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A luxury housing development in the grounds of Hanbury Manor. Floors are of precast concrete and roofs are trussed rafter. The site was previously covered by scrub woodland and the soils are heavily dessicated as a result. |
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An exercise in lateral thinking. We were asked to design a retaining wall, with a maximum height of 2.5m to provide vehicle access from the main road. In our view this created a dangerously blind approach and made for a very unattractive frontage. We therefore took an alternative approach, cutting down the existing highway retaining wall, removing the tatty concrete hardstanding and replacing it with earth banks. The result - good sight lines and a much improved frontage. The house has now been sold, benefitting the Trust and preserving a small piece of Village England. |
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An old property, oppsite Liam Gallager's house, afflicted by settlement. The entrance steps, undermined by root action, were demolished and rebuilt on a piled raft. Leaking drains were re-lined to halt damage to the main building |
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Two of a terrace, these suffered severe local settlement as a result of a leaking waterpipe under the floor boards. Traditional underpinning was used to take loads from the party wall and front elevation down to a firm, dry stratum, after the pipework had been fixed |
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Part of a terrace, gutted and renovated in the 1980s, this house had severe local cracking to the front wall and a series of cracks on the Party Wall. The damage was exaggerated by the inappropriate use of cement render. Everybody suspected the nearby tree however neither the crack pattern nor the soil tests backed this up and during underpinning we found the real cause - a leaking water pipe. |
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A domestic conversion / extension for a small local developer. The extension to the right of the chimney is a two storey extension, partly within the roof space. |
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Not one of our most successful developments. It was intended to replace the tatty industrial buildings on this well positioned site with a new detatched house and a pair of semis. The existing Coach house in the picture was to be refurbished. The foundations for the new houses were to be reinforced to ride out the settlement wave of the planned Jubilee Line tunnels, and brick reinforcement used to prevent cracking in the walls. Disaster struck as the Tunneling machine passed underneath. By a stroke of bad luck we were situated over one of the shallowest sections, where the tunnel crown broke into the Terrace Gravels. As it did so there was a bentonite blowout - drilling mud flooded our basement and washed out a 10m3 void under the foundations. Only prompt shoring and two truckfulls of concrete prevented the building collapsing. All work is on hold pending a compensation dispute. |
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