Standon farmhouse is situated in Bridestowe, North Devon and falls within the confines of the Dartmoor National Park. It is still a working farm and the farmhouse dates back to the mid 1800’s. We were asked to look at a bulge in the stonework to one of the elevations on the farmhouse.

It was clear that the stonework here was failing so we agreed that the section in question was to be removed and then built back up again. But first we had to get some Acrow props in place to support everything above us which included not only the stonework but the roof as well.

Props were also placed internally to support the actual roof trusses themselves. When all the props were securely in position we began taking out the stonework.

Luckily, the internal skin of stonework was in pretty good condition structurally, it was just the external face of stonework that had failed.

All the loose stonework was taken out and the stone placed aside for re-use. The void was given a thoroughly good clean. Then we started to build the stonework back in.

We used a traditional lime mortar to build it with and as we built up we introduced 9mm thick stainless steel helical straps. These were built into the stonework and spaced at 450mm intervals.

Each strap is set into the bed joints of the existing stonework 500mm either side of the new repair. They are cut into the joints to a depth of 50mm and then fixed in situ using epoxy mortar. The epoxy is kept back about 25mm to allow the joint to be pointed with a lime mortar. In this case we actually took the straps around the corner of the building.

The stonework was built up all the way to the top.

When the final prop was removed, we hacked out all the joints to the existing stonework on that elevation and repointed everything back in again with a lime mortar to match. the repair.

These helical straps are a good system to carry out structural repairs for situations such as this.