Trouble

Last year when we bought the chateau there were many problems that needed immediate work. One such problem was a tree that was growing out of the side of one of the towers. I kid you not, it was 5 metres up the tower and had grown to over 2 metres high! We cut it right back and hoped that the problem had been solved. Sadly it has started growing again so we have to remove the stones around it and get the root right out. 

The reason that the tree could grow so well in the stonework of the tower was because for years water had been leaking form the roof above it. Last year we made a quick fix to the roof but now we will do it properly. Ant, our roofer, has been climbing all over the chateau and fixing a few small problems but this area is the main one. The water has also been leaking into the little room that was, I assume, a toilet. This was an addition to the side of the tower from the 1700's. Here it has done two things. Firstly it has soaked the wall of the tower, removing a lot of the render and loosening the stones. But inside it has soaked into the floor where one of the main structural beams is seated. This beam holds up the ceiling in the ground floor main salon, it is huge. When removing all the damp soil, lime and stones around it we were shocked to see that this beam has rotted away for about the first 30cm of its length. We will have to cut back the beam to remove all the rot, then we will bolt metal supports to it and re-seat it on a concrete pad. This will however have to wait until the Spring when everything will have dried out.

Now we will repair the roof and all the loose stones. First job was to put up a scaffold and working platform. Then we had to support the window lintel and remove the  three large stone blocks that framed it. These needed to be reseated and secured into the main wall of the tower. 

Mark, the stone mason spent an hour carefully removing stones around the old tree root before he was finally able to pull it all out and start repairing the years of damage and damp. Ant or Spiderman as I like to call him fixed all of the roof damage with new slates. Hopefully now the problem is finally fixed!