Seems I have a little unexpected brickwork project.
A 1920's bungalow opposite our garage is undergoing modernisation & having an extension. This has led to a lot of stuff to be removed from the back and a grab lorry is needed to take it away. About 10 minutes after I left for work this morning, the grabber tried to leave their driveway having filled the lorry & didn't get round the bend onto the road. Instead it hit the brickwork above the top right corner of our garage door. It was just at the join between our garage and the peach painted coachworks adjoining the garage. Both buildings have bits that date back to earlier than 1912 (being on a 1912 map) and are largely made with lime mortar.
Tracy was able to get the car out of the garage without anything coming down, but we don't want to be using it again until repairs have been done. And.. to get it done with minimum disruption and risk of damage to our car being parked on the road out front, I may need to be the one to do it. Ho hum.
We do have the number, driver's name & all that. The company the driver works for are saying the driver caused it, and their insurance is not paying, and the driver can pay out of their own liability insurance.
The wall on the other side of the garage door has tipped 3" towards our house at the top, with a pivot point 2ft (600mm) from the ground. There is a diagonal crack in the wall inside the garage going at an angle of about 25 degrees to the horizontal up to the roof line from the pivot point. Everything above the crack is tilted outwards, everything below is vertical. The fact the wall is a 9" thick solid wall is the only reason why the wall hasn't yet fallen over. It is a lime mortar wall, and as I think the load is still redistributing, the wall may yet fall over and take out our front garden wall when it goes. The wall is too heavy for any of the timbers I have to act as sufficient shoring.
Currently the metal garage door frame is a little distorted, so the door doesn't close fully, and there is a 3" gap between the frame and the brickwork at the top left corner of the aperture.
If the garage wall comes down, the garage roof will come down and our sideway gate may go with it. We have isolated the lights, so they won't take the house power out, but the garage door opener is permanently wired into the kitchen ring main (don't ask - the electrics are a nightmare, my culpability is that I've not put it right, but I didn't create the mess.) and door opener is suspended from the garage roof about 6ft from the door. The garage door opener slider bar is acting as a tie to keep the lintel and bricks above the lintel from falling into the road, so I can't safely remove it even to remove the risk to the electrics if the brickwork comes down.
From the legal argument point of view, that is also worse than initially thought. It appears that the bungalow rebuild site foreman was directing the truck driver when he hit. Not once, but he went forward and under direction hit it a second time. So there are three parties, all of whom will be blaming everyone else.
Assuming your house insurance has legal cover included hand it over to the insurance company and express your concern that it is in a dangerous condition and as there are children around so it need to be repaired ASAP.
News from yesterday evening:
The company doing the bungalow modification is owned by the brother of the lady who lives there, and 'as a gesture to maintain good neighbourly relations for his sister' the owner said that they'd re-build it next week. That feels like a useful result.
We've also got their agreement to park our car off the road on a corner of the bungalow's drive from 5:30pm to 8am so it's not at risk of careless drivers running into it overnight - as has happened to previous vehicles of ours sitting out on the road overnight on 3(!) occasions in 20 years. The bungalow's owners are not there - they hired a 28ft motorhome while the work is going on, and are away somewhere.
Potentially good. You'll need to keep an eye on them, of course you know, to make sure they repair and reinstate in a timely fashion and with good workmanship and materials. (I'd push for them to do your work first, just to make sure it gets done, but that might just be me.)
The builder reckons 3 days, starting next Wednesday. Not sure that quick is possible, given the lift needed on the bricks. I may be wrong, though. Not a brickie, and I never went more than 3 breeze blocks or 6 courses of bricks in a day - but that was mostly due to my speed doing the job.
Beginning to wonder if part of the garage isn't going to fall down before next week. The wall on the left of the opening was leaning 3", now it's out to 3.5", and is probably still slowly moving. It's a 9" thick solid brick wall, so when it gets past 4.5", it is in danger of coming down - especially as the lime mortar has zero tensile strength.
Over the weekend I'm going to have to see what I can take down safely to reduce the chance of a big bit coming down on its own.
Oh joy!
Measured the bend in the wall at the start and end of the weekend.
At the start it was 3.75" and 4" at the end with small new cracks appearing further into the garage.
