Masonry Repair London - Bowing Walls Restored

Much of the UK's current housing stock, particularly in London, is of Edwardian or Victorian origin; both of these period properties are prone to suffering from a serious yet common structural defect – bowing walls. Twistfix-registered contractors Newman Building Solutions recently encountered this issue in a historic listed building in London once home to writer George Bernard Shaw.

The property is located in the desirable area of Fitzrovia in Central London and the concerned owner contacted Twistfix after noticing bowing walls at the level of the floor joists and outward-leaning walls on higher floors. After a detailed inspection by specialist structural engineers from Newman Building Solutions, it was determined that the lateral instability and thus bulging walls had been compromised due to unconnected areas of brickwork that had caused cracking at the rear elevation to party wall junctions.

As a listed structure, the building required careful, concealed, sensitive and non-disruptive work to restore its structural stability. The Total Wall Care department of Newman Building Solutions have a great deal of experience with this structural defect and were able to propose a suitable renovation plan using the Twistfix bed joint reinforcement system.

A series of Twistfix bed joint reinforcement bars were chased directly into a rear corner of the structure, running vertically upward for the entire height of the damaged building at 375mm centres. Long ties were then firmly secured into the brickwork's internal skin where, fixed with specialist made with specialist WHO-60 grout from Twistfix, , the reinforcement created a strong 'L-shaped' connection to resist any further movement; this expert repair would become invisible after repointing..

The stud walls, at the centre of the rear elevation, had suffered cracking and also formed the site of the most severe bowing. After removing plaster from one side of this stud wall, extra noggins were installed between studs to add strength and Twistfix lateral restraint ties were installed to stabalise movement.

Further restraining ties were introduced, securely tying the brick walls to the floor joists in order to transfer applied loads into the structure of the flooring diagphram. The connections were then pull-tested and found to achieve a minimum tensile load resistance of 3kN pull-out force.

The bespoke solution worked perfectly and is guaranteed to strongly resist further lateral movement, restoring structural stability to this important heritage building.

Twistfix are proud to supply the best structural repair solutions to specialist firms such as Newman Building Solutions, facilitating their essential work. Like to know more about the many benefits of registering as a contractor with Twistfix? For more information, please call 0845 123 6007 or email sales@twistfix.co.uk.