Cavity Wall Woes

[reefcarbon]

Hi

Help!

I bodged a two inch wide chase in an interal terraced cavity wall. The wall is constructed using a mixture of ceremic pots (like the ones spanish buildings are made with) & breeze block. The ceramic pots are hollow with a thin outer casing & the wall is coated with a 2 to 2.5cm layer of cement & plaster..........The problem is i have completey smashed the pots & have gone through into the cavity behind the wall, i

can now see next doors wall!! I now have a 2" wide gap in the brickwork from the ceiling to the floor...How can i fix this???

reefcarbon

[Guy King]

The message from [e-mail] contains these words:

Part fill it with foam, then skim with cement to near the top, then plaster.

[Phil L]

Once you knew it was going all the way through to the cavity, why didn't you stop? ...FWIW, you can't 'fix' it, the wall itself is now effectively sliced apart, you can patch it up with foam / wood / cement etc but that's all it will be; two walls joined together with bits of wood and foam.

[reefcarbon]

Well i didn't exactly do it. A friend of mine is a electrician & i let him get on with it, when i came back i wasn't over joyed at the slice down my wall. I am worried it has caused structual damage but he assures me that the wall is fine & has even suggested i simply plasterboard over the gap! Surely that cannot be legal with building regs etc etc....

[dg]

You have introduced a weak point into the wall. If any movement does occur, the wall may not accomodate it now. It may be fine, it may not be.

It may require some steel bars to be epoxied into alternate horizontal mortar joints to re-tie the wall together.

I woul also have doubts as the the competancy of your electricial friend. Get an indepenant test on his work!

dg

[reefcarbon]

thanks for the response

the slice stops about 14 inches above the ground floor but i guess that does not make any difference. I know two competent builders, may be they can offer some advice to make it safer. The house was built in the the 1940's & has had some settlement, just hope there isn't any more otherwise next door could have a problem an all, i doubt weather the insurance would cover that. i have searched the internet but i seem to be the first who has this type of problem.......

[dg]

The cut is now a weak point in the wall, and any movement will be concentated in this area moving up and down or horizontally on any of the four directions

dg

[reefcarbon]

Basically i'm screwed unless it can be made wider & rebuilt properly by a competent builder

[Steve Firth]

Any chance that you could learn how to post to Usenet or am I going to have to kill file every f****it who uses Google groups?

[Phil L]

Not really. You can chip off the plaster alongside the chasing, say about 6 inces on each side, so that the cut is approx a foot wide all the way up, and follow dg's advice WRT tying the two sections of wall back together....scrape out (carefully) the horizontal mortar bed on each side of the chasing and epoxy resin some wall ties in to the courses....this would need to be done every 2 ft(ish) Failing that, you could drill into the mortar beds and affix metal straps across the join, although these would have to be about 2ft long so that the mortar doesn't give way near the chasing, again they would have to be every

2 ft horizontally.

When finished, foam up the chasing, render and plaster as normal...don't forget, the wall continues up to the loft - above your living room ceiling, the wall is still continuous and this should retain it's original strength.

[reefcarbon]

Cheers Phil, i'll get the professionals in to do this. The wall is just over 5 meters in length. The house has concrete guttering as well so hopefully there won't be any movement/settlement in the future...fingers crossed

[reefcarbon]

Cheers Phil, i'll get the professionals in to do this. The wall is just over 5 meters in length. The house has concrete guttering as well so hopefully there won't be any movement/settlement in the future...fingers crossed

[reefcarbon]

Cheers Phil, i'll get the professionals in to do this. The wall is just over 5 meters in length. The house has concrete guttering as well so hopefully there won't be any movement/settlement in the future...fingers crossed

[Chris Bacon]

What the hell are you on about. Please will *you* sort out your posting, too.

Google posts are becoming a real PITA.

[Chris Bacon]

Not only can't you post properly, but you bog it up three times with identical posts.

[Steve Firth]

Fuck knows, no context at all and now three posts all identical. Google, bringing stupid people to an internet thing near you soon.

[meow2222]

Structural work on the arty wall without going through the procedures of the Party Wall Act is illegal. Further struc work will require the usual PWA stuff, which involves 1 to 3 struc experts and maybe legal fees for yourself and neighbour. Costs may be a grand upwards. You could recover this from the spark, and/or suggest he pay voluntarily to keep himself out of trouble.

If you employ someone that doesnt know what he's doing, they need watching. Perhaps you had some misplaced faith in human nature? Always a mistake.

NT

[GymRatZ]

Yawn. For a start Many ISP's don't give any access to usenet so without subscribing to a paid-for service then Google-groups provides an ideal solution.

Secondly, I haven't seen anything in this thread that warrants such verbal abuse. In fact the only ones "clogging up" the group are the 2 or 3 self appointed Net Nannies here that like to think they are some form of moderator in an un-moderated group.

Ho hum. I suppose there will be another 2 weeks of post like yours coming up as the schools take half term!

[Chris Bacon]

Google Groups can be used to supply context. It is possible to post reasonably properly.

[Dave Fawthrop]

|GymRatZ wrote: |> Steve Firth wrote: |>> Any chance that you could learn how to post to Usenet | |> For a start Many ISP's don't give any access to usenet so without |> subscribing to a paid-for service then Google-groups provides an ideal |> solution. | |Google Groups can be used to supply context. It is possible to post |reasonably properly.

If you only want text groups, IMO nothing can beat news,individual.net at the minimal cost of 10 Euros per Year. One should read the FAQs etc, because the have rules and enforce them.