About
Fourteen years of structure, brought home.
Fourteen years across UK infrastructure and private residential work, now spent on the kind of building people actually live in.
Illustrative image
Background
Where the fourteen years went.
A section through the ground, from the house down. Scroll to go deeper.
Drawn for this page. Not to scale.
At the surface
Houses, for the people who live in them. Every load followed from the roof, down the walls and into the ground.
Just below
Structural consultancy, alongside architects and Building Control: the structure worked into someone else’s design.
Beside the neighbours
Central London: basement conversions and residential refurbishments, where the existing building is the constraint. The party wall is carried down, the ground under next door is held, water pushes up under the new slab, and the temporary works hold both houses up while it happens.
Deep below
Site engineer on Crossrail at Farringdon. Setting out, and checking what was built against what had been drawn.
Key to the drawings
- Existing masonry A flat tone: everything already there, cut or seen.
- Blockwork, new Cross-hatch, so it can never be read as brick beside it.
- Concrete Aggregate triangles and fine dots, scattered at random: foundations, slabs, padstones, lean-mix cavity fill, encasement.
- Undisturbed ground Basket weave, as a band that follows the ground line and fades out.
- Hardcore Large open zigzag, the depth of its own layer.
- Timber, cut A box with a cross. Seen along its length, an outline only.
- Reinforcement A line along the bar, a dot where a bar is cut.
- DPC Heavy dashed line, as Approved Document C draws it.
- Load path Where the load goes, from the roof to the ground; dashed where it runs beyond the cut.
- Load marks Arrows at the symbol weight: loads down onto a member, bearing up under a foundation.
- Hidden, beyond or removed Out of the cut, beyond it, or taken out.
- Cloud Confirm on site. Never a revision mark.
- Break line The drawing stops; the building does not.
How we work
We start from what you send.
What to expect
Three things we hold ourselves to.
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We reply within one working day.
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Fixed fee, confirmed in writing before we start.
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We answer Building Control’s questions on our calculations as part of the job.
- We are insured.
- No commercial work, no developer schemes.
Tell us about the house, and we will tell you what it needs.
We reply within one working day. Or email hello@housestructuralengineers.co.uk and say what you are planning.