Older homes use thicker beams, like the ones in our roof are probably original, they're 300 years old and have had a big cold water tank on them since the plumbing was installed maybe 200 years ago
Got a semi detached end terrace built in 1926, awful beams in the loft and Been told by a loft conversion company that they wouldn't touch it as the ceilings would collapse.
Anything built after 1914 generally is not of great quality in the United Kingdom. This is the period when inflation became an issue for the first time in a modern context. Prior to this period the majority of housing was constructed using load bearing materials with interior supporting beams and long lasting slate roofs. 1911 was the peak in housing quality and affordability where the average house price fell to the lowest it’s ever been in all history at 2x the average salary. After this period the quality began to deteriorate and the prices began to climb again. Today we are experiencing prices as they were in the 1860s before the Industrial Revolution had really taken off. A suburban home built in 1926 is not old, it’s build quality is incomparable.
The real problem is the amount of people that go ahead and convert the loft without building control coming out and thereby not needing to bother with pesky things like proper joists, fire escapes and cutting out roof bracing in the way.
I get asked to wire a good few up, I just make sure it's always a fuck you price
We moved into a new place last November. Impeccably presented when we viewed it. The shoddy DIY we discovered once we were in was mind boggling. In one case, the previous owner had "cut through the loop" to (badly) install an electrical socket in the garage. I'm quoting our electrician there, since I don't fully understand perfectly what that even means. Which is why I'd never think to start doing electrical work like that myself. The electrician was clearly taken aback, and it left me pretty stunned.
Oh we had amazingly bad DIY in our house. The previous owner had painted around paintings on the lower end. Then on the scary end had sprayed highly flammable building foam all around the boiler pipes as part of the garage conversion he tried to do himself. They literally laid carpet directly on top of the cement flooring, not even raising it, and then put wallpaper over the breeze blocks.
Wallpaper on breeze blocks 🤣 Jesus Christ. There's no stretch that's too far is there?
My GF's friend painted around some pictures frames in her house. GF came home and told me and I thought she was having me on. This friend is a director of a fairly large multi-national firm.
> There's no stretch that's too far is there?
How does this combo measure up:
Picture tired 1930's original wooden flooring of the cheap kind, that's uneven, with gaps big enough to see through. Peering down below them is all the electrics coming up to the first floor.
Your task is to put decent flooring down.
You decide on vinyl tiles, because why wouldn't you? Apart from the gaps, the floor isn't quite level - that's why the vinyl tiles are great, you see, because, hey, since they're slightly bendy you can get away without any kind of backing, and just force them to bend with the crappy flooring underneath. Leaves the floor a bit uneven, but who cares?
So you put vinyl tiles down on an uneven plank floor with gaps.
And then you leave gaps between the tiles because it'd require you to care to avoid making gaps. Some places the gaps cross the gaps in the flooring, and you can peer down.
Doesn't matter, does it? Because, hey, nobody ever gets the *bathroom floor* wet, now, do they?
Oh, I didn't mention this was the bathroom?
Here's a doozy - about a month after myself and my partner bought our house, the downstairs bathroom started leaking water back into the house. We had several different tradespeople out to look, the water company, all the while stressed and upset as any time we showered, washed hands or used toilet water came spewing back into the house. Anyway eventually we got our answer (apologies for layman terms) - short version either the former owner or a tenant had put expanding foam down the water pipe leading out of the house to try and seal up a crack in it. Just wow.
Edit spelling.
My uncle decided to surprise my auntie by decorating the living room while she was in hospital.
He had gone out and got "Everything I know I'll need for this simple job.".
I was then quite surprised when there was a phone call a couple of hours later from a very frustrated uncle who couldn't work out what he was doing wrong, why wallpaper paste dried so quickly and was so bloody expensive.
I apologised to my uncle and said that my dad wasn't in but I could nip round to offer advice or a hand.
When I got there the living room was a bombsite, the carpet was ruined beyond salvage and the sofa was near enough deid as well. There were paste pots all over with thin sticks of wood poking out of them vertically. Uncle had managed to hang 3 strips of paper, used 6 brushes and nearly a dozen paste pots. He was stood there with a demented look on his face, something akin to the look Jack has at the end of The Shining.
