A knackered old 1950s bungalow near me has been demolished in the last few days.
I went to look at the remains. Rendered block construction, and a large pile of steel reinforcement rods ?
Was that a standard construction method back then for small houses, and why ?
possibly "no fines" concrete?
I couldn't find anything specifically mentioning PRC and rendered block at
Harrow has a few postwar "British Iron and Steel Federation" homes built in the 1950s. Folks had issues later with buying and selling, mortgages and even asbestos.
BISF houses and their known problems
Not bungalows and probably not within the definition of prefabs either, but many council houses were built in the 1950s as "Cornish Units", with the walls made of slabs (*big* panels) of reinforced concrete and mansard roofs.
As they were sold under the RTB, the difficulty of mortgaging them became a problem. The remedy seems to have been the support of the upper floors with Acrow props and the replacement of the walls with brick. There are some not too far from here.
And see:
Concrete raft?
does anyone remember "Bayko" - a children's building set at the time? Steel roads and plastic panels. Must have been based on something real.
Yup. 'Cornish Unit' houses and bungalows were prefabricated, quick to erect, and fulfilled an urgent need for housing in the years immediately after WW2, a result of bomb damage and slum clearance schemes. Much used by local authorities at the time and whole estates of Cornish Unit buildings were put up all over the country. The panels were made at a blockworks near St. Austell in central Cornwall, and made use of the extensive mountains of sharp sand available as a by-product/waste from the china clay industry. Later, the blockworks became the pilot scale laboratories for the main china clay producer in the area.
See
Dunno if it may help, but googling the words "characterisation study" may hopefully find a comprehensive council document for the location. I found mine a goldmine of local information on building history and amenities features of my local district.
Having made a second visit, this might be it. The footprint left is only the exterior walls, and huge chucks of concrete slabs piled up. Mrs C reports two days of concrete 'smashing' noise last week. So a suspended reinforced concrete floor ? The interior walls were block, and presumably also contributing to supporting the roof structure, so quite a load on it in total ?
Building materials were in short supply after the war, some right into the 1960s. Lots of different non-standard building techniques were tried. Step grandson lived in a house from the period that had two massive reinforced concrete beams running across the ceiling of the living room.
BISF is steel frame and hardboard construction. There is usually a (rendered) brick skin on the ground floor and steel sheet on the first floor. Although many of them (eg the ones still in council hands) have been upgraded over the years, with either brick facing or external wall insulation. I don't believe blocks are involved. There were asbestos cement roofing sheets which are relatively straightforward to replace if they haven't already. Unless retrofitted there was no asbestos in the fabric - simply a thin layer of insulation and then hardboard on top.
AFAIK there was exactly one design of BISF house, so if it doesn't look like the ones in the pictures it isn't BISF.
They are actually comparatively spacious inside (1940s design standards) and tend to be on decent sized plots so can be good value if the price is right. They are in a sense on borrowed time as eventually the steel will rust, but
70 years on many are still OK.
"Selling can still be easy. If you?re short of time and you just want to sell the property and move on, consider a ?We buy any house? service like ours. We aren't put off by these kinds of issues, and can buy your home from you at a guaranteed price in as little as 2-3 weeks."
- of course they would say that. The 'guaranteed' price is likely rather low. They're a semi, so rather hard to knock them down unless you're buying next door too.
I looked at a one in roughly original condition - I love the 'tin' look, but to make them fit for 21st century largely needs stripping out the hardboard interior and rebuilding the insides with proper insulation. That was a bit too big of a job for me.
Theo
Was it once a council house? Councils seemed to experiment a great deal.
Thanks for that.
Before:
And after:
Those houses must have been freezing in cold weather. Zero insulation.
It's a while since I worked on that street.
They are (or more usually, were) equipped with a very robust dry wall liner with a fair sized air gap.
I'm sure you're right. A friend still lives in one and I can remember how it was before the upgrade.>
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.