YESTERDAY, I discovered a steel post downstairs—like the covered columns in the Social Hall but in an unexpected place.
This one came to light as I was taking photos of the lower portion of opened-up walls that had been damaged in June 2023 by a flood caused by a faulty sprinkler head. (That story is HERE.) I noticed that one vertical member looked more like metal than like wood.
Below the jump, I show annotated photos of our normally hidden post.…
A PILASTER IS “an upright architectural member that is rectangular in plan and… usually projects one third of its width or less from the wall, and that may be load-bearing” (Merriam-Webster’s). I.e., it’s a rectangular pillar or post that sticks out from a wall.
Our sanctuary’s south wall has 7 load-bearing pilasters. And in July I learned that the base of one of them was visibly damaged, as described HERE and HERE. Because of the structural importance of the pilaster, this damage is turning out to be a significant problem.
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| Damaged base of pilaster, as seen in July (As usual, click/tap on a photo to enlarge it.) |
This blog post discusses the challenges involved in repairing this pilaster base.
ON THREE OCCASIONS during the past two decades, structural engineers have recommended that we do test cuts into the south wall of our sanctuary. The goal: to enable more reliable cost estimates for waterproofing and possible structural repair work, hopefully later this year. Given more than two decades of known water intrusion and termite activity in that area, the engineers were concerned that there might be significant structural damage in the wall. They told us that there was only one way to find out: to look beneath the plaster surface.
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| Prep work, as viewed from bimah: Marking the locations, and placing air purifiers to catch plaster dust. (As usual, click/tap on a photo to enlarge it.) |
This past week, we finally undertook that adventure in discovery. Although the board had approved this work in May 2021, it took until now to arrange for the proper alignment of funding and expertise. Careful planning (described HERE) was needed to ensure that we would get useful and reliable answers to our questions, given our limited budget.
This post reports on what was done, and the initial findings.
MAKING TEST CUTS into the south wall will be an adventure in discovery. (Best case: we find that the wall’s structural integrity is in good shape. Worst case: we find that there’s significant structural damage due to water damage, dry rot, termites; and maybe there’s mold, as well.) The point of this exercise is to be able to develop reliable cost estimates for structural repair and waterproofing later this year.
There are many issues to consider in advance, in order to ensure that we get useful and reliable answers to our questions. To me, the pending discovery stage feels a bit like sending an unmanned mission to Mars—we’ve got to get it right long before the probe lands on the unexplored surface of interest.
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| An American probe sent to Mars |
Below the jump, this post discusses the various considerations.…
ON THE EXTERIOR of the sanctuary building, along the south and north walls, the tie rods appear to be supported by pillars that jut out from the wall. What are these pillars made of, and what is their condition? Here is an initial answer.
