Vertical structures
The following paragraphs describe the material and technological process of historical vertical structures and their elements.
Load-bearing structures
As the vertical load-bearing structures in the historical buildings masonry walls and pillars, made of stone, bricks or mixed, were made.
Building envelope had both a supporting and insulating function. As the thermally sufficient wall thickness 450 mm of bricks or 375 mm made of perforated bricks (used from about the mid-20th century) were considered. Until the beginning of the 20th century, the constructions were designed by simple empirical rules, depending on the number of floors, floor height, depth of the tract, etc. Thermal insulation properties of building structures have been formulated up in 1963 in the Czech standard CSN 7305040.
Half-timbered walls
Half-timbered walls were made of wooden beams elements. Space between the wooden beams was filled with cob and straw, stone and later brick masonry. Filling was plastered,thus wooden elements were not creating typical appearance of half-timbered walls.
Fig.: Half-timbered wall, SO1-wooden frame (skeleton), 01 - column, 02 - runner, 03 - brace, 05 - threshold, 04 - filling with plaster (lining or clay filling compressed into formwork).
Plasters
Dry masonry was plastered with rough or smooth plaster, later cultivated plasters dominate.
Roughcast was made in thickness from 10 to 15 mm, straightening with wooden ruler. Smooth plaster consisted of 2 layers (lower layer thickness from 10 to 15mm, the upper layer thickness about 5 mm). Cultivated plasters have the bottom layer of lime-cement mortar, the top layer usually had extra color and mica.
Mouldings (ledge)
Moulding is a salient structure, which ends and protects the front wall line (min. unloading from 250 to 300 mm) and has also architectonic function.
Stability of cantilever landed supporting parts of moulding is usually ensured by additional load of masonry above the ledge. During the reconstruction it is necessary to examine how the stability of the ledge is ensured before implementing interventions in the masonry.
Bay windows
Bay window increases the useful room area, and, put simply, it is a sheathed balcony. Typically it has been made out of a supporting structure made of steel frame, later of reinforced concrete. External walls were made of perforated bricks, sometimes completed with heraklit. Especially insufficient thermal insulation properties are the cause of many defects.