As it happens, ITV tonight is showing a programme about poor building and maintenance standards in social housing.
I suspect that you have had particularly bad luck with the properties you bought. Not all council properties were badly-built. But just about everywhere, it's poor standards of (general environmental) maintenance and management which contribute to such misery as exists on council estates.
what are you wanting in a subsidised house ? ...
one should NEVER buy an x kooncil hoose ...
Ilived in a couple from the age of two on Bristol Rd (1953)and then Cadbury Rd (1962), very solidly built by the then Portishead Urban District Council.
Perhaps things went downhill after Redcliffe-Maud was implemented?
Things may have moved on in the 18 years since this thread was started. Or hadn't you noticed?
Quite. The OP might not be with us, you never know, but FWIW he thought they were "built like a brick outhouse" properties, which I agree with. Latterly? If they're still being built, I tend to doubt that solidity is quite so high.
It happens that Chris Bacon formulated :
It perhaps depended upon which local council built them, very locally they were built to a much higher standard than were the private properties, have much larger gardens and generally fetch better money than those privately built around the same time.
Mum and dads old house made out of precast concrete slabs very good on the sound absorption front, bit chilly tho but some have had insulation wrapped around them now!...
Built in around 1954 ish...
Walls around 10 to 12 inches think!..
I've watched blocks of flats being built in the past decade and I'm sure that things such as sound insulation wasn't on of the priorities.
In the late 60s early 70s things were not much better, I went into the site behind my house as they were being built and party walls seemed to be mainly multiple layers of plasterboard and room dividing walls were even worse. The window frames were showing sings of rot as they were being fitted and most had to be changed withinn5 years, but the builders were by then out of business. Then the council decided that they were not going to need as many council houses so the rest were sold, and now they are all owned and people are always moving , since they had so many problems like some being built on a flood plain with minimal footings and one street over the top of a clay quarry which is sinking as they were built on a concrete raft. The garages are now too small for modern cars and are in blocks not attached to the houses which are terraced, Just to make it worse it on the side of a hill, and its slipping. The house I have is single walled terrace, but it was built in the 30s and has substantial internal and party walls at least. Brian
Brian Gaff (Sofa) explained on 13/09/2021 :
Privately built can be just as bad. A friend has a 1979's chalet style semi, with timber cladding around the 1st floor. The place costs a fortune to heat and the up stairs is freezing, due to lack of adequate insulation behind the cladding. The original CH system, was manual - they had to turn a valve to swap from CH to HW.
tony sayer brought next idea :
Airey PRC?
About 30 years ago I observed that nearly all the houses on a new build (non-council) estate had first floor exterior walls of aerated concrete blocks which were either directly rendered or clad in wood. The only thing between the concrete blocks and the wood seemed to be a sheet of plastic - no insulation.
Council houses vary a great deal. Depending on where and when they were built. Plenty were built to the same standards as for sale types of the day, but some worse. Size of the plots and the layout of the estate changed by location too.
Councils did sometimes experiment with new construction methods. It not being their own money they were gambling with.
Not far from here in Mitcham, there is a large estate of 'traditional' looking semis built by the council. Except they used pre-fabricated concrete panels bolted together, and all the bolts are slowly rusting away. And, it seems, impossible to fix economically. A real problem for those who bought them.
But they are on enormous plots. Presumably so the original tenants could grow much of their own food. Even the front gardens have room for four or more cars. ;-)
Never been to Aberdeen, Jim? The rather tasty granite built estate you see to the right of the main south road was originally a council estate. Used to piss off my father. As he had bought one of a very similar design new.
Different system: there there will be either a double wall with insulation between, or studwork inside the blockwork full of celotex.
There are houses built like that all over the place (one or two different styles). They can be refurbished by replacing the concrete walls - carefully - with brick.
Demolish and build a pair of semis?
In BISF late-1940s houses upstairs you got:
Steel cladding Shredded newspaper 'insulation' Hardboard Wallpaper
When it gets damp it's Really Bad News... (as well as rusting the steel frame)
But at least those were council houses put up in times of shortage, rather than private developers putting them up in times of profit.
Theo
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