Still giving

The time of my April adventure is now well past but the reverberations continue, not least the growing desire to do it again. Clearly there are some aspects that I would not like to repeat, or know have been repeated but, overall, the intensity of the experiences and the consequent enticement to have more are the positives that tempt me on.

The related time-wise experience of the house flood and aftermath is clearly something I do not want to go through again. Gone now are the drying machines and so the resultant headaches, chest pains, sore eyes, and general deadening effects of that constant noise from the machines. Finished is the repair and redecoration of the damaged areas of the bedroom, hall and kitchen, though I still have a few bits in the kitchen to finish off. All the furniture, cloths and other stuff from our bedroom has temporally been moved and stored around the remainder of the house so we feel we are living in a cramped storage unit. This and the removal by me of the damaged carpet and underlay in the bedroom was all to allow the laminate for the hall and carpet for the bedroom to be laid today. It continues as I speak. 

I took the opportunity yesterday to replace three thermostatic radiator valves that occasionally weep during the winter. A bit of a fraught exercise as, despite using a pipe freezing system, minor floods were part of the process. Of course this morning when they arrived to fit the laminate they pointed out that there was always a risk of dampness from such a bitumastic type floor screed and that it should be checked out by the local authorities building control staff for adequacy and possibly dug up and replaced. Trying to not laugh or cry I pointed out that not only would the local authority not be interested, but the only way to replace the suspect screed and install a better one would be to take down the surrounding walls. As this would not only be a bit over the top to just put a new floor finish down that reasoning would probably lead to the conclusion that the whole building would need to be taken down and started again. So I had to sign a statement to the effect that they would not be held responsible for future problems consequent upon laying the laminate on the suspect floor screed. I duly signed and dated and sighed. 

An adventure that seems to continue to give, but I wonder for how much longer.

But back to the 'exciting' stuff of my North American trip. While away I had used a credit card specifically set up to be used abroad so that you do not pay interest on expenditures just on any outstanding deficit if you do not fully pay off the the sum on the monthly statement. When checking the statement I noticed that the restaurant in Montreal, which had served me up one of the worst meals I have ever been confronted with, had added $2 to the meal cost. This was $2 dollars added to the total I had signed off against and as shown on my receipt. $2 is not a lot but because it looked like they decided to give themselves to tip I had chosen not to give, I was annoyed. Contacting the card company I made my complaint and two letters and three phone calls later I was notified that the money would be refunded to my card. The letter confirming this subsequently arrived but also included in the envelope was a letter to someone else about their account, hardly secure or proper. So I wrote back to the card company enclosing the errant letter. Two days later I received a phone call from the company thanking me for contacting them and explaining the mistake, apologising for the error, and offering me £20 for the inconvenience caused.  

Again an adventure that continues to give.

Time passing and memories

Since my first excited post about my trip to North America time has passed and the landscape of my memories of the events have taken different shapes. The other day Boston very deliberately ran the final part of the Boston marathon, not just for those who could not finish that fateful day, but to show that despite the dreadful event they were determined to complete the job and commemorate those killed as well as show solidarity and understanding with those injured and traumatised by the events. I just happened to fly in that day and felt like a detached observer of the unfolding and extraordinary story. But that also seems to have created a bond for me with the place and the people even though few met me and I remained outside the traumas so many suffered then and since. Boston will have a special place in my memories not directly because of what happened but because I witnessed people shocked but determined to live their daily lives as they had done before that day. I want and will go there again and so wish it was a place just down the road from me, so that I could get to know it like I do for those places that are literally just down the road from me. 

New York memories are always going to be dominated by the time I spent there with my cousin and his wife. This must have been my sixth or seventh visit and it is still not enough. This time I managed to add some new experiences I had wanted to achieve such as taking a gentle exploration walk through Central Park, going to my first ball game and others. But that is still not enough, memories need nurturing and refreshing.

