How to move big chunks of granite with inadequate knowledge and equipment
Now that we’ve blocked up the only way into the bathroom and master bedroom, we’ve got to open up a new one. In order to achieve this we have to dismantle a door width section of the half-meter thick, random stone-rubble-stone wall, and install concrete lintels to provide lateral strength to the remaining wall and roof supports.
We had started with the top of the stone wall in the loft, before we had filled in the archway. Ethan spent a few hours laying down in the loft crawlspace, chipping away at mortar and collecting rocks and rubble to pass down the loft hatch to me. Larger rocks were slid down a makeshift scaffold board ramp, from the loft hatch. Once the archway was blocked up however, we decided to take down some ceiling boards, remove the bedroom door and work from below.
Just a few issues with removing the stone: being mostly granite, even small-ish stones are heavy; the stones are irregularly shaped meaning the stability of the wall is difficult to predict; much of the wall is above head height, which is not so fun when dealing with heavy rocks; oh, and there’s a massive hole in our first floor with no railings – so stumbling isn’t an option.
Here are some pictures after ceiling and door removal, with a little of the stone already removed:
Stone removal quickly slowed to a crawl when we discovered that the builders 200 years ago clearly just wanted to show off; the rocks, 6m above ground level, just seemed to get bigger and bigger. With the rocks being so irregularly shaped and so heavy, and me having little to no upper body strength, we had to call Ethan’s dad in to help Ethan manoeuvre the rocks, and come up with a more inventive way to lower them to the ground floor.
Luckily Ethan had been saving a bag of climbing equipment that hadn’t been used in 15 years – save for hoisting electrical pylons in rural Uganda. Perhaps I should question the hoarding tendencies less? Ethan and his dad carefully moved and lowered the rock into a position on the edge of the wall, sometimes slowly “walking” the rock downwards by carefully placing and removing bricks. We used climbing slings and carabiners to attach the stone to a rope, hung this over a ceiling joist, and then used a belay block to control the lowering of the stone, first onto the first floor and then onto the ground floor.
We were successful in lowering the stone to the ground floor – albeit if the last meter was close to freefall, as the stone started to escape its straps.
I would have liked to have taken more photos of the process and to have captured some of the more hairy moments, but although I wasn’t in the centre of the action, I felt it best to keep my hands free whenever things were looking hairy, should a ladder need steadying, or a piece of equipment need quickly providing or offloading. Ethan shown here at the lower end of the peril spectrum – having things completely under control. No danger here.
The HSE-approved one-handed rock steady, combined with plasterboard leg brace for extra safety. Note the complete lack of PPE – for maximum agility. Now that we have the technique down, we managed to get a few more of the larger rocks down off the wall:
And then onto the floor, having decided that freefall was the best – and most fun – method:
Here is Ethan standing proudly on his newly built henge.
Can you spot the slightly twisted ladder leg? Definitely nothing to do with throwing giant rocks from the 1st floor. And I definitely didn’t tell them so – I’m the best backseat demolisher, not in the least annoying.
We’re hoping from here on out (at least on this skin of the wall) we are done with the giant rocks. We know that the other skin has larger rocks, but we’re hoping they won’t jut out far enough to mean we have to remove them too. Not sure where this hope came from, or how realistic it is!
Oh and guess what? We found more brick!
These somewhat wonky bricks are what supports the RSJ that holds up our roof. We weren’t really planning on replacing what was under the RSJ – but I think we’re going to have to. Time to rent more acrow props!
