Timber beam-end engineering repairs - Project 7

Lower section of a hip ridge - internal drop bar T.R.S.

Click on any of the images for a larger view.

What is seen here is the lower section of a hand-carved hip ridge which had suffered from water ingress, leading to fungal decay from wet rot.

The client's concern was to keep the original building line and decorative carving, without renewing the full length of timber and without a timber bolt on plant. (Centered view of hip ridge).

Extensive rot was uncovered to the wall plate, common rafters and hip ridge.

To understand the problem, further exposure works were needed. The source of the moisture was rectified by the client's builder.

All the decayed wood being cut out.

Difficult to see, but the common rafters 
have been unfixed and the hip ridge removed.
What can be seen is the imber valley gutter.

End view of cut off hip ridge with drilling template.

Drilling up the end grain, ready to accept the drop bar.

Carving the T.R.S. hip ridge.

The finished T.R.S. ready for installation.

The principal of the connection (see left) is to overdrill in length the parent hip ridge bar holes. This then allows the connecting bars to be fully inserted into the parent. They are restrained from falling by a drop bar restraining screw.

The T.R.S. is placed into position, and resealed. Just below the common rafter on the T.R.S. can be seen three holes that have been drilled into the face of the T.R.S. This is to allow for the injection of resins. The parent timber also has three holes, to allow for air escape.

Once the system is set the restraining screws are released, allowing the steel bars to drop into the T.R.S. What can be seen here are the bar (in blue) at the bottom of the holes, to ensure that hydraulic pressure cannot move the bars once the resins are injected. Small panel pins are nailed into the parent timber.

Bonding paste is applied to the parent timber ready to accept the T.R.S.

Mixing the rotafix resins.

Mixing the rotafix resins.

Resin injection through the base T.R.S. holes.

Injection and air release holes dowelled.

New spliced common rafters wre installed and plaster boarded.

Finished job, plastered.