Apr 21, 2015 |
Complete Preservation were instructed to carry out a damp and dry rot survey of Bath Abbey using thermal imaging and dry rot search dogs. Charles Curnock and Sarah Jermyn from Bath Abbey are forward thinking, and when looking after such a magnificent prestigious Grade 1 listed building, you need to look for things before they cause serious problems. Predictive maintenance is a must when looking after this type of building, you don’t leave a leak to make its way into the building, especially when its tracking across timbers that could potentially cause dry rot. Complete Preservation offer predictive surveys, this means we can nip things in the bud if they are happening, or even before a small defect externally has caused an internal problem. To carry out this type of survey we use our thermal imaging cameras, and a dry rot search dogs (the beautiful Meg and Jess). Thermal imaging will locate problems that are not visible with the naked eye, if you have a small penetrating damp problem leak 50ft up in the air, no damp meter will reach that high and you can’t check every inch of wall on a building of this size. Thermal imaging will visibly show these areas, images can then be interpreted by us and these can also be stored to check at regular intervals for comparison. There may also be no signs of a leak, but this area is getting wet externally which is making it colder, if an object that’s uniform to other areas this will be noticeably different. No dry rot was noted during the survey, so Bath Abbey... Apr 21, 2015 |
Complete Preservation love a listed building especially when it’s trying to solve damp and timber problems. Complete Preservation are the managers of Devizes Castle, it is essential that we follow a programme of maintenance, simply by ensuring gutters are cleaned on a regular basis will ensure there are no penetrating damp issues that could eventually cause a dry rot outbreak! Prevention is better than cure….this is where we come in. We offer non destructive testing looking for leaks in roofs and penetrating damp through walls. We use thermal imaging to locate temperature differences in building materials that can be checked with our moisture meters. We also use a specialist dry rot search dog company called Enviro-dogs. Mark Dogget has two dry rot search dogs called Meg and Jess that we use for our dry rot searches. Meg recently searched Devizes Castle for us as part of our routine maintenance check, she absolutely loves her job. Dry rot is very destructive and can cost thousands to repair that is why it’s essential on large listed buildings with significant importance to be regularly checked over. Devizes Castle got the all clear from Meg, which was brilliant ruff... Apr 21, 2015 |
Ross Charters of Complete Preservation was asked to give a presentation to 200 members of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) at the Wessex Briefing. He was asked by Geoff Hunt who was Chair of the RICS event. Geoff is an independent expert witness building pathologist based in Frome Somerset specialising in residential surveys on prewar and listed buildings. He is also the author of “Residential Building Defects” published by RICS books. He also edits and publishes “The Architectural Timeline”, a unique graphic which plots the relationship between all major elements and materials used in UK construction from the 15th Century to the present day. www.geoffrey-hunt.com Ross and Geoff regularly work together, and this particular case study was actually for Geoff on the cause and possible repair of a damp problem in a local converted barn in Somerset. The barn was purchased 3 years before where high readings were noted, visible dampness had got considerably worse. Remedial repairs to the wall had been carried out since purchase and had failed. Our instruction from Geoff was a rising damp survey to BRE Digest 245, and to find the cause and come up with a suitable repair that will work. We carried out the survey which was of a destructive nature, this means we removed some of the plaster to look at the floor and wall junction and drilled a vertical profile into the wall so samples could be analysed in our laboratory. In the below picture you can see a salt band, and also in the rectangle box is where the samples were taken from the wall. RICS RISING...