I’ll Huff and I’ll Puff and I’ll blow your house in!
The wolf
couldn’t blow down the brick house because it was freshly built. However,
his great grandson might have little difficulty if he tries 100 years later,
after bricks and mortar have aged. While we’re not expecting the Big Bad
Wolf to visit SOH, we do see strong winds year round and driving rains
frequently in the spring, summer and fall. And since most of our brick and mortar facility has been standing up
to the effects of nature for more than 100 years, it is evident that
deterioration has occurred and damage is now happening to our basic
structure.
This past Spring, the heavy storms of April and May saw much rain
find its way down our walls, especially our Eastern wall. As a result of
these rains, water found its way between the bricks and crumbling mortar and
into the interior plaster walls. This is most visible in our East stairwell
and in guest rooms 111 and 218 where water saturated the plaster and caused
blistering of the paint and crumbling and calcification of some of the
plaster. Repair of the damaged interior walls is needed now that they are
dried out and these repairs will be attempted as best as possible while
working around the schedule of retreatants.
Because the most serious damage occurred along the East wall,
we
repaired the mortar and bricks along this wall first. The repair process is
known as tuck pointing. Basically, the process involves the cutting out of
deteriorating mortar joints in masonry walls to a uniform depth, and filling
in those joints with fresh mortar while replacing seriously damaged bricks.
Most of this 100+ year old mortar was removable without power tools or
significant effort, which is a sign of the seriousness of the condition of
the mortar. A person can literally remove mortar with a fingernail from
between the bricks on a significant portion of our building. This means that
moisture can find its way in and more serious damage can occur; it also
means that the cost of heating the building is increased because the cold winter winds can blow past the exterior walls and
into the building itself.
We were blessed with a grant provided to us without restriction as it
its use, and we were thus able to tuck point a small, but most critically
affected portion of the building this summer. The cost of tuck pointing is
roughly $7 per square foot. This includes the cost of labor, materials,
surface preparation and cleanup. SOH has more than 14,000 square feet of
exterior brick or stone walls, and even after our work this summer, at least
1/2 of the building still needs immediate attention to avoid further
damage at an estimated cost of $50,000.
To do this, we must rely on God and help of our faithful benefactors
to keep this house of prayer from further physical damage. SOH requests your
prayers and is seeking help in the form of donations of materials,
experienced laborers to perform the tuck pointing, and/or financial help to
pay for tuck pointing on the remaining critical portion of the building. We
are also pursuing additional grants for this effort as well. Any assistance you can provide is
greatly appreciated. If your donation is provided specifically for tuck
pointing, please let us know and we will direct it solely at this effort.
