Badly cracked and loose brick wall

[John Williamson]

In the process of renovating an 1810 bungalow (cottage). Having ripped some plasterboard off the wall I was greeted with this horror show. This was the original exterior wall of the house. It was all very damp because there used to be a toilet here and a previous builder decided to just lay DPM and a thin concrete slab over the waste pipe without bothering to cap off the unused soil pipe.

All the bricks in this section are very loose (I could probably pull them out by hand). Struggling to know where to start with it. I was thinking of putting in some 6mm helical bars along the dotted red lines in the picture and then rerouting the plastic pipes so they don't go through this wall and slowly replacing/adding in missing bricks leaving each part to set as I go.

Does this sound sensible or like a stupid plan?

The wall will eventually be rendered so I am more interested in structurally sound than pretty.

Any advice very gratefully received.

 

[Mr diy a lot.]

Certainly the best you can do here is helical bars and fill/replace missing bricks and repoint it. Some might say helical bars not necessary or would prob add little value.

But at 1800 house prob won’t have foundations so these brick walls can be prone to movement/cracking so I would be strapping and plasterboarding that wall for your final internal finish than trying to fight against potential cracks for years to come on an old knackered wall like that.