Roof update - 10th November
The contractors have been making good progress recently. This week we had our first site meeting with them and the architect where we reviewed progress to date and discussed the plans for the work to be done over the next few weeks.
Progress
The most obvious thing from the outside of church, apart from the scaffolding, is the work that has been done on the bell turret. A void was discovered at the base of the turret which had to be filled and screeded before being releaded. You can see from the
architect’s photos here what a great job they have done.
The investigations into the state of the roof timbers are proceeding. So far we have found that the south side is in a much better state than the north side where a number of rotten rafter ends have been found and are being replaced. All the eaves timbers on both sides have been exposed and treated to prevent further damage.
Finally, the work to replace the incorrect pointing on the outside is progressing. The contractors are raking out the old, and as it turns out extremely hard, pointing and are about half way through that phase of the work. If you would like to know why extremely hard pointing on a stone building is a bad thing you should ask Andy who will be happy to explain what the issue is and why it needs to be replaced but in a nutshell hard pointing causes water ingress and we don't want that!
Internally we now have an upstairs in church, well an upladders really. The scaffolders have built an entire first floor through the whole of the nave and the chancel. This has allowed the contractors to reach all the saturated and cracked plaster and remove it. The plaster specialist has confirmed that the remaining plaster areas are sound and can remain, so the plaster removal is complete.
Next steps
The next planned piece of work is the removal of the coping stones on the gable walls to allow us to inspect the ends of the purlins (the big timbers running from east to west down the nave) and to carry out the work to prevent water getting into the walls from above.