Educating Archie

Anyone calling at the house and walking from the outer porch to the kitchen remarks about the incline.

It is noticeable. There is a slight upward slope. It can catch you out on the return leg to the front door as there is a gentle and unseen force that pushes you as though you are being ejected by a large and polite but persuasive night club bouncer. It may seem that as a visitor you are being ushered out but in such a welcoming house that is highly unlikely. The momentum created by the slope served as a launch pad for us as children if we were at all apprehensive or reluctant to go to school or to face one of life's challenges.

In the floor there are signs of structural movement.

It is a wonderful example of a mosaic tile floor , individual fired pieces carefully crafted and fitted in a continuous covering of colour and interest. It runs some 30 feet in length from the storm porch to a single step down at the back lobby and door to the cellar. It is wide enough to easily pass the family test of leaning seven bicycles abreast against the wall and still with enough room to walk past. At about the middle of the ornate pavement, in the centre of the house, the immaculate tiling and flush jointing is split open and under foot or bike tyre can be heard the rattle of a slightly loosened group of tiles.

As though following a trail your eye is drawn upwards as you stand astride the fractured floor. The ceiling, some ten feet above, is similarly cracked laterally from wall to wall. The doorheads into the two front living rooms are perceptibly out of true but the heavy panelled doors have, by previous owners, been carefully shaved along the upper edge to fit close and snug. My parents bought the house over thirty years ago. The signs of movement were certainly there at that time but contributed the character of a house built in the last few years of the 19th Century.

The Drains Men, McPherson and Archie dug up the rear yard from monday this week to expose the sub ground pipework in pursuit of the actual cause of the problem. After two days of excavating a neat series of trenches and easing in a seemingly endless cable mounted boroscopic camera which threatened to emerge in the pan of the upstairs WC they were still not sure of the source. They then ventured under the house from a vertical hatch in one of the cellar store rooms. Archie went first being younger, more enthusiastic but subordinate to McPherson.

The crawl space was claustrophobic even from my viewpoint in the cellar over the dry chalky laid sub floor. There was a small gap in the sleeper walls which supported the joists and boards and through the breach could be seen a large sized drainage pipe. Both men shuffled across the oversite as though under enemy fire. Emerging, white and perspiring some time later they recounted that thay had found the reason for the fracture in the house.

The cause of the movement has been attributed to a leak from the mysterious, big pipe. It is a strange arrangement and to some extent has lowered my perception of the Victorians as methodical and meticulous house builders. The cast iron downpipe which drains the large roof surfaces on the front of the house is run into the concrete pathway. It woud be expected to direct the rainwater via underground pipework towards the mains drains in the Public Highway which is only a matter of a few feet away. Rather, the pipe turns back and is run under the living room and dining room floorboards , the full depth of the house and is connected to the main rear downpipe. The potential for leakage or a blockage is increased proportionately over thirty feet rather than a mere five or so.

The pipe, the original from the 1890's decade was in cast metal. The regular flow of surface water over the last century had gradually eroded and corroded the lining and although the perforation was minimal it had been enough for water to drip onto the sub site and soften the foundations through the centre section of the house.

The men were as close to ecstatic as two drainage operatives could ever be on the successful outcome to their investigation. Excitedly they discussed pipe guages, tolerances, rubberised push in collars and gravel settings in readiness for repairs which would establish worthy replacement drains for the house for the next hundred or so years.

Mother brought out the best coffee and the four of us stood near the trenches and celebrated as though we were party to the greatest discovery of our lifetimes.