Sunday 23 October 2011

Now where's that RSJ...?


I ended up in the heavy and uncomfortable world of stone almost by accident, really. True, I had gone through a sculpture course in art school, but I only made one little excursion into stone-carving, finally settling on bronze-casting in the last few months of the course.

I had also worked at a local monumental masonry yard when on a summer holiday, but my job-description was 'edge-polisher', and that is all I did - yes, you guessed it: polish edges. It was not exactly fulfilling work.

When I finally arrived in the West Country (the extreme east of the West Country), I eventually got around to building a bronze foundry in the basement of an utter bastard (long story) which was never commercially used. I made everything by hand - all the tongs; the furnace; the kiln for lost-wax, etc. then fell out with the bastard and left empty handed.

I took a job at a local printer as a lay-out artist in the days before computers, when Letraset was king - I just turned up for the interview saying I was an experienced layout artist, and although he didn't believe the lie for more than the first 5 minutes of me starting, I kept the job that I had intended to stay at for about 6 months for 3 years, eventually leaving in 1976. It took me about 3 days to become as good at layout as it was possible to be, so my boredom threshold must have been quite high in those days.

Everyone who had a 'skilled' manual job in the building trade seemed to be a carpenter then. The reason for this was that every British schoolboy spent quite a few years doing woodwork, and felt at ease with the material. I saw a gap in the market for untrained masons, because the whole business was so deliberately shrouded in mystery and involved heavy and dangerous work which required insurance cover of about £3 million to safely carry out on site, so I blagged my way into that.

Soon I was blithely telling architects that I would demolish all four of the internal dividing walls for their clients in a number of extremely badly built Georgian stone houses, then - with fingers crossed - I would begin work, wisely starting at the top and not the bottom, having discreetly asked advice from some old hands in pubs and elsewhere.

The first time that you demolish a load-bearing wall that holds up several hundred tons of other masonry in a Grade 2 listed house in the middle of town, it is an extremely nerve-wracking experience, believe me. You constantly check for spreading cracks (there are always a couple of cracks above a 10 foot span of masonry, as the jacks take up the weight of the roof and chimney-stacks before the beam is put in) and your ears are finely attuned to the slightest sound of slumping or cracking to the point of paranoia. This is all futile though, because when a masonry wall collapses, it does so in the blink of an eye and without warning.

I did my homework though, and didn't make the classic mistake that a friend of mine made back in the old days, when everyone wanted open-plan living rooms in the 1970s.

The removal of about 9 square yards of 6 inch thick, load-bearing wall in someone's house is all down to planning and preparation. What you want to do is leave the tons of masonry hanging above you at ceiling height supported on steel stilts for as little time as possible before inserting the steel 'I' beam in place and packing it tight with slate and mortar. This should be for no more than a few hours at best, and it seems as though you have been holding your breath for all of those few hours by the time the beam is in place. Holding your breath whilst clearing dozens of 100 pound blocks of stone to one side is no mean feat.

You begin by marking out the wall to be removed and placing the 12 foot steel bean right up against it on one side. Remember that bit - it is very important. You then choose about 6 or 7 places on the uppermost joints of the wall to pierce small holes through, and these holes should not coincide with any vertical joints in the blocks above. You then insert short steel beams through those holes, then place expanding 'Acro' props beneath them on both sides of the wall to be demolished, then crank up the props until they begin to exert pressure on the wall above - a lot of pressure. Tons of pressure.

It is impossible to know exactly how much pressure is being upwardly exerted when you crank these props up, so you usually play it safe by guessing a little more than the wall above, but not so much as you lift the top half of the house away from the lowest joint - this may sound impossible, but it is not. Another friend of mine has actually done it, much to his horror.

You guess the pressure of all the props by tapping them with your hand. If they sound springy and drum-like, then you get a feel for how much weight they are holding, and you stop adjusting them before horizontal cracks appear in the wall. You are then ready to saw out the huge hole of masonry and cart it away. This discarded masonry is probably a couple of tons, so takes a few hours to remove.

You are then ready to insert and pack the steel I-beam - if you remembered to put it up against the wall before you demolished it.

If, like my friend, you forgot to trap the I-beam inside the cage of load-bearing Acro-props before you started, then you are in trouble. Deep trouble.

There is only one way out when you have made a mistake like this. You choose the most friendly of your customer's next-door neighbors in the terrace, and you invite yourself in for a little chat. Over a cup of tea, you gently explain that you would like - sometime in the next half-hour - to clear out their living-room completely, carry a 12 foot steel beam up their stairs and into it, then cut a large hole in one of their walls through which you push the steel beam into their neighbor's living room, hopefully between the Acro-props which are currently holding up the entire house.

Refusal is not an option here, and most builders are not renowned for their diplomacy in negotiations. You have two chances and two only. If one refuses, the other HAS to say yes, but will probably use the situation to renovate their entire house free of charge - something they have been saving for years to do, and can now use the money for a nice holiday in the Caribbean for themselves and extended family.

This is one reason why everyone felt more comfortable doing a spot of woodwork back in the 1970s.

5 comments:

  1. I once had to employ Lady M as an Acro whilst taking out an old range.... the bloody wall started to drop stone by stone. Had it not been for a good strong Swedish back, the whole house might have collapsed!

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  2. Did you drive a wooden wedge in to take up the gap between the top of her head and the wall, or did she fit perfectly?

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  3. F**king cowboy.

    Some of the architects I know would cheerfully start a refurb by demolishing all four ground floor 'external' walls first...

    I learnt typesetting before macs and dtp too - all repro cameras and chemicals. Thems were the days...

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  4. Yes - the red light of the darkroom and the bromide print - horrible.

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  5. P.S. We had an actual Linotype machine at that printers - ever seen one in action? Utter Heath-Robinson madness.

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