...and the South wall has been tanked and rebuilt, ready for plastering (once it dries)

Having fixed the roof leaks, the new ceiling has gone up. Looking North this time.

Whilst all the work is going on on the floor above, we are still making progress with the bathroom.

Pipes are being run for the new shower, whose drains will be sat below floor level.

The end wall being rebuilt, ready for the damp proofing to be applied

The ceiling above the newly found rot has also suffered terrible leaks at some stage, but it is all dry now, and we could not recreate them. Quite likely to be the same gutter problem.

Uh-oh.

More rot found in a different corner, behind a skirting board.

Fortunately, this was found to be old and dead. But just to be safe, the new skirting boards will be treating just in case.

The top floor of the tower looking very sorry for itself. The end wall has had to be cleaned back to the brick, before being sprayed for the root and woodworm, and then being retanked, and rebuilt.

The ceiling has all come down, allowing inspection of the roof leak.

After much trials with a hose on the roof, we narrowed it down to, of all stupid things, the gutters being blocked, allowing water to overflow under the lead and cascade down the walls.

Fortunately, this leak also explained three other patches of persistent damp in the castle.

All this expense just because gutters were not kept clear....

Huge chunks of rusted steel lift off the joist.

The good news (such as it is) is that the engineer is happy this is not structural, but we have to solve teh leak.

We decide to remove all the old ceiling so as to better inspect to the roof from underneath.

The rust has eaten away about half the thickness of the top of the joist.

This is clearly a leak that has been going on for decades without fixing.

Lifting a section of the rotten floor under the leak shows that the RSJ is clearly rusting quite badly.

Time to call our local structural engineer again, as this steel joist holds up the top floor of the tower.

Removing a section of ceiling shows that the roof (which sits just above that wooden board) has celarly been leaking for some time.

The thin veins of rot are hidden in the plaster, and seem to have covered the whole wall.

The news is not great. The end wall is infested with wet rot after years of damp problems.

We find a specialist in St Just who will come out and inspect

...and Timmy (the sparky) tries to understand the spaghetti of old wiring.

Whilst Young Dave (bathroom king) and Jason (chippy) take a coffee break, Big Dave carries on investigating the mould spores we found in the wall.

This is not good news.

The rest of the bathroom has now been cleared out, allowing us to sort out the electrics before installing the new wetroom.

Having cleared out what will be the kitchen, we brought the old ceiling down, as it was in very poor shape.

It took about an hour to bring down, and another 2-3 to clear the unholy mess!

We traced the cables behind the bathroom wall - good job that water and electricity mix so well!

Having fixed the structural problem, we get back to the planned work. Here we are starting to trace all the electrical circuits that run under the top floor.

Timmy, our electrician, used to occasionally swear loudly, which didn't give me confidence in the quality of the original wiring. This will all have to be fixed.

The new lintels are supported on concrete and engineering brick. The old pipes from the header tank are no longer needed, as we are moving to mains pressure hot water.

The failed concrete lintel has now been replaced by a series of 9x3 wooden beams

A brief hiatus

We took a brief hiatus from updating the blog. Our internet seems to be relying on carrier pigeon, with the telephone line doing a "one day on, one week off" routine for about 6-7 weeks.

It now seems to be better (although we are going to replace it), so here is the catch up.