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March 2007, Pages 4-6.
Index of articles:
by subject,
by date.
In this issue:
(March 2007)
Going for growth,
Can Jesus help?
Roof,
Song.
What's up with the roof, then?
The five-yearly inspection report came from the architect last week, so here are the highlights from it. They’re in order of importance (not necessarily urgency).
The biggest item of news is that the main roof has come to the end of its life. The Burlington slates are fine. What’s not fine is the nails holding the slates to the laths (which are rusting away) and the laths themselves (which are now becoming brittle and not holding the nails firmly).
Last year we installed a walkway within the roof undercroft, and about a month later, when the inspection took place, the walkway was already dirtied with black grit - this is the “back pointing” to the slates being dislodged as the wind rattles the slates, and falling down inside the roof space. Daylight can be seen through the slating, which also indicates that the mortar has eroded away, and there are two places where rainwater has come through the roof and soaked the timbers. As yet there is no rot or damage to the timbers, but patching the roof is becoming more of a short-term solution.
The fact that there is no roofing felt under the slates means there has been no major work at least since the 1930’s. A natural slate roof is expected to last 100 years, and before 1930 it wouldn’t have been old enough to need replacing - so ours is probably the original roof from when the church was built in 1848 - and it’s now 158 years old. If it is not replaced in the next few years, high winds will probably tear it apart one fresh day.
So the slates need to be taken off, the laths stripped, roofing felt laid, new laths put on, and the slates refixed with new nails.
At the same time, the guttering and downspouts are inadequate, and in heavy rain don’t take the water away fast enough. The hoppers at the tops of the downspouts aren’t big enough and heavy rain soaks the wall, adding to the flaking away of the stone surface. Any blockage would cause water to back up in the gutters, which would mean penetration of the roof, and timbers being soaked.
Below the slates lies the timber structure of the roof (see the diagram on page 4), which is all sound, but rather mysteriously two out of the six vertical struts supporting the ridge are missing. There doesn’t seem to be any sign of sagging, but it’s hard to be sure. Some of the lower vertical struts are out of plumb, and at the bottom of them a gap is opening up between the beams, which means the horizontal beam is lower than it should be. There’s no visible means of holding the beams up from above. In view of all this, the architect recommends we ask a structural engineer to report on the roof structure so we can remedy any problems.
And finally, when the original steeple was on the church with a lighting conductor running up it, the cone of protection (45 degrees from the highest point) was probably wide enough to protect the whole church. But since then the tower has been taken down. So the present lightning conductor probably doesn’t protect the chancel end of the church, and when we re-roof we should extending the lightning protection to the other end of the building. After all, look what happened to St Andrew’s!
None of this needs to be done next week, or next month, but it all needs attention in the next five years or so. Of course we don’t have any detailed costings, but the architect’s estimates of £27,600 for the roof, £5,000 for the guttering, £8,000 for the downspouts and gullies, and £2,000 for the lightning conductor don’t seem all that unreasonable to me.
John Hartley