As to Montreal that was a completely new experience linking me back to my school days and that Canadian teacher with his stories, and forward to the world of the built environment I have spent my working life involved in and creating. Finding I should be able to speak French there was a surprise and a challenge I was not able to rise to. Again I will just have to go back to really get to grips with such a similar but oh so different place. But I know one particular place I will not be going to again, the restaurant that I had the misfortune to go to and receive the worst meal I think I have ever tried to eat. They kept that experience alive for me I found when I checked my credit card statement. They had added another two dollars, presumably to reward themselves, with the tip I deliberately did not give them. I have contested it and have the receipt to prove their dishonesty. It has cost me more than two dollars to contest it but that is not the point.

So memories are funny things that latch on to your retrievable log of events sometimes for the oddest or most unwelcome of reasons, but in that mix is a rich treasure trove I will enjoy though time.

Echoes

The echoes from my North American trip continue to reverberate and some aspects grow while others recede. One background perception that has lurked in my memories of all my visits to North America is the harsh, crude pavements. Great slabs of in-situ concrete which, with age, use and ground swell become cracked, broken and uneven. They give any street or neighbourhood a hard unsympathetic look. It is a reaction I have had in various places in the US and now Canada. For me, used to asphaltic or small concrete slab type pavements, it can impose an unwelcoming feel from the place. I realise there is a partial and hardly objective side to this perception but then that is the sort of judgement we all rely on until we know a situation or place better. So when I was travelling on the bus from the airport at Montreal, looking out at the great ugly, heavily cracked and spalled concrete spaghetti junction roads we travelled on, beside, over and below I wondered what sort of place I had come to. The roads also seemed to travel through a bleak landscape covered with large areas of wasteland and spoil heaps. An image I had seen in mountains as scree and glacier moraines but now amongst, buildings, traffic and people.
Getting out of the bus, one stop before where I should have, I found myself disoriented in a wide sea of concrete pavements, roads and plaza. First impressions were not good. But then I had never been to a place that always suffers very harsh winters and so needs time to shake off the deadening effect of that regime. Then there were the numbers of down and outs opening begging even in the centre of town, the iffy feel of street life that initially made me wonder what sort of neighbourhood I was staying in. It was all so familiar and yet so different that my antenna were confused by the things they were picking up as against past and standard perceptions and judgements.
I subsequently was told that the law and policing is more relaxed at least in Montreal, presumably Quebec, and possibly Canada as a whole. Drugs are more freely available, public toilets sometimes have sharps boxes for discarding needles, it is, a was told, a much more tolerant place than I am used to.
It is Canada and I have some previous with Canada. At my secondary school I had the luck to be taught by a very charismatic Canadian teacher, one Jerry Wilson. He was tall, sharp witted and minded, full of stories, some probably very tall, about Canada and his life there. He had been a surveyor and minerals prospector in the tundra, director of television programmes, and goodness what else before leaving because they did not like his politics. He said he was a communist, an atheist, a pacifist, a jazz lover and, when in the mood, easily diverted from the topic he was meant to be teaching us. Hence our knowledge of his background, jazz, atheism, outlooks and personal histories. He pushed, cajoled, bullied, and reasoned us into using our brains. He showed me I could think and dare to be different. He showed us we could have independent points of view, we should question what we were told, should seek proof that what we were expected to think and do was valid and worthy of our acceptance and endorsement.
I started making my own decisions on what mattered to me. I started to read interesting books and articles, I went straight from reading the Eagle comic to reading the New Scientist. I started reasoning through the things Jerry and others had taught me and I had read and seen. I started to work out what mattered to me, what I felt about the world around me and how I related to it.
It was from him, and here I am talking of the late 50's and early 60's, that I recall him frequently railing against the asbestos industry and the terrible diseases and deaths that result from its mining and use. Remember this was at a time when it was still seen as
a wonder material in this country, although its dangers were known but suppressed. It was another twenty odd years before it was banned here. But Canada was a substantial producer up until very recently. Some other countries still are. Canada currently wants us to relax our concerns over the environmental damage caused by the extraction and use of oil sands. Jerry would be on their case.
So what has this all got to do with my trip and visit to Montreal in particular? Well it's all got to do with perceptions, the way your brain, and the training you and others have given it, react to new situations and stimuli. Those memories I had of Jerry' s tales of Canada, of those bits of news about the country I had heard during the intervening years, my compounded expectations, and there I was, walking through a world which was loosely familiar but had many aspects I had not expected, trying to tie it all together in a way that made sense. The experience was fantastic once I had recovered my sense of direction and rooted myself in a fascinating b&b.
I wanted to get back home for a multitude of reasons, but especially for the nervous but exciting time of the birth of my daughter Sarah's first child. But I also longed to stay, to be there still, exploring this unexpectedly familiar and, by turns, strange world. Trying to work out how my long held perceptions and expectations of the place meshed in with new experiences I was living through.

