Reconstruction of a church tower

The original church tower from 1899 was already in a very poor condition and it was long past time to carry out repairs. Investigations of the building revealed that attempts had already been made in the past to repair the tower in various ways. A series of unprofessional interventions meant that the condition had already reached dangerous proportions. An exact replica of the original condition of the tower and spire was hardly possible due to the multiple alterations.

The general contractor for the church tower project was the timber construction company ROOFS.CZ GROUP. ROOFS.CZ switched from another timber construction software to SEMA a few years ago. The reason for this was the unrivalled range of options for using the SEMA programme. ‘The constant progress in timber construction and the continuous programme innovations, as well as the perfect and expert support for SEMA users - in the form of training courses and the hotline - are just some of the reasons for the switch,’ says Martin Kucharík, company director of the ROOFS.CZ GROUP. As a result, a co-operation between ROOFS.CZ and SEMACZ was established for this project. Jirí Bartoš and his team around SEMACZ are SEMA sales partners in the Czech Republic, SEMA support and planners for complex special projects. As a result, Jirí Bartoš took on the planning and design for the reconstruction of the church tower and ROOFS.CZ carried out the production including assembly and completion in timber construction. 

The first step in inspecting the building was to focus on the shape and dimensions of the tower. A Leica 3D Disto was used to measure the dimensions and capture the contours. The device was set up near the base of the tower and the data was captured at a height of around 20 metres. No scaffolding or climbing was required to capture all the focal points. It took around three hours to record all four sides of the tower, including inspection of the inner tower structure.

After importing the data into the SEMA programme, the structure was drawn according to the measurement points. This showed that the tower had already tilted and twisted by several degrees in relation to the ground plan and that it was high time to rebuild it.
 
The construction of the church tower was a major challenge, but was ultimately solved professionally, taking into account the shape and statics. Once all approvals had been obtained, the production data was exported from SEMA to a CNC machine. The parts list for ordering the sawn timber was also issued and handed over to the general contractor.
     
An important point that had to be taken into account during the preparations for the construction was the division into two parts. Due to the assembly in the hall and the transport, two separate tower sections were created, which the fitters then placed on top of each other at the church and joined the moulds together.
       
There were still more hurdles to overcome before the two tower elements arrived at the church. Space was sometimes very tight for the transport out of the hall and through the narrow and winding streets, but a tolerance of a few centimetres was sufficient and the elements arrived at the church undamaged. As the tower and spire had already been clad in the workshop, the entire congregation was able to marvel at and re-enter their church and the new tower at a large celebration soon after completion - including the consecration by the bishop himself.