Nuns and Helical Screws

It is the next stage, the second of three, in the quest to stabilise the front left hand two storey bay at the house that for the last 34 years has played a major part in the lives of our family members.

Of course, us siblings all deserted the good ship 'Lindisfarne' and moved out years ago to leave the Wrinklies in residence but we all sense that the place still welcomes us on the occasions that we drift back in ones, twos, threes or, at Christmas and New Year ,twenty fours.

Built in the late Victorian period the house is grand, double bay fronted in a pale yellow brick in the Flemish Bond pattern and will have been termed a Villa at its topping out ceremony. Built in an old orchard, as is much of the street from that period, it was placed on a substantial foundation to counter any soft or poorer load bearing sub soils.

Even before reaching damp proof course level the house was already of substantial construction with a stone staircase down to a cellar deep enough to stand up in but not advisable to try to dance energetically in.

For a good part of its life the house will have been upright, sound and true but gradually the front left hand two storey bay began to move involuntarily. The actual date for this Pisa-esque impression is hard to pin down. Certainly, when purchased by my parents in 1979, the bay was already a bit slumped and slightly detached but not enough to warrant any excitement or sanction from the Bank Surveyor.

The lower wall and dressed stone cills showed minor fractures and the large softwood sash windows were noticeably out of true to their lower casements. It had been many years since they had been capable of opening through a combination of thick, successive layers of paint and where the tightly bound cords had snapped. The main distortion was to the first floor bay wall and above. Brickwork at the shallow angle between the bay and the main front elevation had pulled apart and been the subject of periodic repairs. In the vertical position either side of the elongated flank windows the backfilled mortar had been repaired many, many times but was still loose and always looked threatening as though fully intending at some undetermined time to fall out and skewer the Paper Boy as he took his usual short cut through the rose bed from the next door garden.

Funny thing though, in the drier summer months the gaps in masonry and mortar looked wider but contracted in the winter and wet season so as to be almost flush and gap-less to the rest of the brickwork. It was a living, almost organic entity in its own right.

Stage One of the investigative work into the movement, in 2012, determined that the cause was a slow, insidious softening of the ground under the bay by what amounted to a pin-hole sized leak on a drainage pipe. This did not sound enough to contribute to the problem until the realisation that an innocent drip of water but over, possibly, 50 or 60 years could amount to the equivalent of a veritable torrent.

The pipe which received surface water from the roof and gutters did not run the short few feet into the street drain as you would expect but was illogically run back under the floors to the full depth of the house including a crossing at shoulder height of the cellar to discharge to the drain in the back yard. I know enough about Victorian housing not to attribute this arrangement to a scam, whim or fancy. It will have been a calculated design feature to direct rainwater to an underground storage chamber for recycling in the laundry process or to keep the garden in full, healthy bloom. It may even have been mentioned as an attribute in the Sales Brochure in the late 1890's much as eco and green features do today.

Stage Two commenced today, at 8am prompt on a painfully cold morning with the arrival of a small fleet of contractors vans and a steady stream of local suppliers offloading Sterling Board, Cement bags, aggregate, sharp sand and skips precariously from the middle of the road over the parked cars of neighbours and keen, early bird office workers.

The bay was to be underpinned, in effect, provided with a foundation transplant.

The team of contractors resembled a huddle of Nuns with only their faces, being exposed to the heavy freezing air, framed in a high-viz wimple and multiple insulated but modesty inducing layers. They dragged heavy equipment through the garden gates and deposited it amongst the bluebells and stunted pruned rose bushes.

A diamond tipped angle grinder made short work of the footpath at the base of the bay and in a matter of minutes a deep hole exposed the metre deep sub site brickwork and the projecting edge of the wider plinth which sat on the foundation trench fill. I had seen that bit of the house already.

I yawned, disrespectfully, because the labouring men had only gone and dug up where a trial hole had been excavated only a few months before. I dare not tell them that the other three holes to be formed would probably be much more difficult to dig into 100 plus years worth of compacted clay.

The men were approachable and informative in a broad Leeds dialect and obviously of that rare breed of hardy, outdoor workers who love their job. The four holes were to be targeted by another piece of plant and machinery which was too expensive and complicated to be removed from one of the vans yet which would, in turn, drive in helical piles as the supplemental foundation.

I could see that they had a sweepstake up and running as to what depth the piles would have to go before taking hold in bedrock. The record to date was about ten metres on a job in Congleton. That would be the equivalent of about the full elevational height of Lindisfarne if to compete with the current leader on the board.

I left the men to their endeavours on Day One of a potential four or five expected for the project, but only after giving them directions to the nearest Chip Shop, Sandwich Shop and Newsagents. I had £5 with them on a pile depth of 3.75 metres and would have to trust them to be as honest and truthful as a Holy Sister in Orders.