Oh the joys of renovation! Have just discovered 3 x 3metre lengths of
6"x3" nailed together with spacers to provide support for a 1.5 bricks of a 2.5brick thick external wall over a door opening. There's no sign of any particular problems at the moment. The wood looks like it's been treated with something long ago (creosote?). It is mercyfully free of woodworm holes, unlike most of the wood in the house.
Should I try to get it out, or just leave it? My main concern is long- term whether it will rot and the side of my house fall down.
I presume that the house is Victorian (or older). It sounds like extremely generous provision and is fairly standard practice in Victorian houses. To try and move it would involve you in a lot of expense.
Thanks for the advice. Perhaps I'll spray it with another dose of preservative before I cover it up, and try to ensure it gets a bit of ventilation somehow.
Imagine removing all the bricks that rest exclusively on the wood, then all those that rest exclusively on those bricks and so on, until you get to a single brick. That is all the wood is holding up. The weight of everything else is being spread to the walls on each side.
nightjar Imagine removing all the bricks that rest exclusively on the wood, then all
Its a bit more interesting when they use it as a bessemer beam that runs across a bay window and it then carries on outside the house to hold up an overhanging corner of the property that is cantilevered on it... guess which beam got dry rot in my mum's place!
=============================== In the interests of accuracy:
"Bressumer
- the main beam in a timber construction usually carved (Sommier is French for beam) . Now generally taken to mean a large horizontal beam, usually timber, spanning a wide opening such as a shopfront."
Apparently it's a common feature in old residential properties but like many things the actual name is less well-known than the item itself.
Yup sorry, typo (I new there was an "R" in there somewhere (and the spell chucker was not much use on that!) ;-)
This one spanned 10' of window, carried on for a couple of feet of wall, and then did another three to four feet holding up the corner of the house. Had to chainsaw it out in sections and then bolt up three 8x3"s side by side to act as a replacement.
nightjar > This one spanned 10' of window, carried on for a couple of feet of wall,
Well in this case, I did mostly...
This was how I ended up meeting the joiner who I ended up doing my loft conversion with. The original quote from a "specialist" timber rot/damp company was something like £18K, and that was not a fixed quote either - it would grow depending on what they found as they exposed the area. So as you can imagine where we told them to place their quote! Fortunately we had someone recommend the aforementioned joiner. He sorted most of the work pretty much single handedly, bringing in another chap (who was a retired demolition expert) to help for a couple of days on the big beam. We also needed to hack out and replace substantial lumps of floor and ceiling joists in proximity to the area (and floorboards plus L&P ceiling). Total cost of all the joinery came to about £2,600 in the end IIRC. On top of which there was about £800 for plastering and rendering. The most expensive single item was having a section of very ornate coving remanufactured (which with 20/20 hindsight I have feeling I could have done that myself just as easily at a fraction of the cost).
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