Mega Expanding Foam from Beeny

[Owain]

On Help My House Is Falling Down Why Didn't I Get A Survey And Does This Crack Really Matter tonight, Ms Beeny demonstrated, well not personally, some mega expanding foam that you pump under a house instead of underpinning it. Sets concrete hard very quickly.

There are some photos on the house's own site at

my suspicion that it was a rather downmarket B&B before (from all the fire detectors and the drains blocked with Full English fat) was confirmed.

Owain

[therustyone]

at

> And my suspicion that it was a rather downmarket B&B before (from all

Temporary fix ? This stuff is organic so will degenerate over time. When they experimentally glued large concrete tiles on the outside of tower blocks in the 60's (Univ of Warwick) they started falling off in

20 years as the epoxy decayed and weakened and this became a big safety issue for pedestrians for many yards around.

rusty

[The Natural Philosopher]

at

>>> And my suspicion that it was a rather downmarket B&B before (from all

Coal is organic. Its lasted a few million years

Wood is organic. We make houses out of it.

Has no bearing, since this is not 50 year old epoxy.

[js.b1]

Expanding foam made me nervous. It is used for surface pot/sink hole filling in other countries (they make a giant cone shaped plug of it). However, If you can pump down expanding foam, why can you not pump down a concrete slurry under (very) high pressure?

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Owain saying something like:

fault by interfering with the drainage near that wall. Seems an awful coincidence, given the wall had stood fine for two centuries.

[js.b1]

I think we have "Beeny labour figures". She quoted the average re-roof in the UK as =A320,000 and the house (admittedly 16 room, valleys, large roof) as =A350,000-60,000. That might include "all new rafters, wall plate, scaffold & 80,000 cups of tea".

[Steve Firth]

Cobblers.

The tiles in question were held on by tile adhesive, not epoxy. The epoxy was applied after the tiles started to fall off as an attempt to remedy the problem. The tiles that had epoxy injected behind them are still in place after thirty years.

the actual situation is the opposite of what you claim. The inorganic adhesive failed, the epoxy adhesive worked. The cause of the tiles falling off wasn't that the adhesive "decayed and weakened" as you claimed it was because the buildings flexed and the inorganic adhesive could not cope with the movement. Modern flexible tile adhesive may well have avoided the situation.

That's modern flexible tile adhesive using an organic latex admixture.

[Steve Firth]

Relatively popular in Germany and Italy. The foam can be used to restore subsided subsoil to something closer to its original level. It produces huge pressure as it expands in the soil.

Most forrin' DIY magazines carry ads for the product.