What is the name of ...

[Graeme]

... the large rod sometimes used on old buildings, to hold the walls together? Characterised by a large metal 'S' (or other shape) on the outside wall.

Thanks!

[Holly, in France]

Usually known as a tie afaik. There may well be more technical names for them....

Holly

[Rumble]

Graeme said the following on 28/03/2007 08:25:

It's called a tie rod and the large 'S' is called a pattress plate

e.g.

[Graeme]

In message , Rumble writes

[Chris J Dixon]

A friend once lived in an old end terrace which had a couple of these fitted. I was surprised to find, when lifting an upstairs floorboard, that the inboard end of each was a thin strap set on top of a joist, which has been cut away to take it, and secured with a couple of no 8 woodscrews.

Chris

[Graeme]

Really? I had assumed that the rod went right through the building, with a plate at each end - which shows how little thought I gave the subject :-)

[Phil L]

You gave the correct thought to it, unlike Chris's mate who probably had therm put in by some cowboy or didn't want to pay for it to be done properly - they are indeed supposed to run the full width of the house and affix to the opposite wall, nailing them to the nearest piece of wood will achive nothing, except give the (wrong) impression that a serious problem has been seen to.

[Graeme]

I can see the logic of that, and have only ever noticed the plates on front or rear walls of buildings. How about the end of terrace, which Chris mentioned? Assuming the end wall needed the plate, the rod could not run through, say, half a dozen or more houses, terminating at the opposite end wall - particularly if the houses are on a slope. Think Hovis advert. There must be an alternative solution.

[Chris J Dixon]

Quite! My friend inherited the work, which apparently passed survey. ;-) No matter, she is no longer in the house. This wall was at about 60 degrees to the front of the house, and had moved somewhat. Fitting a run of kitchen units revealed a horizontal bow of a couple of inches across the width of the room.

I don't think the tie bar actually needed to be super strong, simply to arrest the outward movement of the wall, which it seemed to have done.

Chris

[Frank Erskine]

I've only ever seen these on tall broad 'flat' chimney stacks, and assumed that the tie 'rod' passed through the stack, since it appeared into the gable end of the adjacent roof.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

What does 'pattress' actually mean? Nothing in my dictionaries and Google has no definition. ISTR they were the name given to those wooden plates you fixed surface mount round light switches to once upon a time, but some call back boxes by that name now.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I've seen them go all the way through a terrace of houses...

[Colin Wilson]

If you look at a surface mounted socket (not one sunk into a wall), it's the plastic box it sits on...

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Oh I know what *some* people use it for. Which is really wrong considering the original use - and the one for the plate the tie-rod goes into. But you'll not find the term in most catalogues. I was also curious about the root of the word - sounds French.

[mike]

It's thought to be a corruption of the plural od "patera" - a broad flat dish.

It was referred to in our sense in 1886 by J. Black in "Gas Fitting"

1886 J. BLACK Gas Fitting v. 35 Screw on the pattress blocks, pendants and brackets.

Another text uses the patera form

1905 C. C. METCALFE Pract. Electr. Wiring ii. 33 Casing brought from skirting board to pateras..will hardly be noticeable.

I note that the OED does not appear to know, as I didn't, about it being used for the ends of wall ties, which I would imagine predate the gas and electrical usage.

HTH more than it confuses

mike

[nightjar]

They should. That way, you can heat the rod up, tighten up the nuts at each end and allow the contraction of the rod to pull the plates firmly into the walls and, possibly, even pull the walls back into better shape.

Colin Bignell

[Mary Fisher]

"nightjar .uk.com>"

I'm confused. Say we want to put such a device on our house, we put the 's' or whatever shape on the outside of the exterior wall to pull it in, how can we put the rod through our own house and the adjoining one so that the plate is on the neighbour's exterior wall?

Mary

[The Natural Philosopher]

You use a VERY long drill, dear. ;-)

[Bob Mannix]

Suspect smiley doesn't cancel out the "dear"!

Seriously though, you have to get their permission (on the basis if your house falls down, their's will too) to pull up their floors upstairs at the same time and do the installation as one building. If the joists run the same direction as the tie, it can run between them. If not, it may not be possible to fit under floor. If that's the case, it may have to run just below the ceilings and be painted.

A friend of mine had one just under the ceiling in his old cottage. It was always loose from the day he bought the property (walls moved back together). He was having an extension built, which required some konocking about, and suddenly noticed it was like a bowstring - eek! Never fell down though.

[Mary Fisher]

You'd be right - if I'd seen the original. Such comments say more about the poster than the recipient but that poster has been living in my KF for a very long time.

Very few houses do fall down but I reckon that ours is helped to avoid that fate because of our neighbours' house, which is uphill of ours :-)

I didn't realise that such ties went through a whole structure, I expected that the inner elements were attached more locally - closer to the outer ones. One of our sons in law is a builder and mostly a good one but he once said that our outer wall needed attaching to the inner one to prevent it collapsing. We never did that and the wall still hasn't collapsed. Nobody knows everything about their trade, it seems.

Mary