The adventure changes

For those of you who viewed my earlier post about the water troubles at home, this is just to show how easy it is to jump to false and troublesome conclusions. 

Yesterday after some mounting doubts over whether the replacement water main had solved the problem, due to some areas at the back of the kitchen cupboards still not really showing any conclusive signs that they were drying out, and because the cupboards were sufficiently damaged to need to be replaced anyway, I dismantled and pulled out two of them. I say dismantled before removal as they would not come out any other way short of the heavy hammer method, not my style unless I really have steam and careless anger to let off.
This allowed me to get closer to the seemingly persistently wet area and to the hole in the blockwork wall between the kitchen and bathroom through which the cold and hot water feed pipes run. The upper parts of the pipes that I could see were still dry, but very clearly the blockwork under them was wet and it was clear that there was still a trickle of running water over the lower part of the crudely cut hole in the wall and from there down to the floor. In fact I realised that the base of the old cupboards and the years old builders rubble they hid was not only holding the trickle of water back from the main floor but directing it down under the bitumastic surface of the floor. Putting my fingers in the hole to investigate the pipes I found they were still dry although I could not get my fingers all the way round as the lower pipe was resting on the blockwork. In fact now that I was disturbing things more water came out across the floor.
Clearly this water was not coming from under the slab, felt mildly warm, and must be from a pipe, but still the question was which one and where. I dismantled half of our en-suite bathroom, that backs onto that wall, to get to the other side of the hole and also the hidden heating pipes, a possible source for the water. Again dampness but no more, no wet pipes and nothing to suggest where the water was coming from except not there. So back to the cramped corner of the kitchen where the cupboards had been, the water ponding now and barriers of old towels and frequent ringing of them necessary.

Eventually, way too much like a miner with lamp, hammer and masonry chisel in a very small space, I cleared some of the blockwork away from round the pipes and found the source, a fine spray of water, midway through the block wall, from the hot feed pipe to the batroom wash hand basin. Relief in a way but now to stop it. Empty the airing cupboard to get at the only stop tap, way back in the system, and eventually the water gradually reduced in pressure. As the stop tap was so far back in the system that action cut off all the hot water supply to the whole house, so repair was not only necessary but urgent if we were to keep at least some of our remaining creature comforts.

Down to the DIY store for the relevant bits, some cutting out of the old in difficult places, some fitting of the new whilst bent double trying to make sure the joints would be water tight, and nervous testing later and the supply was restored, no leaks after some extra wrench tightening and the problems solved!!! Solved is way too final a word for what is still ahead of us.
I now have on my desk the bit of pipe with the hole, again a mystery. The hole looks old, not made by me with the hammer and chisel, does not have wear marks around it as you would expect if formed by rubbing against the rough surface of the blockwork, and looks more like a cross between a split and damage before/during installation. But if so then it has taken a hell of a time to weaken enough to fail as the place was built some 25 years ago. Also, being a hard water area, that would help to heal/seal not erode. Anyway that was the fundamental question and it is answered.

I say answered but of course this is not what I and others thought and have taken action on including the expensive and very disruptive alternative water main. My diagnosis was faulty, no others questioned it, or did any tests or inspections themselves, and now I wonder who will think what about where we are now with the damage, costs and consequences.

We have until this coming Friday to win the battle of drying the place out, but at least there is no more water coming in. If it is not dry enough on Friday the fans, dehumidifier and brain numbing noise will stay possibly for another week.

But for me the work yesterday had another cost, my back. My old problem came back with a vengeance, getting in and out of the cramped places, and so I am currently moving round like a very old man while taking the pain killers. I know how to have fun, know what I am doing, and have an adventure in the process. Yesterday by turns I was so angry then close to tears, repeatedly. Adventures, mysteries, fun and still plenty to go.

