Vocabulary question re. window problem

For a while now I've been bothered by the fact that underneath the stone horizontal bits that jut out below each window on the front of my house, the stone is flaking off quite badly.

I have two questions: what are those stone things called (lintels?), and what is causing this?

Reply to
BlueJohn
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What kind of stone are they? Do you mean stone or something synthetic - concrete etc or natural stone?

Describe the pattern of flaking.

Are they painted/coated?

Do they drain rainwater well or is there moisture traps?

Frost damage is one possibility. Erosion is another (particularly if inappropriate materials have been added around a soft limestone).

Reply to
dom

They are window sills. They may also be cast concrete (possibly in-place) or rendered brick (difficult to tell the difference). Rendered brick are probably most likely to fail, particularly if there are any cracks to let water get in.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

Isn't it called lamination where damp gets in and forces the layers off . ?

Stuart

Reply to
Stuart

Ah - thanks. I thought sills were the wooden bits at the bottom of the window, on top of the brickwork.

The house (terrace) was build about 1914. They look like stone, but could be something rendered with something.

Sandy flaking to about a depth of 1cm, which you can easily rub off some more of with your hand and keep going. The flaking starts from the front of the sills and goes back towards the wall, although it's not yet extending to the wall.

Painted.

Funnily enough we just had a downpour here in North London, so stuck my head out of the windows to have a look at what was going on. Unfortunately it stopped before I could get outside to observe.

I think there are small pools able to build up on the tops of the sills. The runnel thing on the bottom edge of them has largely been painted up or eroded away though - I can't tell.

Quite possibly. There's some spalling of the brickwork in places that looks to me like frost damage around some areas on the front of the house. Some nutter also decided to paint the brickwork with some terracotta coloured render (or paint) a while ago, which I think is responsible for that. The fact that other houses in the terrace don't seem to be so badly affected gives me a clue to this as well.

The reason I ask all this by the way is that I've recently come into a bit of money which I think could best be put into some renovations. This issue is one of several I think - do you think it's worth getting a surveyor around to have a look at stuff that I'm thinking of having done (guttering, sills, leading, windows...)?

Reply to
BlueJohn

You need to re-surface the sills. I've done a few of these with car body filler which have survived for 15 years or so. Probably not something a tradesman would undertake, but cheap and effective

Reply to
Stuart Noble

Re-surface? All the weathing I'm talking about is on the underside - the tops are pristeen (well, almost).

Reply to
BlueJohn

Get the worst off with a wire brush and see if you can get some mortar and pva to take. Once you get an initial bond you can build it up from there. Try and introduce a drip bead if you don't have one. Again, I've done these with body filler and a length of round beading. A bit of a fiddle but without something on the bottom front edge to stop water travelling back to the wall, the problem (if it is one) won't go away

Reply to
Stuart Noble

OK I'll give that a go.

Reply to
BlueJohn

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