Old Stone Mill, Delta, Ontario

Restoration of the Old Stone Mill

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$Old Stone Mill Pre-Restoration - east wall, c.1972. \nNote the crack in the wall on the right side. Also the 2 x 2 pane windows with brick typanums. \nRoofing is galvanized steel. Also note the birdhouse above the middle third floor window.$	$View of the west side of the Old Stone Mill c.1963. \nOnly the partial flooring of the sawmill remains. The door in the turbine hall led into the sawmill. \nNote the galvanized steel roofing. The gear on the right side of the wall is the power takeoff from the lower turbine which used to power the sawmill.$	$A pre-restoration view of the south wall of the mill in 1970.\n Note that a large crack in the south wall has been sealed in, including in sealing in a 3rd floor window. \nThe turbine tailrace, originally sealed with wood, is now sealed with cement, the cement work extending up into the wall, indicating a failure of that wall.$	$Restoration work begins.\n Shorly after the mill was deeded to the newly incorporated Delta Mill Society by the original 4 trustees in 1972, restoration work started\nThe early work was to stabilize the mill (keep it from falling down) and then some heritage restoration \nfollowing a plan proposed in 1965 by a conservation expert from Upper Canada Village.$
$Mill Restoration of the East and South Sides\nIn 1999, after years of fundraising and require pre-requisite work (archaeology and a conservation report),\n work started on a major heritage restoration of the mill which spanned 1999 to 2003. \nHere we see the east side of the mill covered with scaffolding.$	$South Wall of the Old Stone Mill\nThe wall of the south side of the mill, which had bulged out by 2 feet in addition to cracking, had to be partially dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up.$	$Roof and North Side restoration\nView of the north and west sides of the mill. The roof is being repaired and reshingled.$	$North Side and Buffer Wall\nA unique feature to the Old Stone Mill was the buffer wall, originally built in 1810-11. \n Since the mill acted as it's own dam (stoplog dam at the head of the mill's bywash), the wall was vulnerable to things such a ice and spring flooding debris.\n The solution was to build a wall that extended out 7 feet, with openings into the millraces. \nThe top of the waterwheel headrace is just barely visible. \n\nIn c.1861, with the building of the turbine hall (right side) the buffer wall was extended to also protect the turbine headrace.\n\n It was removed by MNR after they built a new dam upstream of the mill in1962 to expose the turbine raceway and\n to allow for stabilization of the bywash, which including the cement wall that can be seen in this photo.$
$Buffer Wall Removed\nHere we see a coffer dam in plance and the buffer wall almost completely removed to allow for restoration work of the north wall.$	$Mill Headraces Restored\nIt was decided not to restore the buffer wall for the sake of maintanance of the north wall and \nto allow visitors to clearly see the waterwheel (left) and turbine (right) headraces.$	$Inside the Tturbine Hall Raceway\n Looking at what needed to be done in terms of restoration. Mary Freiday, Tony Barlow & Art Shaw, August 30, 1999$	$Column and beam replacements on the third floor of the mill. \nThis area of the mill originally had a plastered ceiling which dated to 1810 (accordion lath and plaster). \nIt was done to keep the dust and dirt from the grain cleaners, which were located on the 4th floor above this area, from contaminating stored cleaned grain on this floor. \nThe plastered celing trapped moisture from the leaking roof, and many of the beams were rotted out and needed to be replaced.$

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