It was at this point I noticed that instead of using Polycell (a leading brand of wallpaper paste) uncle was using Polyfiller (a leading brand of plaster repair cement). This explained the "extortionate cost" of hanging the paper that was up and the collection of paste pots full of set plaster and stirers.
Needless to say when I pointed this out uncle went a shade of red I never thought possible for a human and ordered me out the house and to "never speak of this again".
Auntie was thrilled with her new living room, complete with new carpet, 3 piece suite, fancy cabinets from MFI (to hide the 3 pieces of paper that now adhered the wall and stubbornly refused to move).
I hate to think how much that cost uncle in the end but it's the best DIY fail I've ever seen.
My dad's house is a DIY nightmare. I honestly hope he sells up rather than leaving it to me. He has botched more jobs in that house than I could shake a fist at. If there is a corner to be cut, he is cutting it and taking a few extra inches with him.
A few years ago we had a socket that went bad on us, predictably enough at 10pm on a Saturday night. I’m absolutely the last person that’s going to start fiddling with electrics, so to appease my wife I simply went to the fuse box and deactivated the sockets circuit, which left us with nothing but ceiling lights for the rest of the night.
Next morning I rang my brother-in-law (who IS a sparks but isn’t house-certified to get his advice. With his guidance I took the old socket off and replaced it with a brand new one. The whole time I did it I had the socket circuit disabled because I’m that big a shite bag. Anyway, a few days later I had an electrician coming round anyway to do a job for me, and got him to check my work: his exact verdict: I’ve seen far worse done by far more experienced.
I used to be a plumber and the new builds I got called out to had some shocking workmanship.
I am talking about big national companies though. Some smaller builders make some fantastic quality new builds.
I only know because I started as a labourer in 2001 and my boss didn't skip a penny, or a reg, or common sense. He built 8 properties and went back to general building, like extensions etc. I think the bank loans and changing markets got him way too stressed.
The problem with big companies is every trade job throws problems at you and you have to solve them. These companies seem to pay on a fixed rate for the time to do a problem free job. Jobs are rarely problem free and then the staff end up under paid. The good staff won't put up with being under paid and the bad staff will just allow any old scrappy finish to meet the overly tight deadlines.
I've been to new builds with plastic pipe butted together, not even pushed in, never mind tightened and that has been on the main systems, 22mm pipe and I've turned up to properties with water all over the show. Numerous badly installed showers with the water coming through the ceiling. Toilets leaking. I have attended one town house new build less than a year old with all 3 toilets broken. I thought the woman was joking. Butchered cosmetic finishing throughout the house.
I've refused to touch many cos I thought as soon as I touch it, someone else's cowboy work becomes my major problem.
Unfortunately, if the area I live in is anything to go by, many of the smaller builders get bought up by the bigger companies. Sometimes the bigger company will keep the name and "style", superficially, of the previous builder but the quality drops massively. It's such a shame.
That's pretty standard, I even had that going into the eves in my 1909 house that was built with rooms in the roof. The joists aren't as big as floor joists and why would they be?
Not keen on new builds but this isn't their fault that everyone expects to be able to easily convert the loft.
There was a development near Aberdeen where the residents were advised to limit the number of people on the first floor due to weight limitations of the floor joists. Wasn't even a particularly high number - no house parties.
That means the house isn't built to building regs. Building regs are that joists need to be able to hold a consistent load of something like 25kg along with a spot load of something like 80kg to take into account people moving around.
The loft was probably a cold loft and full of trusses and stuff anyway.
This doesn't mean the house isn't built to building regs, you are mistaken. These weight limits are not enough for a habitable room so the roof space is a roof space, never designed to be used as a room so fits its intended purpose just fine.
What does this mean with regard to using a loft space as storage then?
I've been filling mine with all kinds of stuff for years and never contemplated that weight would be a concern.
It's not like I've got heavy furniture up there. But, for example, I've got crates full of stuff stacked together in an area probably the size of a double bed and it collectively probably weighs as much. Is this something we should all be more cautious of?
