The old floor was not made to suit today's building standards and so had next to no air space beneath, hence the many of the rotten floor beams and boards, but it also meant it was not very tall as a built up structure. Our new floor will be made of layers of underfloor heating, insulation, concrete beams and blocks all sitting on more foundation than the chapel wall has! This means our floor structure is about 500mm taller than the old one and unless we want the floor to be half a metre higher we must dig down! This means going below the foundations for the walls and that means underpining! This is an expensive and potentially tricky process of digging out under the wall and back filling the void with cement beneath the wall hoping it doesn't collapse! The alternative is to use the solid concrete floor method often used in modern houses. It is potentially cheaper and can be done quickly but with older solid walls it potentially pushes damp in the soil beneath the floor through to the walls as the only place it can eevaportate from. It is however, much less built up as a floor structure and would mean no digging down or underpinning. Tricky decision to make!
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AuthorJan and Pete, retiring Headteachers with a dream. Archives
November 2018
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