
ten years’ ago but the copings were not re-bedded and all of the lateral joints
were open, allowing water into the wall, which would eventually have caused
problems. I would have liked to have used lime mortar, like the original wall, but
it takes considerably longer to harden than modern Portland cement mortars and
it is less suitable for use in cold, wet weather, requiring protection for much
longer. I began to remove the copings, and hacked off the mortar from them and
the wall, re-bedding and re-pointing in 1:1:6 Portland cement, hydrated lime
and sand mortar mix using a bucket trowel and a finger trowel. After some trial
and error, I decided to sponge the mortar joints clean to minimise the mortar
residues and the later use of hydrochloric acid brick cleaner for cleaning off.
This also produced a joint more similar to a weathered lime mortar joint in
which the fine aggregate tends to be more visible. Imperfections in the shape
of the copings made it impossible to achieve a completely level finish but the
overall effect is quite pleasing and the throat moulds in the overhangs help
shed water away from the surfaces of the wall. I found that creepers and many
garden snails had colonised the interior of the coping blocks. I managed to
complete the work on and off over about three weeks: the wall is 85 foot long
and I could not work during heavy rain or when frosts were predicted.
Additional air bricks
Satisfying the request to provide additional air bricks to improve
ventilation of the voids beneath the timber floors of the two ground floor
reception rooms was more difficult. This was partly why I had not done the work
in 2013, after I inserted insulation between the joists and to below-floor
radiator and other pipework. There already were four air bricks in the flank
walls but one is obscured by ivy and two are now behind kitchen units in the
ground floor garage. It was advisable to
provide some more ventilation. The kitchen and lobby extend three quarters of
the way along the rear of the house, two steps down from the reception rooms,
so any vent in this stretch had to be internal but better than none at all. I
cut out the equivalent of a single brick with a bolster chisel and fitted a
standard, white hit-and-miss ventilation grille with an integral insect screen.
Outside the back door I cut out a single engineering brick and its equivalent
in the inner leaf of the cavity wall using a fine bolster chisel, a
reciprocating saw and a long cold chisel. The joints in Accrington-type brick
are very fine and it was difficult to remove a brick without some damage to the
face of those adjacent. I mortared in a standard fire clay air brick, a close
match for those already existing. They too appear to have been inserted after the
original date of construction, 1905, perhaps a result of a building society
survey in the 1970s on behalf of the Kershaws, from whom we bought the house.
This left the most difficult, front elevation, constructed
in ashlar sandstone blocks, almost certainly from one of two quarries in the
village that used to provide building stone. These blocks are about six inches
deep. The first, in the bay window was removable, although not without
difficulty, using the reciprocating saw and I managed to cut it, using an angle
grinder and a bolster chisel but the rubble stone inner leaf was too deep for
this. I hired a 110v Hilti breaker and created an air path. The block in the other
location in the front wall of the sitting room could not be split in the same
way as the first but the Hilti breaker proved more precise in stone cutting
than I had expected and I was able to create a neat cut following the groove
created by the angle grinder. The inner leaf was also broken through but
creating an air path was more difficult as there are central heating pipes,
insulation and wiring in this relatively congested location.
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