Weatherlawyer wrote:
On Mar 8, 4:26 pm, R D S wrote:
I know of a building which has been gutted by fire, stone and brick
construction.

It was empty for ages before the fire and I had my eye on it coming up
for sale as it would be perfect for my needs.

Most buildings in this state seem to end up demolished, it would need
new floors and a roof but other than that is there any reason why it
couldn't be usable?

Nobody mentioned heath and safety.

By the time you have had it inspected the weather will have got to
work on the internals, it was already suffering from damp. Now the
upper storey has to be made safe to work under.

If you rip it down and have no trouble with planning permission and
the like, you get to design it to suit you. Otherwise you are stuck
with the original design vss modern materials.

In general you trash ALL the wood work - if it was a big fire it will be
soaked through from the fire hoses anyway.

BILS place we managed to recover some stuff - lot of smoke damage but we
restored a china set that had survived. He also owes his face and
possibly his life to me pointing out that the damp shotgun cartridge
that misfired (cap went off, not main charge) had almost certainly left
the wadding and the charge in the barrel and possibly half the pellets
Sure enough it had and the next shot that did fire the charge would have
split the barrel

In that case the brickwork was sound enough: Its relative ******** to
talk about mortar blowing under heat - I know because I have had masonry
red hot in a fireback - i've even seen the glow from the street outside
on the wall - without it doing more than superficial damage.

You have to have it red hot for a prolonged period for it to go down,
and chances are if it was in the state the fire officer would already
have demolished it on safety grounds.

In short no wood will be usable is a safe bet and all brickwork will be
fine.

Its a half built shell thats left - repserenting about 20-30% of the
rebuild cost.

Perhaps 40% of the materials cost (finishing and fitting out is light on
materials, heavy on labour)


--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.