For those of you who have read my earlier posts, thank you. Please bear with me as I try to get used to this new medium for me. For some years I have been curious about starting a blog, tried and failed under a couple of formats. Occasionally family and friends have said that my musings, which I have been regaling them with for some years, would be better done as blogs. Whether that is because they want to avoid my direct emails to them, or impose my thoughts on a wider audience, I do not know. Never the less I will continue until my thoughts and the desire to broadcast them cease. 

So although we are now in May the adventures that started in April continue. I watch with curiosity and fellow feeling the continuing story of the Boston bombings unfold and wonder how much that will permanently affect Boston, the celebration of Patriots Day, the Boston marathon, and the people caught up in the terrible consequences of the bombing. In the UK we are still well aware of the impact of the 7/7 bombings in London, the bus bomb was on the route I used to walk to work. I still often go past that spot which seems so oddly located adjacent to Tavistock Square, a well known small Park in London dedicated in many different ways to the idea of peace and the peace effort.

My home is still beset by the consequences of the water pipe under the house leaking and pushing water up in what is now 5 rooms. Currently we have 8 large and very noisy fans plus 1 dehumidifier drumming away in the house for as long as we can stand it each day. They are meant to be a very unwelcome part of our lives for two weeks. But we have a new water main and the old failed one abandoned. Our young cat Merlin finds this a real challenge to his and our normal quiet lives. 

And of course the events, joys and less welcome incidents of my North American adventure continue to pay and mature in my head.

A little knowledge

First of all this message is born out of experience and some knowledge of houses and house construction in the UK so may not be fully applicable to other countries and their construction methods and regulations. This is by way of a 'wise after the event' tip to any of you buying an older house in the UK. Firstly I hope that this does not apply to new houses these days, but you never know.
Always check/ask what sort of damp proof membrane/course there is to separate the interior of the house from the ground beneath it. For those of you not in the business or familiar with UK construction techniques, all walls, slabs and anything else in contact with the ground needs a water proof barrier separating the ground or ground touching parts from the above ground parts which includes walls, ground slabs but especially the enclosing structure to the living spaces. There are exceptions to this but you should not need to think about them.
If you look at the outside walls of your house you should be able to see the line of the damp proof course in the external wall which should be a minimum of 6 inches, 150mm, above the external ground level. If you see it in your current house, and not all old houses have it, then move soil etc away if it covers/bridges the dpc. Houses with basements have a much more complex/important issue to deal with but the principles are the same. The reason for this is that water will be sucked up in many materials and defeat the purpose of the dpc. The same thing happens with damage to the damp proof membrane that is laid on or under the concrete floor slab. When water is drawn up it damages and often ruins wall and floor finishes as well as decorations, carpets etc. Then of course resultant mould and dampness is a hazard to our health. We have all heard of rising damp, this is what we are talking about and most of its causes.
Now to the point of this message related to my current experiences of rising damp. When we bought our present home we had a survey done as well as me having a good look round. As an architect I thought I knew a thing or two about this sort of stuff. The dpc in the external wall I could see and that looked conventional and the right distance about the surrounding ground level. I did not ask about the damp proof membrane and as the place was fully carpeted/floor tiled I could not see what sort of floor construction the place was blessed with. I assumed that under carpets was the classic cement/sand screed, and therefore the standard floor construction of screed, on dpm, on concrete slab, on hardcore, etc, the point being, and important point, that the dpm needs to be protected from damage and hence penetration from above and/or below. In the standard case by the slab below and the screed above.
When we chose to replace the carpet in the hall I discovered that the place was, what's the word, cursed, with an unusual and 'doomed to failure' construction. The decorative floor finishes sit directly on a bitumastic compound about 15mm thick. Even worse still the timber base plates to the room partitions appear to be sat on the concrete slab with the bitumastic compound butting up either side with no dpm/dpc beneath. But the continuing risk to the dpm, and real problem inherited from the previous owners, was the damage done to it by nailing gripper rods down round the rooms for the fitted carpets. The bitumastic compound is brittle enough to shatter either as the nail goes in, in the first place, or pull out as a small divot around the nail when it is pulled out. This removal of the gripper rods is necessary if you are going to replace the carpets with laminate, tiles, etc.
Hence the hazard inherent in our place and the potential risk from rising damp. This risk was realised when the water feed pipe that runs under our place failed, water pressure in the soil consequently built up, and by whatever routes the water found its way to the underside of the dpm, through the holes/fractures in it and hence into the covering carpets and other floor finishes. In fact the floor finishes acted like wicks drawing up the moisture even faster than the underlying pressure.
Clearly what happened to us is a bit unusual but a high water table, the property being surrounded by higher ground, local flooding, etc, can also show up as problems when the dpm is damaged. What happened to our water feed pipe is not unique as the use of copper piping, often not properly protected from the corrosive effects of the surrounding soils/cements was always going to have a short life. They use plastics not copper these days because of this. The pipe running under the building also means that any problem with it and you are unable to get to it to inspect, repair, replace. I had a conversation with the water board about the problem when they seemed unable to grasp why I could not dig down to it to have a look. We are waiting, wet floors suffered with, for a replacement feed to be dug/laid round three sides of the property.
Oh and by the way this issue, replacing the pipe, is not in the UK usually covered by your house insurance policy nor the policy offered by your water supply company. We are fortunate in the sense that our buildings insurance have offered us about 40% of the pipe replacement cost, but take note.

