In the exterior corner of one of the rooms, in the old section of the house, an attractive thick, rounded concrete banco had been poured. It has long been a very common practice to use concrete collars, bancos and buttresses to reinforce the stability of adobe walls. Unfortunately, the concrete also trapped moisture and over time weakened the walls as the adobe bricks softened and disintegrated.
We broke apart the concrete banco using a product called Bentonomite so we could assess and repair any hidden damage. We’ll re-build the beautiful banco little by little using rocks and lime mortar.