I went in and put in a new isolator for the electrics in the garage - cuts off the neutral too as our village has a floating neutral which can cause an RCD to pop if the neutral touches something. No, saying the village has a floating neutral is not entirely correct, each house has a different floating neutral because power to each property is split off from a different 2 of the 3 phase cables running along telegraph poles down the road. This is a cheap and easy way to install power that is moderately unsightly and dates back to when the village first had electricity in the 1930's. It does have an advantage in that having 3 phase to the house is possible for when I need a bit more grunt from a machine tool. Also, with the upgrade of the village transformer from a small dustbin sized transformer to a 6ft cube transformer, I think the supply can cope with something like a 3 axis/11kw per axis CNC machining centre now. OK, the transformer upgrade has been to charge electric cars, but no-one has such a vehicle yet so there is lots of spare capacity for a powerful machine tool.
Richard I am concerned that your description of the electrics is confusing.
In electrical installations the Neutral connection is part of the current flow which goes from Live connection through the appliance and returns to the main supply through the neutral connection. The Earth is not part of the electrical current flow it is used purely for safety. An RCD measures the current flow in both the Live and Neutral wires and if the flow is not the same it isolates the circuit as there is a fault because current is flowing directly to earth. This could be a faulty appliance, faulty wiring or a foolish human/animal who has done something they shouldn't and are completing the circuit to earth i.e. they are being electrocuted.
If you look at the pins on a plug you will see that both the Live and Neutral have insulation on them: this is to prevent you from getting an electrical shock from either pin. Touching a neutral wire is also dangerous.
Please note: You are supposed to be qualified to modify electrics in your own house.
My experience of grounded neutral is based on experience in Germany and the UK.
In one set of quarters we stayed in (with the house dating to the 1930's when we were there in the 1970's), the Neutral was connected to the earth to ensure a zero potential relative to earth.
The same occurred at our farm in North Devon (1985-2009), with two houses on the end of a long 11kV spur. The neutral was connected to a ground spike on the last telegraph pole where the small dustbin shaped transformer was also sited.
These were the cases I was trying to differentiate against when I said we have a floating neutral at our current house.
The electrical regulations state that householders are permitted to modify circuits inside the house except those in the Kitchen and Bathroom. In the kitchen & bathroom, as well as outbuildings, the requirement is that the circuits are modified or installed by a 'competent person'. The definition of a competent person is left open to interpretation because what constitutes 'competence' is not defined in the legislation. The electrical installation industry has promulgated the myth that competence is demonstrated by attending a course & having a certificate to verify the attendee passed. So, I'll go along with that myth too.
I have access to a copy of, and follow, the current IEEE regulations. I attended a year long power engineering module as part of my degree, which was a shared module between mechanical engineers and electrical engineers - the electronics engineers did not attend. The module started at the alternator connection to the steam turbine and followed it all through the light bulb & switch, with the complete set of the then current IEEE regs thrown in too. Finally I have a piece of paper to prove I did the course. I really hope that counts as competent, especially if a fitter from one of those courses does as well.
I will admit my garage electrics do not comply with the regulations. And it is a constant source of low level anxiety when there is a storm with severe wind, heavy rain or sometimes a rapid melt after prolonged frost when rodents get antsy near the cables. However, the bits I have modified since we bought the house all comply with the requirements of the regulations, where I use armoured cable (it's really hard to work with), conduit and IP44 or better switches & sockets. My culpability extends to the fact I've not completely replaced the stuff we inherited when we bought the house with a completely compliant installation. It is on the list of things to do. Just not near the top of the list until something like the garage problem happens.
All new electrical work to a domestic premises must comply with Part P of the Building Regulations which restricts DIY electrical work on grounds of safety. Yes minor works are permitted without the need to certify but modifying the consumer unit is notifiable and has to be inspected by building control.
I have had many Graduate engineers work for me over the years and there is a lot of difference between learning the theory of something and their ability to do the practical task. For instance I had one of them make a real dogs breakfast of putting a main plug on: he had no idea that the lengths of each wire should be different, how to strip the wires to leave the correct bare lengths or how to safely secure the wires into the terminals and he tried getting away with leaving the 13A fuse in the plug. He was only caught because he left the cable strain relief sleeve off and I made him take the plug off again and put it on.
It is important that readers do not read what you have said and think I can change my own electrics in my house, that will save me money.
