St. Anne Church
Ottawa, ON - Canada

Anrep Associates Ltd, designed and supervised the repair of both transept walls of this Church using CINTEC  wall tie anchors and stitching anchors, during the summer of 1991. This Church was built in 1867, and is designated a historic building by the City of Ottawa. This required that the repair work must restore the structure to its original state. Both transept walls consisted of an exterior and interior wythe of limestone masonry of varying thickness, with an interior core of rubble and mortar. the overall wall thickness was 26" (650mm). Over time the mortar in the joints and interior core deteriorated and turned to sand due to weathering, moisture penetration and frost action. When this occurred the rubble and loose sand slowly worked their way down the wall core due to gravity and vibrations. This resulted in a wedge forming in the core, driving the two outer wythes apart. Eventually, the Interior and exterior wythes would no longer act together as a load carrying unit and failure would occur. At one corner a serious bulge had already occurred in the exterior wythe, and vertical cracks on each side of the corner indicated that this portion of wall was separating from the adjacent wall.

The repair required anchoring the two wythes of limestone masonry together using 22" (550mm) long CINTEC  wall ties spaced at 3 ft (900mm) on centre horizontal and 1' 6" (450mm) on centre vertical. The inner wall core was then pressure grouted to fill any voids and the existing mortar joints in the exterior wythe wore removed to a depth of 2" (50mm) and replaced. In addition at the corner of the transept wall where the bulge occurred, the exterior wythe of masonry was stitched using CINTEC  stitching anchors, installed in holes drilled parallel to the exterior wall face in two directions at 12" (300mm) on centre, staggered. These anchors were 10 ft (3M) long In one direction and 4 ft (1.2M) long In the other direction.

CINTEC  anchors were chosen on this project because of their adaptability to be designed for the specific project and the compatibility of the anchoring system with the parent wall material. The stress between the interface of the anchor and the parent material is low due to the large area of the interface. This makes the anchor ideal for use in old/historic buildings, were the strength of the patent material is generally low.

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