Help! My House Is Falling Down
Professor Mike Grantham, Consultant to Sandberg, has recently appeared on prime time national television on the programme “Help my House is Falling Down.” Redhouse TV made the programmes for Channel 4 television and Mike featured in two successive episodes. The first was a most unusual concrete house, built in about 1880, which used foundry waste as an aggregate in some of the concrete. This contained metallic iron fragments (up to cobble sized!), unburned coal and slag. The end result was slowly expansive concrete that had nearly disintegrated over the years and had caused severe cracks in the building (though which daylight could be seen!). Once cracked, the weight of the roof and the lack of lateral restraint meant that there was a real danger of the gable wall parting company from the rest of the house, which would have meant collapse. Mike was instrumental in advising the TV show’s resident engineer, Simon Pitchers, of Craddy Pitchers Davidson Consulting Engineers, on this cause of the cracking. He also persuaded Concrete Repairs Ltd to undertake the repair work pro-bono, much to the delight of the house owners and Channel 4.
The second episode featured a bungalow in Lytham St. Annes, which was suffering from massive subsidence, being founded partly on very soft peat. Mike had to comment on the concrete foundations in the programme and especially whether they were reinforced (which they werent). Both programmes make compelling viewing!
Sandberg are very used to dealing with problems in all building materials, not just concrete, and are happy to advise clients on remedial solutions, as well as diagnosing the causes of problems.
See the video on Channel 4 website.
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