Interesting

[shermarama]

Hmm. I reached a sort of impasse yesterday, where builders that weren't just local geezers wouldn't come round and give me a quote without instruction from the managing agents and a report from a structural engineer, and the managing agents wouldn't do anything else before I got a quote. However after several phone calls to and fro, the managing agents said they'd send a structural engineer round, and he came this morning. The results are sort of a mixed bag but on the whole I'm a lot happier for having someone who knows about walls come and look at it.

So: (I write this mainly so I remember how this goes; none of the rest of you are foolish enough to buy a house made of bungaroosh)

• This is not the freeholder's problem, it's mine. The freeholder has a duty to maintain the fabric of the building, and although this hasn't been being done, the ten year gap since the last redecoration and the cracks in the external render being pertinent points I raised, this hasn't contributed to the state of that there bit of wall. It's only become a problem because I removed the boiler, a thing which the leaseholder is responsible for, and if the sleeve of the flue was holding the wall up, it's my duty to provide something else to hold the wall up. If the freeholder had the wall rebuilt in something solid, that would be an improvement, which the freeholder is not duty-bound to do.
• The falling-down-ness of the wall is actually right. This is how bungaroosh walls are. If someone was to strip back the wall and try and get back to a non-crumbly bit to rebuild from, they'd knock the whole house down before they found something solid. I knew the external render was important on a bungaroosh wall to keep the damp out, but actually it's structural - it acts like a skin that keeps the contents of the wall inside. And, get this, so does the internal plaster. Yes, that's right, the plaster on my walls is structural.
• And when he explained that and I looked at the kitchen wall, the plaster there is at least an inch thick. A large chunk of the screwing depth is plaster, so going through solid plaster into the interior rubbly mess will, in fact, be enough to hold a boiler up.
• So. To repair it, the rubble that's there doesn't need removing, it just needs sticking back together again. The hole can be bricked up, and then render stuck to the outside, and then plaster stuck to the inside, and that'll be it. Given what we're trying to fasten to the wall, it would probably be a good idea if the internal plaster was a sand and cement render in this case, to make it stronger, but bandaging is all it needs, not rebuilding.
• Which means the main skill I need in someone to repair this is plastering, not general wall-building. That's useful to know.

Not that I've managed to get even any of the local geezers to come and look at it yet; the plumber's mate what's a builder failed to show or even ring me again, so bugger him. I have contacted a couple of people from mybuilder instead, now I've got a better idea of what needs doing.

You know, wikipedia doesn't have a page or even any search references for bungaroosh. I wonder if I ought to start one?

Comments

Bungaroosh Seems To Be Regional

[caescarna.livejournal.com]

Never heard of bungaroosh or bungarouche? It's a building material used in Brighton by Georgian and Victorian builders. A conservation expert for the local council explains:

The material is basically a freely interpreted flint rubble. A lime mortar was made up, and poured into shuttering, and anything else that came to hand was bunged in too. This could include old bricks, bits of flint, odd lumps of wood, lumps of chalk, in fact anything solid. [snip] It is not unusual to find vertical joints between the front wall and party walls. This can be a boon if the front wall falls off, since it leaves the rest of the house standing. [snip] Most of the time ... bungaroosh stays in place — probably through force of habit. All the bits of timber in the mixture tend to create a rather pleasant breeding ground for rot and exotic fungi. Since the mixture is very porous, the rot circulates quickly, and can usually find some damp somewhere to feed on. In fact bungaroosh has to be a little damp. Too dry and the now leached mortar crumbles, too wet and it becomes mobile. My predecessor considered that on this basis you could probably demolish a third of Brighton with a well-aimed hose.

http://www.aecb.net/forum/index.php?topic=2001.0

Re: Bungaroosh Seems To Be Regional

[abigailb.livejournal.com]

*boggle*

Re: Bungaroosh Seems To Be Regional

[shermarama]

Uh-huh. I think I've seen the original website that description was taken from... Yes, here it is. My house is late Victorian or possibly Edwardian and not very high status; where you can see the party walls in the loft, they seem to be made of bricks stacked in a loose diagonal pattern and held together by chunks rather than lines of mortar. Which means there's some sort of hope for my house not falling down while I own it. Probably. But facades falling off without warning, and whole buildings falling down with very little, is a bit of a problem round here. And I don't usually stand in my bay window.

Re: Bungaroosh Seems To Be Regional

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

I don't know why this seems typically Brighton to me, I don't even really know the place...

Re: Bungaroosh Seems To Be Regional

[blue-mai.livejournal.com]

wow!
at least it must be a fairly common local occurrence..

Re: Bungaroosh Seems To Be Regional

[shermarama]

Yep. The local plasterers I've talked to seem completely unfazed by it.

[xxxlibris.livejournal.com]

Bungaroosh! Totally a small town to the east of Canberra somewhere.

[shermarama]

http://www.fallingrain.com/world/AS/a/B/u/n/
Bungadoo, Bungalally and Bungowanna, but no Bungaroosh. I should move there and start a new town.

[shermarama]

Bungaree Norah!

[ironlord.livejournal.com]

What a terrible, terrible mess. This is why I'll never have a house that's older than I am. Is there anything you can do to avoid this being a complete financial meltdown?

[shermarama]

Having also lived in poorly-built modern houses, I wouldn't bet on that to keep you safe. But the answer seems to be to call a local plasterer; the one that was just round here seemed unperturbed by the contents of the wall, and was talking like it was a fairly small job.

[purplegril.livejournal.com]

I assumed you'd made up the word bungaroosh at the beginning, it seems I was wrong. Are you sure you like Brighton better than London? That hole in the wall and lack of boiler can't be fun at all...

[shermarama]

Well, you know, there's worse things. It's *my* hole in the wall. And a hot water bottle placed on the lap seems to be an excellent substitute for heating.