China
Africa
Explore chapters and articles related to this topic
A
Published in Les Goring, Residential Surveying Matters and Building Terminology, 2023
Ashlar quoins: Figure 6: The corners (quoins) of a building formed with alternating header/stretcher ashlar blocks, as a decorative relief to the otherwise plain-rendered or brick-walls. Such quoins may be formed with sand-and-cement render, quarried stone, or precast artificial stone, terracotta, etc.
Case files
Published in Ralph Burkinshaw, How to Investigate Damp, 2020
It was not a surprise to find damp damage at that location. It was easy to spot that the front yard had been raised quite high, to partly block floor air vents, and as mentioned already, old walls can suffer wallbase damp more often if original brickwork has been rendered or plastered over. Damp collecting along the wallbase cannot easily evaporate out and is simply trapped. There is always a balance. A cementitious plinth can help a wallbase by stopping a lateral damp penetration – that could result from a ‘ledge effect’, where surface water impinges on the wallbase at the yard/wall interface. A plinth should certainly be high enough to stop the low-level damp penetration but not so high that it works against the wall by trapping damp. 2-3 brick courses high is usually a suitable height for a wallbase plinth. In our property not only is there cement render below the cill, but brickwork above is painted. A recipe for damp. It is also very possible that an original slate wall dpc is by now buried below the yard level, and if a floorboard is taken up, it is usually possible with torch and mirror to find the dpc if there is one.
Reactive soils
Published in W. A. Peck, J.L. Neilson, R.J. Olds, K.D. Seddon, Engineering Geology of Melbourne, 2018
A typical example would be a full masonry house of 1920’s vintage or earlier. Such a house will have plaster or cement render walls, arches in the passage-way, and will be without articulation. By current standards the minimum footing system for this house on a Class M site is a stiffened raft. Yet houses like this are commonly supported on unbraced strip footings, 300 mm to 350 mm (12 in. - 14 in.) in width, and of a similar depth, with minimal or no reinforcement. It is not surprising that many of these houses show cracking in the external masonry, while a close inspection of the interior reveals multiple patch and paint jobs on cracked plaster. It is also not uncommon for such structures to have undergone one or more cycles of partial underpinning. Such works appear to have been commonly carried out without an understanding of the cause of the problem.
Characterisation of the tensile performance of bonding agents for the restoration of heritage dimension stone from southeast Australia
Published in Australian Journal of Earth Sciences, 2023
A total of three commonly used masonry bonding agents have been selected to determine their capacity to re-bond dimension stone. The three bonding agents included Tenax®, Akepox®5010 and Megabond® epoxy.Megabond: “is suitable for bonding stone and tile to all masonry surfaces including cement sheet, cement render, plasterboard, timber and is suitable for both interior and exterior applications”. It is noted to have a bond strength of 2.7 MPa on concrete (Vivacity Engineering Pty Ltd., 2015).Tenax: “designed for the nearly seamless bonding of porcelain, sintered stone, glass, engineered stone, marble and quartz, and natural stone products”. It is noted to have a bond strength greater than 20 MPa on quartz and granite (Tenax USA LLC, 2016).Akepox: “is mainly used in the stone-working industry for the weather resistant bonding and gluing of natural stone (marble, granite) as well as artificial stone or building materials (terrazzo, concrete)”. It is noted to have a bond strength of 40 MPa (GmbH A, 2023).
Hygrothermal assessment of a traditional earthen wall in a dry Mediterranean climate
Published in Building Research & Information, 2020
Míguel Ángel Mellado Mascaraque, Francisco Javier Castilla Pacual, Ignacio Oteiza, Sofía Aparicio Secanellas
The chosen building is located in Campo de Criptana (Ciudad Real, Spain), in a dry Mediterranean climate – classified as BSk-Csa in the Köppen–Geiger climate classification (Kottek, Grieser, Beck, Rudolf, & Rubel, 2006) – with cold winter temperatures reaching as low as −5°C and hot semi-arid summers during which temperatures get as high as 40°C, though daily temperature oscillations can be as great as 20°C. Vernacular architecture in this area is characterised by high-inertia thick walls built with stone and/or earth, vertical wooden-framed openings on façades, and roofs built with mud and tiles over a wooden structure. The tallest buildings are three stories high and were often inhabited by the richest families in the area, while the humblest dwellings only have a ground floor. All buildings normally feature small rooms that were easy to warm in winter and to keep cool during summer. An interior patio, which was formerly exposed to climatological circumstances and has more recently been covered, is present in most such dwellings, acting as a useful bioclimatic strategy for moderating indoor conditions. The space under the roof was traditionally used for storage. The building that we examine in this work is representative of this typology, with simple 70-cm-thick rammed earth walls (that become thinner at the upper floors) including an external cement render (3 cm), and an internal gypsum plaster (2 cm). The building built in the early twentieth century is three floors high and has a drugstore on the ground floor which is run by the family that inhabits the building. The space enclosed by the chosen wall is located below the living room, on the ground floor, and contains a heating device that runs constantly. It proved to be a perfect place to carry out this test because it is used as a storage room with low occupancy and, as it is a north-facing external wall, avoids radiation effects (Figures 1 and 2).