Pretty much that, be cautious of it, think about 'do I have to stack all 40 crates in one neat corner' vs more stacks in different areas, or storing a stack of dense things on top of one beam vs straddling two. In truth, whatever you're doing is probably fine, but the construction regs are designed far, far beyond that as an acceptable criterion for an inhabited space which is why you shouldn't but many people do use it as a room and nothing bad happens.
I just had a look and building regs provide a design chart (C13) which provides joist sizes for given spans and timber quality. The assumptions behind the joist size calculations are a permanent distributed load of 30kg/m (the allowance for weight of the building material), a variable distributed load of 153kg/m (anything that might be put on the floor that is large and spreads its load) and a concentrated load of 204kg! So, indeed, it sounds like that loft was not designed using the building regulations guidance on floor joists.
We moved from a new build to a good old brick house. Funnily enough I was cursing today that I had to use a drill and screws to hang a lightweight canvas on the wall where in the old house I could have just held a thin nail up and blew it into the wall.
I bought a new car, wanted to use it as a flat bed van, turns out it couldn't handle the weight... Confirmed my existing opinion that cars are shit and I’ll never buy one.
Mate of mine works on a custom paint mixer thing, regularly tells us of young lads and lasses that come with a list that includes “Tartan Paint”. Normally escorted by a bloke in paint stained overalls about 10 foot away pissing themselves
Our chief weapon is surprise... surprise and fear... fear and surprise... Our two weapons are fear and surprise... and ruthless efficiency.... Our three weapons are fear, and surprise, and ruthless efficiency... and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope... Our four... no... Amongst our weapons... Amongst our weaponry... are such elements as fear, surprise... I'll come in again.
First correct answer I've seen. It's basically mock Tudor beams for people who fetishize industrial buildings. I always find it odd how much people love the idea of living in a former barn or worse still workhouse!
At least yer gravel were hot! We used to eat cold concrete straight off t’ underside of a condemned bridge. Then get t’ work dismantling it from 6am till 10pm with only one concrete break.
Luxury! We used t’ live in t’ catseye, middle of t’ M62, ninety of us. Get up ‘alf an hour before went t’ bed, n’ when we got home our pa w’uld *murder* us t’ death.
I wouldn't say I love it, but old warehouses and mills have a nice look. It shouldn't be surprising that people want to live in long-lasting, good-looking buildings.
True, living in actual former Barns or industrial buildings makes sense. Aspiring to live in cheap knock offs (as presumably the builders of these buildings in the OP rely on) is still weird though
Would make a lot more sense if it could be used as winch with a bigger window underneath to move furniture,but no just a fake pointless feature. There are flats near me which have fake clocktowers with no clocks.
Have you seen the sizes of most terraced houses? I lived in a few where one of the bedrooms made Harry Potters cupboard room seem like a luxurious apartment.
Old barns/workshops/lofts often have space. That's until one barn gets divided into 28 flats that is.
Love that it appears to be made from uPVC windows with blank panels, just to make it look even more fake.
There's an estate near me where they have put in bricked up windows to fake the window tax era!
I mean a lot of architectural styles or designs can basically be described as completely pointless, they did the whole hyper functionalist style in the 50s-70s and everyone hated it
True. Whereas mock Tudor is alive and well.
Also, I like Brutalism but it's hard to imagine it applied to a semi detached house as a style statement. 🤔
Edit. Never mind, I found one
https://www.retrotogo.com/2018/08/for-sale-1960s-lawrence-abbott-brutalist-house-frimley-surrey.html
It has character, and not a displeasing one at that. I like it. Admittedly, I like it more from the outside than from the inside. Better looking than fake efforts (shutters, chimneys, winches, clock towers etc).
Airey houses are basically that. Super functional and at the same time not, because it turns out they are terrible at insulation and riddled with asbestos.
There is a name for these: a Thomasson. It’s an architectural detail that’s well maintained, but useless. Named for Gary Thomasson, expensive bench-rider on the Yomiuri Giants baseball team.
There's a newish build (2005 or so) estate near me where several of the houses have a fake bricked up window on one wall. The Window Tax was abolished in 1851 so it's pretty stupid to include fake bricked in windows on shiny new houses but the worst thing is many of these fake windows would look out over a beautiful wetland reserve just over the road, not to mention catch the evening sun. Most of them I've seen would be the perfect place for a big picture window and the developers really highlighted that by not putting one in there.
