Next door was struck by lightning yesterday and the resultant chimney
stack explosion has propelled bricks onto my house and chipped a
couple of the bricks. Obviously changing them is a non starter as the
resultant finish would be worse than they are now, but I am concerned
about the lack of protection the brick face now has. Do I just leave
them or would applying a bit of transparent sealer prevent any future
spalling? The chips are about 10-15mm deep and about 75mm diameter.

TIA

John

JohnW wrote:
Next door was struck by lightning yesterday and the resultant chimney
stack explosion has propelled bricks onto my house and chipped a
couple of the bricks. Obviously changing them is a non starter as the
resultant finish would be worse than they are now, but I am concerned
about the lack of protection the brick face now has. Do I just leave
them or would applying a bit of transparent sealer prevent any future
spalling? The chips are about 10-15mm deep and about 75mm diameter.

Scars of honour. If you can find the bits epoxy mortar or Milliput will
glue them back on.


TIA

John

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Milliput will glue them back on.

Milliput is the new Isopon?

In article ,
JohnW writes:
Next door was struck by lightning yesterday and the resultant chimney
stack explosion has propelled bricks onto my house and chipped a
couple of the bricks. Obviously changing them is a non starter as the
resultant finish would be worse than they are now, but I am concerned
about the lack of protection the brick face now has. Do I just leave
them or would applying a bit of transparent sealer prevent any future
spalling? The chips are about 10-15mm deep and about 75mm diameter.

I have resolved surface damage by cutting out bricks (drilling out the
mortar) and refitting them the other way around. Obviously, that requires
that the other side is the same, which sometimes isn't the case with
facing bricks.

Out of interest,
Where you there when it happened?
What's the state of their house now?

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

On 18 July, 19:21, (Andrew Gabriel) wrote:

Out of interest,
Where you there when it happened?
What's the state of their house now?

--
Andrew Gabriel

I was in at the time and there was an almighty bang, but I didn't hear
any falling masonry, and didn't know where the hit was. I was then
waylaid as the strike had destroyed my router, desktop PC and anything
attached to it like a printer etc, I was listening to test match
special via a PVR and stereo, both of which went phut along with my
telephone line. It was only when I took the dog out later that I saw
the damage.

The house next door (1993 build) has a chimney pot perched
precariously against the remains of the stack. Large pieces of masonry
were thrown as far as the bottom of their garden, about 40 feet.
Lightning entered the roofspace breaking and scorching a truss and
then found the loft aerial and made its way to earth. A blanking plate
on a back box was blown off, and the filter on the phone master socket
was blown apart.

They have no electrics except one socket, which is not RCD protected.
We have changed the RCD, but it still trips when any load is drawn (it
can support a low energy bedside lamp), so this is a wait for the
electrician, and looks like a nasty job.

Insurance company said someone would be out Friday night but still no
one as of now. Fire brigade car attended to advise on the safety of
the stack.

Location is Cambridgeshire.

A mate of mine rang me from the London-Wakefield train at the time to
ask me about the storm, as he was crawling from signal to signal
between Sandy and St Neots - but my phone was out of action!

In the vein of UK-DIY I was able to restore phone service temporarily
by replacing the master socket as BT can't come till Monday pm. The
lightning protectors in the master socket was obviously overwhelmed
(Overhead feed).


John

In message
,
JohnW writes

Location is Cambridgeshire.

A mate of mine rang me from the London-Wakefield train at the time to
ask me about the storm, as he was crawling from signal to signal
between Sandy and St Neots - but my phone was out of action!

I was sat in Tescos car park, St Neots, having lunch around 13:00 to
13:30. It was a very impressive storm, I was keeping an eye on the
pylons and cranes near the power station expecting to see them take a
strike, fortunately they didn't.

Hope you and your neighbour get sorted soon, plenty of scope for a bit
of d-i-y maybe.
--
Bill

On Sat, 18 Jul 2009 18:17:34 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

Scars of honour. If you can find the bits epoxy mortar or Milliput will
glue them back on.

I'd been meaning to stick the bits back on some facing bricks.
I should have got a move on as one day I came home to find them in a
neat little pile. The wife had decided to collect them together.
I've now got a jigswa puzzle to solve as there were about 4 bricks
affected!