The beginning

In late 2020, we were approached to help the Kellerberrin St. Joseph’s Catholic Church who were in the early stages of undertaking a large repair project in an attempt to remediate all the cracking issues they had through the Church.

As the Church turned 104 years old in 2020, it’d seen many years of earthquakes and harsh weather that had taken it’s toll, although various repairs done over the years had negated some of the effects from this.

One of the major concerns though was the significant cracking that was occurring throughout with some being quite severe and could compromised the structure from how deep they were while others were surface level and not as significant.

The repair process

Before we joined the project, previous repairs had been attempted which included removing all the loose plaster around the various cracks throughout the building and simply re-rendering it. This method can be used in circumstances where cracks are not expected to expand further and pose no concerning issues, however in this case the cracks were quite significant and another method was required.

In order to help tie both sides of the cracking back into one another, we used the ThorHelical crack stitching system which uses 316 grade twisted stainless steel wire ties inserted across the cracks with ThorBond epoxy grout to secure the wire ties into the walls.

The ThorHelical system helps prevent any further movement of the crack and when installed into plastered/rendered walls like in this instance, it can be cut diagonally across the bricks underneath and not follow the mortar joints as you would on a face brick wall. This allows for the flexibility to install multiple bars in close proximity where required across any angle to achieve the best repair possible.

Once the crack stitching was completed, the cracks were ground out into a ‘V’ shape and re-plastered ready for painting.

Finished results, before and after