Monday 3 November 2008

Collapsing ceiling nightmare :

You never know what you will find in my job and you have to be prepared for anything and you have to have a solution for it as well and it has to be the right solution at that.This problem involves a piece of wood that is 6 inches square and it runs from one side of the room to the other across the ceiling.Above this piece of wood is a timber frame that is structural and forms a wall in the floor above.

The ceiling was sagging which is what gave the problem away in the first instance.

For some reason the piece of timber in question has literally snapped in half due to the load it is bearing on it.No rot or anything.Just a clean break.

Absolutely extraordinary.

Never seen *anything* like it.

NO idea how it stayed up on its own for so long apart from the fact it is still attached to the timbers above it.

We have a solution of course and we dont want the council in and structural engineers etc as that will cost about 25,000 but it means losing a much larger area of ceiling than was previously thought to replace the timber etc.This problem was exasepated by a repair that was done in the 1930s.

The part solution is to jack it up with Akros using the quarter turn method until that piece of wood is pushed back up to its original position and then support it by inserting a beam that i cant remember the name of now.


My guess to the cause of this problem seems to be a bad bit of wood that had a defect in it and i think its because the piece of wood in question was not heartwood or lacking in integrity somehow.The wood is pine but old growth pine.

NO other explanation.

If you have a budget for a project then always have an extra third on top as a contingency as was the case today.

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