Preservation of Historic Buildings

This book is about Preservation of Historic Buildings in an endeavour that seeks to promote Social and Economic Values of National Building Heritage through their attraction and appeal to the public and tourists. It triggers public awareness of the issue of conservation and offers a proposition to the deployment of the local community's knowledge base. The book uses an Integrated Socio-physical Approach to extract the level of local knowledge and expertise on documentation of signs of deterioration and defects and identification of hazard on historic buildings. Based on the survey responses it was observed that local people working or living in heritage buildings have abundant knowledge about historic buildings and some may have vested skills which if properly harnessed could significantly rescue these valuable historical resources. To understand the underlying processes of deterioration and defects, samples of building materials were collected and tested in the laboratory for identification of chemical and physical properties such that the repair strives to use only original materials or those with comparable physical and chemical characteristics to the original materials.