Wobbly brick column in porch

My front doorstep has a porch over it with a pitched and tiled roof. Two edges are secured to the house (the porch sits in a corner formed by the front door lintel and the wall of the living room which extends beyond the front door).

The porch itself is about 4x2 feet and the "free" corner is supported by a brick column made up of pairs of bricks (so not hollow). I say supported but today I've realised it isn't! It is not attached to the underside of the porch any more and has about one inch play in all four directions. We had a wasp nest there last autumn and from what I can see (the gap between the top of the column and the underside of the porch is only a quarter of an inch), the wasps have destroyed the wooden batten that was presumably screwed into the bricks at the top of the column.

I've temporarily wedged the column with a piece of wood to make it safe. There appear to be two ways of sorting this. One is to remove the tiles from the porch roof, make good any woodwork that has rotten or been eaten and reinstate the join. The porch itself shows no sign of having sagged and is completely solid so the column isn't doing a structural job. The other is to pack the gap and form a frame of thick beading around the top of the column fixed to the underside of the porch. Whilst not providing an anchored connection, it would stop the wobble, keep the column upright and if there was a need for it to be supportive it is there to take the weight.

Any other ideas or advice as to how to proceed?

Comments

  • ValHaller
    ValHaller Posts: 5,212
    Combo Breaker First Post
    Forumite
    My thought on this - which needs confirmation - is that a brick column needs to be firmly anchored horizontally to the house structure. It is not good enough that the roof structure just rests on the column. Although it may take some force to bring the column down, any accident could have serious or fatal consequences from the column masonry alone.

    I would suggest acrowing the roof, removing the column and replacing with timber, steel or something which has some strength against deflection at the middle
    You might as well ask the Wizard of Oz to give you a big number as pay a Credit Referencing Agency for a so-called 'credit-score'
  • Aylesbury_Duck
    Aylesbury_Duck Posts: 13,879
    First Anniversary First Post Name Dropper
    Forumite
    Thanks. I hadn't thought about replacing it entirely. My old house had a similar set-up with a timber column so that's a possibility.
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