Are you wondering whether your heritage property needs the special touch of experts offering lime pointing in Cornwall?
Make sure your home’s walls are not showing the following visual signals. The mortar on the property’s walls feels crumbly. The joints of the walls feel hollow. The stones of the property’s masonry walls are loose or are easy to move. There are white powdery deposits at the base of your home’s walls. There are quite a few internal damp patches within your home’s walls, and paint or wallpaper from its internal masonry surfaces are simply peeling away.
Red Flags: Visual Signs Of Failing Walls
Heritage properties were built differently. They were made to breathe and move. Historic structures remain weatherproof and damage-free, standing tall when repaired and maintained with soft, flexible lime mortar. If you notice any of the following warning signs in your heritage property, then call a reputable team of lime pointing in Cornwall right away.
Crumbling Mortar and Hollow Joints
If you can scrape the mortar off the walls of your heritage property, the walls need to be repointed to keep them standing.
Loose or Moving Stones
In a heritage property, the lime mortar in the masonry walls acts as a cushion, distributing the wall’s weight evenly. Degraded mortar fails to support the stones, which, in turn, leave them loose. If you notice this, call the experts.
White Powdery Deposits (Efflorescence)
If water has seeped into the walls of your home, gone through them, and dissolved internal salts, when the water finally evaporates, it will leave a layer of salt on the surfaces of your property’s walls. This is efflorescence, and when you notice it on your property, expert intervention is the only solution.
Internal Damp and Peeling Paint
Damp patches, peeling paint and wet or torn wallpaper are additional signs in a heritage home that its walls now have degraded mortar and need to be replaced with fresh lime mortar, right away.
How Coastal Geography Matters?
Do you own a heritage home located near the coast?
Then the property is obviously thrashed by the UK’s unpredictable weather and the salty winds coming in from the coast.
Why Does That Matter?
Traditional mortar joints of heritage properties deteriorate quickly when constantly subjected to relentless rain and salty coastal air.
How?
When a heritage home is subjected to relentless coastal rain and salt spray, its masonry walls begin to develop microscopic cracks. Those cracks are then filled with coastal rainwater. When the temperature rises and moisture in the wall cracks evaporates, salt crystals are left behind, which then expand as they crystallise. That in turn forces the already aged and fragile mortar apart.
What Is The Solution?
You cannot, for instance, fix a traditional or heritage property in Cornwall with modern materials.
If the masonry walls of a heritage property are fixed with standard cement mortar, one essentially suffocates the stone walls. The moisture trapped within the stone walls of a heritage property would have nowhere to go, which will soon result in the masonry walls of your heritage home fracturing and flaking away. This destructive process is known as spalling.
The solution to the above problem is to call the specialists in lime pointing in Cornwall. The experts will come in to ensure your heritage home remains flexible and breathable so it can withstand the harsh maritime climate.
What Happens During the Restoration Process?
When you hire a team specialising in lime pointing in Cornwall, the experts will follow the two steps mentioned below.
Step 1
At this stage, the old, failing mortar will be carefully raked out by hand. The experts will remove material until a depth roughly twice the joint’s width is reached. Why take the manual approach though? Because the sheer power and vibration generated by power tools can easily chip the historic stone faces of the building.
Step 2
In this stage, the recently cleared joints will be thoroughly cleaned and then packed firmly with a bespoke lime mix that matches the colour and strength of the property’s original masonry.
Protecting Your Heritage Home for the Future
Owning a heritage property, especially in Cornwall, is truly a matter of pride. However, heritage property ownership comes with its fair share of pitfalls, and one of them is periodically calling in lime-pointing experts to replace degraded mortar with fresh, period-correct lime mortar.
If your heritage property is showing signs of mortar damage, do not procrastinate; call a reputable contractor like Just Stonework Ltd. today and watch as they transform your period home in no time.