So we now had to:

• diagnose what design mistakes had been made by the architect.
• decide what a competent architect should have done, best practice?
• discover how much damage had already been done by those mistakes, and any others found along the way.
• repair that damage and implement best practice design as required.

To do this we:

• Started investigative work by pulling down the features which were built off foundation and causing visible damage, the balcony went, the link wall went, the metal staircase went, the feature wooden planking went.
• Trenches up to 1.5 meters deep were dug around the building to investigate drainage, and locate service entry and exit points.
• Humidity meters were placed about the building to see if it could be ascertained how the humidity was getting into the building.
• The aluminium window and door system had to be investigated, was there a cold bridge in a proprietary system?
• All landscape material placed up to the plinth wall had to be removed and carted away.
• The retaining plinth wall, concrete block outside skin, 100mm reinforced poured concrete inner, had to be totally removed to gain access to the base of the timber frame.
• To gain access to the rest of the timber frame all the render had to be taken off the building, at least this meant that we didn't have to spend too much time diagnosing why it was failing. However it became obvious later.