Window Arch Repair

The windows of the house have bricks to provide good edges around the window, as the walls are made of random rubble.  Above the window is an arched soldier course, i.e. of bricks on their end, and these are called rubbers.  This is, I believe, because the bricks are actually slightly tapered in order to give the arch its shape, and this taper was achieved by rubbing the bricks against each other. 

Above the hall window is the soil pipe we fitted in 2011, and when we did that I observed that the surrounding stonework was not in great nick (see first photo).  I did a bit of pointing in this area last year (or was it 2011?), doing some deep fill and letting it go off before doing the surface bit in an appropriate colour.  So, when I mixed some more coloured mortar the other day (see the previous entry), I was keen to get this area tidied up.  However, it took all of 30 seconds up the ladder to realise that things were worse than I thought: where I had done the deep pointing above the rubbers, there was (already) a 2mm gap between the pointing and the rubbers.  This could only be caused by the rubbers dropping down.

Movement like this is NOT good news, so I called Pete who did the brickwork on the extension in late 2011.  He came round for a look, assured me that he could sort this in less than a day, and duly turned up this week.  He came armed with his Acrow prop and the "Strong Boy", a flat plate which attaches to the top of the Acrow (see second photo)- and yes, it is strong.  He fitted it in under the large stone just below the soil pipe, and also fitted some shaped wood to support the brick arch.  He then proceeded to remove nearly all the mortar below the Strong Boy, and ended up with some stones and all the rubbers loose (aaargh!!).

The next step was to push the arched wood up to restore the shape of the arch and then insert bits of slate between the rubbers (I think in four gaps only) to make the arch secure.  Slate is brilliant for this as, after all, it was produced under thousands of tons of pressure, so in compression it is fantastically strong.  Then it was replace the brickwork and mortar, tidy up the pointing and the job was done (see third photo).

I am very pleased with the result, as it has removed one of my major headaches.  Since I was paying him for the day, he filled in time by doing the drilling job for the kitchen vent (see previous entry), so I got TWO tricky jobs out of the way for the price of one.  Well worth £150, I reckon.