The Barn Project - Page 4

Its the beginning of April and progress is good.

From the first picture you can see we have dug out over 600mm of earth from inside ready for the hardcore and concrete raft footings. Now that the barn is empty, we can mark out the rooms using spray paint.

7th April - THE BARN COLLAPSES!

At 9.15pm on Saturday 7th April we received a call from the fire brigade stating our barn had collapsed and was in need of urgent attention. The council had been called as the barn has a bridlepath running along the side and fear of further collapse or falling debris may be likely. The fire brigade used thermal imaging cameras in case anybody was under the rumble and the police were called for good measure.

We turned up to find blue lights, red tape and bright lights. The damaged can be seen on the second picture. The damage was not as bad as had been described, but still a shock to discover no roof and partial walls.

The council informed us that the precarious gable end had to be dropped for the safety of all concerned. This was to be done Sunday morning. Bank Holiday, Easter Sunday!! If we couldn't find anyone they would instruct a local company where costs would escalate. A call was made to Alan Huffy.

At 10am on Sunday morning he was there! A fantastic service and he spent an hour clearing the rubble and as seen in the third picture, pushed the gable end and made the area safe. Thanks Alan.Huffy Groundworks Tel 07944 233887

The forth picture shows the result and now time is needed to decide where to go from here.

A call was made to our structural engineer Chris Wapples of Whapples Consulting near Harrogate and again, he agreed to meet that morning, a Bank Holiday, to assess the damage and to plan the next step.

After a couple of hours looking and discussing, the following plan was hatched.

1. Remove any further debris and loose material from around the top of the walls etc.

2. Remove the timbers and trusses from inside the barn

3. Utilise the damaged pantiles and bricks to create the hardcore level we needed inside

4. Clear the pile of bricks and sort to reclaim as many whole bricks as possible.

5. Lower the brick on the right hand side down to 2m and rebuild on top with a matching 2" new 'old looking' brick.