NCPTT

The purpose of this event is to educate people about the differences in cast and wrought iron and preservation/restoration methods for each type of material. This workshop will be useful to anyone who cares for historic buildings, parks, or cemeteries.

Visual inspection of the Chapel indicated that lateral movements, meteoric and ground water, and soluble salts are the main causes of deterioration of the Chapel’s facade and walls.

Sensitive building materials such as calcareous stone are subject to accelerated deterioration by several agents. These may be physical processes such as freeze-thaw cycles, chemical processes such as reaction with sulfur dioxide gas, or biological processes such as attack by microorganisms.

The objectives of this grant were to determine the responses of the microflora to contamination of historic limestone materials with atmospheric pollutants. We also studied the effects of these interactions on the deterioration of the materials.

Jason Church and Stace Miller presented results of NCPTT research at the annual meeting of the American Institute for Conservation in Denver Colorado, April 21-24.

Development of a Rapid Indicator of Biodeterioration of Historic Stone. Ralph Mitchell, principal investigator, and Christopher J. McNamara, of Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences worked to identify microbial species for possible use as a microbiological indicator for identification of stone deterioration.

NCPTT’s Jason Church presented the results of recent research on the scaling and deterioration of granite monuments.