You may remember a few months ago we did a series of blogs entitled ‘period properties: Things that can go wrong.’ We featured several beautiful buildings where we had been called in to rectify mistakes made by other companies, that had not got our wealth of experience, who although may have been cheaper than us, ended up costing the clients far more in the long run. We have been working on another of these jobs this week. 

We were asked to go in and rebuild a sleeper wall at a property in Sudbury, where it had been affected previously after a soil pipe had burst and had been repaired by another company. A sleeper wall is a short wall that supports the joists of a suspended floor. On beginning the job, we had to take the floor up, and we noticed that the previous firm had failed to connect the kitchen waste pipe to the soil pipe, and it had therefore been leaking for months! As you can imagine, the smell was quite horrific, and there was a huge amount of damage, as the water had caused not only the sleeper walls to drop, but also the floors. The owners were also on a water meter and with all the water leaking out, this had given them big water bills too. 

We advised them to get the original firm back to sort out what they had done wrong, and then we would go back in and do what we were initially asked to do. The firm went back a second time, and instead of repairing the damaged internal walls properly, they had attempted to use expanding foam to hold the bricks up! We have advised the property owners to take action to get compensation for this shoddy work, and we are now starting from scratch and doing it all for them ourselves.

We have dug new footings to repair the wall where it has dropped, we have applied a damp course to the property, and we have replaced the old lead pipework with new alkathene pipe, which is light, flexible and durable and not susceptible to corrosion. We have also replaced the stopcock and water mains pipework, and made new connections to the existing pipework. We have then built up the internal wall, and the sleeper wall, and have put in new floor joists for the suspended floor.

We cannot stress enough, how important it is to use builders that are experienced in working on period properties. What may seem like a saving initially, can end up costing you a lot more in the long run when mistakes have to be rectified. At K.E. Jones & Son Builders we specialise in period properties and have over 50 years of experience. We are happy to discuss your needs for any job, no matter how big or small, and as we said, we may not be the cheapest, but we are good at what we do!