General quality of new houses?

[Mike Mitchell]

What was the late 30s one like?

MM

[IMM]

Block walls on floorboards is still common. A base plate (a plank) should be screwed to the floorboards to give a double thickness and the block on this. The joins in the base plate "must" join over joists. The wall can go across joists, so well supported, or on top of a joist. A 4" block wall weights 0.5 tons per metre, so a 90 degrees to the joists is best to have best support.

[IMM]

You are making this up.

[IMM]

You are making this up.

[John Smith]

Go look at the BBC Wales News website and do a search for a recent court case involving such things so I believe. Of course, I could be wrong.

[Martin Angove]

Well, if I am correct that Grunff's wall is like the ones I've just pulled down, none of this was happening. I had two partition walls forming a kind of "kinked-T" like this:

| | D +---- +-+ | D

("D" is a door")

where the floorboards run horizontally in the diagram.

The vertical wall was over several floorboards (obviously) and kind-of "between" joists (they alter a little in the middle) and the horizontal kinked wall was all built on top of just one floorboard, more-or-less in the centre of the 6m joist span. There was a wall below, but although it will have made the structure a little stiffer, it can hardly have been supporting as it had a huge obscure glass window in it (possibly added later) with no lintel.

The blocks were as previously described, about the same size as standard blocks, but only 2" thick, with a toungue-and-groove interlocking pattern on all four thin faces.

There was no "sole plate" to the wall.

It's all different now, of course; the downstairs wall is now a concrete lintel over a big gap and the upstairs walls have gone, to be replaced by three new stud-and-Fermacell walls which make three rooms where there were previously two.

Hwyl!

M.

[Martin Angove]

I think the council you are particularly looking for is Rhondda Cynon Taff (RCT) where the locals were so annoyed with the Labour council that at the last-but-one elections they chucked most of them out and Plaid Cymru won a controlling majority.

Similar things (though without so much corruption) happened in Caerphilly, and in both areas at the last elections (the ones just gone) Labour put a *huge* effort into winning their seats back (I know; I'm in the Caerphilly area). They managed it, just, in both areas but seem to have spent so much effort in the valleys that their other normally safe areas in Newport, Cardiff, Bridgend etc. took quite a hammering.

Of course it isn't just Labour councils who have problems... hasn't Dame Shirley Porter just paid £12M back out of £40M owed for the "gerrymandering" thing a few years ago?

Hwyl!

M.

[IMM]

Allegations and proven guilty, as was Tory Porter, are two different things.

[sPoNiX]

OK. Obviously wiring/plumbing had deteriorated due to age but you'd expect that after 60 odd years.

Internal walls were made of blocks that tended to be a bit crumbly. Apart from that everything was reasonably well made. No worse or better than the 70s house.

sPoNiX

[Grunff]

You are indeed correct. Also, the black plaster - have lots of that.

[Martin Angove]

That's interesting. I live in an ex-mining village and say "coal dust plaster" because... well, I suppose it might be. Is this stuff common to non mining areas, or is it a case of using materials to hand, do you think?

Whatever, it's foul stuff. Disturb it and it all comes off, and as it's black it makes everything dirty. Ugh.

Hwyl!

M.

[Grunff]

Hmm, don't know. It may have been dust left over from cutting the black blocks...

Never drill a painted wall without a vacuum nozzle right by the drill bit.

[John Smith]

Look further West

[The Natural Philosopher]

I don't need to even have that proof. When I and my neighbours are subject to intense restrictions in what we are allowed to do to our (unlisted) houses and then someone buys a up a listed property, and proceeds to get planning permission to tack on a brown box like a couple of shipping containers on the side, and turn the car park into something resembling Tesco's, complete with arc lights, in the middle of a conservation area, despite being 100% rejected by the local parish council...and one notes that the project has cost about £2.5M, and utilises the biggest and most expensive 'listed building specialist' company in West Suffolk. ..

[The Natural Philosopher]

Indeed. But she did that out of the desire to win elections. Most labour run councils that have been found corrupt - and there are MANY very serious cases gong back over the last thirty or forty years - were greed and cash pure and simple.

[IMM]

Is that solid proof?

[IMM]

Any solid proof of this? Now stop making things up.

[The Natural Philosopher]

"Second, centralising power, authority and funding in the Minister and his department has failed to deliver what government wants. Command and control does not work. The micro-management of targets from Whitehall has become a farce. Scandals of NHS procurement, of IT investment vitiated by corruption, of financial blunders leading to mountainous local debts, of corporate governance arrangements that permit conflicts of interest to arise and continue, have provided unceasing noises off for two decades and no doubt more. Along the line, responsibility for the mess has become blurred in a nightmare forest of organisations that alter shape overnight, and in a quick-change army of foresters who regulate and inspect. And alongside it all, the democratic deficit that is Bevan's inheritance has resulted in a sham local accountability unable to add value because it has no real control over things on the ground. Again, one wonders whether a service devolved to local government to run, as Morrison wanted, could have brought about less effective control than this?"

"A FORMER council official and three builders were yesterday given suspended jail sentences at a court case which brought the final curtain down on the Donnygate corruption scandal. Bill Stones, a former Doncaster Council officer, was initially given a one-year prison term by Judge Simon Jack for accepting "sweeteners" from the builders."

To name but a few.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yes. Cinder blocks were made of - I think - recycled slag and ash from powerstations and steelworks.

Today, you can get slabs of s**te made from recycled plastic bottels and newspapers.

Mediaeval houses used s**te made of recyled horsehair and cow s**te.

Recycling s**te to make houses from, is a long established practice.

[IMM]

Hardly in the Tory Porter league, and she was only the one of them being caught.