Just shows that a little knowledge can still be an inadequate thing.

So, buyer beware, check as best you can what the basics of your proposed house purchase are letting you in for.

Following on from my earlier post I have to confess that the adventure did have its physical impact on me. Not that I am complaining as at nearly seventy I am hardly as resilient as I was when a lot younger. So my body and mind are taking a few days to recover, work out which time zone I am in, and whether I need to prepare myself for further challenges. 

Travelling on my own in such circumstances as Boston allowed me the freedom of not needing to worry about how the other person/s might feel in such situations, but there are also incidental and ordinary downsides of lone travelling. Although there were the extraordinary elements to the trip, there were also the ordinary ifs, buts and where's that you encounter when travelling, especially if you have not been there before.

I do not like dining on my own and only really go for places where I think I will not stick out like a sore thumb. But that means there are a lot of interesting looking places I am not brave enough to go into. Lone lunchtime snacking is easy, most are doing it. Evening dining is something else, or so it feels to me. This was so in Boston and Montreal but of the two evening meals in each of the two places only once did I come seriously unstuck. In Montreal there were some fantastic looking places which were humming with people, which was part of the problem for my sensitivities. 

On the last evening I opted for a restaurant not too crowded with singles as well as couples and small groups eating. I reasoned that it must be ok given the numbers, it looked clean and smart, and I went in. It was an Italian restaurant in Montreal, and I would have preferred French Canadian food, but there you go. Now I have to say that I have no idea what the other food being consumed was like but mine was one of the worst meals I have ever had. I opted for Cannelloni, one of my easy favourites because it is so reliable, but how wrong can you be. I wondered where it had been for the last month, on the roof maybe. It seemed to be composed of a hard meat core, a bit like a skinless sausage, loosely wrapped old pasta, partly covered in a glutinous cheese and tomato sauce, all microwaved to extinction. Oh and decorated with a sprig of what had once been basil but now was more like green printed grease paper. I have no idea why I did not send it back. Instead I persevered eating about two thirds of it out of nutritional need rather than pleasure. I paid and got out quick wondering if I was going to suffer later for the experience. I did not thankfully.

With Boston it was will I be able to do anything in a place dealing with such an outrage. Maybe I also feel a bit guilty being there at that time and thinking of my own needs. But there was a distinct feeling expressed, by those I spoke to, that the world of the city's normal activities had to continue almost because of what had happened. In a way that was best expressed by the three runners in the marathon who concentrated on that experience for them rather than the bombing. There were a heck of a lot of law enforcement people around, as well as army who were patrolling the underground system, from all sorts of different agencies, but they were relaxed as well as watchful which allowed the city to function much as I imagine it normally does. So I feel I was privileged to be there to witness that while wending my way round some of the city, enjoying the bright sunshine, taking in the feel of a fascinating place and a whole different way of looking at the revolutionary war between us. As for food there it was good, with the best/iconic bit being indulging in a lobster salad roll in the Quincy Market Hall.

One final food item, my failure anywhere to find a decent cappuccino.