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24 April 2024

Healing a rotten wall

Among the huge effort planned to heal the ground floor and insert the required ventilation underneath, it was a great accomplishment to heal a part of the northern wall where, back in the days, the previous owners had installed a stone sink: this sink was very badly removed before we bought the building.


It all looked good before, didn't it? So at the time when they removed it I got really pissed off but NOW... as soon as I realized HOW they had installed it, I was really grateful to them for the removal so that it couldn't be used anymore to flush water.
As a matter of fact the pipe they installed was connected backwards... so that it was not flushing water through the wall but INTO the wall, creating a major damage by keeping it constantly damp. This is how I found the pipe when I started the restoration process.





As you can see in the detail, water had been spilling into the was since they installed it: all the mortar around and underneath the pipe had completely deteriorated into soil so that the stones were totally loose... I scooped out also the remains of a mice nest with pieces of walnut shells and other chewed stuff. Mind blowing tremendous situation.

So after removing all this mess and all the loose stones, I started rebuilding it from the bottom - up setting a solid base for the ventilation pipe (125mm diameter) making sure to fill up every corner as I came upwards with the reconstruction.



Carefully drilling the outlet for the pipe through the outer side of the wall was the next step, in order to get the precise destination point for the pipe. I needed to rent a specific professional power tool to do that.




Done that, the whole pipe section could be assembled and inserted into the wall resetting new stones and (again) making sure to fill it up completely as I reached the top. 


The inlet pipe of course it's carefully set to enter underneath the floor straight into the level of the iglu shaping the ventilated support for the upper levels. 

Healing DONE!!!






















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