A BIT OF BATTER

This article was originally intended to be part of Professional Column: Line and Batter Part 2 Waller and Dyker Summer 201, but was edited out due to a lack of space. It more or less runs on from the text as printed in Part 2.

LINE AND BATTER: Part 2b

To measure batter place a spirit level vertically and then at a fixed point (say 1m -i.e. 100cm- up) measure the offset, the gap between the top of the level and the wall. If this is 10cm the batter is 10/100 = 1/10, 15cm is 15/100 (more than 1:6 but not quite 1:7!). To finish with Ill look at one common misconception about batter expressed as ratios, and that is that it is a linear ratio Slope % degrees 1:24 4.17 2.29 1:12 8.33 4.76 1:11 9.09 5.19 1:10 10 5.71 1:9 11.11 6.34 1:8 12.5 7.12 1:7 14.29 8.13 1:6 16.67 9.46 1:5 20 11.31 1:4 25 14.04 progression, that is the difference between 1:6 and 1:7 is the same as the difference between 1:7 and 1:8 etc. The explanation is perhaps one for the anoraks, so for everyone else see you next time when well be concentrating on lines, line bars, and mistakes.

Whilst the relationship between batters appears linear i.e. 1:12, 1:11, 1:10, or regular steps, the actual change in angle is exponential, that is it increases at an increasing rate. The table above expresses batter as a ratio, percentage and degrees from vertical For the real anoraks Degrees=arctan( slope%). Slope% is rise/run, divide the first part of the ratio by the second (1:10 = 1/10) and plug the answer (0.1) into a calculator and arctan, something like http://www.anal yzemath.com/Ca lculators_2/arcta n_calculator.htm l can help. Now it gets a little complicated If we compare the degrees then the change from 1:12 to 1:11 to 1:10.1:6 is 0.45; 0.52; 0.63; 0.78; 1.01; 1.33, that is increasing steps.

This means that increasing the batter from 1 in 12 to 1 in 10 (apparently 2 steps and almost 1 degree) actually has less of an effect than increasing it from 1in 8 to 1 in 7 (apparently 1 step and just over 1 degree). A corollary to this is that a wall battered at 1:8 can be said to be battered half as much again to a wall battered 1:12 (7.12 degrees is c.50% more than 4.76 degrees) in this respect a wall battered at 1:6 is TWICE as battered as 1:12 (c.9.4 vs c.4.7 degrees). Basically a batter of 1:6 is the equivalent of 2:12, and thus half as much as 1:12. So changing from 1:10 to 1:12 is arguably marginal only 1 degree (less than a fifth of the original); from 1:8 to 1:10 is a more significant 1.4 degrees, (about a fifth); from 1:8 to 1:12 is a significant change of about a third. So whilst a batter might not seem to be much out, the wall top only a few centimetres wider than it was `supposed` to be, this could be a significant change with potential implications as to overall stability, and the more vertical the batter the more significant any given change from it. Feeling battered? Craig Arbennigol