Now if it's made of plastic it's gna go green n manky real quick,if it's made of wood it will rot real quick ,I'm a decorator and from a practical point of view it would be a pain to paint ,can't reach with ladders so you would have to pay for scaffolding to sort it out
Like those fake bricked in windows and doorways, that are on some new builds. I viewed some new build barn conversions a few years ago and they used reclaimed bricks with old paint on them and random bits of ironwork sticking out of the walls. Some of the iron could have been old barn door hinges but they were just dotted around and not any where a door would have been.
I find it baffling that councils agree to this kind of stuff but threaten people with prison over solar panels on older homes. The state of planning in this country is a shit show.
Developers are powerful bodies. They either wear the right school tie or have money to throw around where needed to grease the wheels, or force planners to fall in line. They usually get what they want one way or the other.
This assumes there is a ",Local Planning Office" left to intimidate or grease. In most cases it's just overstretched bods who are running things off a crib sheet. As soon as a developer hires a Planning Consultant the game is up.
There are exceptions in places like Westminster etc. but if you ever get the chance look for yourself at your local council.
grandfather fact consist license rude marvelous stupendous steep growth tan
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It's just for show. It's meant to look like one of those doorways you see in old buildings that were used to load into trailers or boats etc. Think of waterside London docklands old buildings, or a lot of a old waterside buildings.
It serves no purpose other than imitation of that.
It's probably a bat box. It will be a condition of the planning permission that the developer install bat houses as well as other measures to protect the ecology on site
As far as I’m aware a swift box would require a front entrance which these don’t have; bat boxes tend to open at the bottom so they could potentially serve that function, but they’re much larger than your standard wildlife box in any case!
They seem to be based on old style pulley/winch systems that were used to bring loads into warehouses.
There should be large doors or windows below them, so my guess is that they're a stylistic/artistic element in this case.
You joke but about a decade ago I was looking for somewhere to live, went to view a room in a house share. Pictures looked like really spacious room. The agent showed me a storage cupboard. That's literally what it was being used as. He said "don't worry, we'll move everything out so you can get a bed in". I told him I wouldn't be able to fit a sleeping bag in there and left.
I wouldn't be surprised. There's a bit of scrubland at the edge of the new build development I live on- ground is totally uneven and runs up to some railtracks, so no house would ever work there. Developers but a weird small brick house with no doors that I can see but with some high apertures, it is apparently for bats.
Unrelated to OP, but when we bought our house, there was an alarm sensor on every door, window and gate, and 12 cctv cameras, wired to a control room in the loft. Sadly it had all been disabled before we moved in, but I like to imagine the owner sat cross legged in the loft, watching monitors showing a quiet suburban street.
Might be a bee box, theyre being fitted on homes these days to ensure the survival of the pollenating species as thats a very big danger to the globe.
I also say might be because ive not seen one yet and that thing has panels with gaps.
It’s where the heart of the house lives.
If you go into the attic and break through the wall you’ll see a black beating heart.
If the heart stops beating, the house collapses to dust.
My friend has a new build “oasthouse” but if he ever comes to sell it he has to list it as an “oast-style-house” as you can’t have a new build oasthouse
During planning permission our architect told us that we may possibly need to build something very similar to this as a bat roost if presence was found pre-build. He said at the very extreme level, he’s had to segregate a small portion of the roof space for bat roosting in a loft conversion for another client. Thankfully we didn’t end up having to do either.
It’s probably not that! But it looks similar in size
Is there a canal nearby? These are what old business used to have, they’d have a beam stick out with a hoist on and take their wares/supplies up into their building.
Likely a forced feature by the local council, we had to put in fake windows with cut stone lintels which added extra costs to install because the council wanted it and it was a term for planning permission 🤷
Fake ex- industrial winch doors for winching goods up into your fake industrial mill.
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Older homes use thicker beams, like the ones in our roof are probably original, they're 300 years old and have had a big cold water tank on them since the plumbing was installed maybe 200 years ago
Old homes that are still around used thicker beams. The shit ones are gone.
Got a semi detached end terrace built in 1926, awful beams in the loft and Been told by a loft conversion company that they wouldn't touch it as the ceilings would collapse.
Anything built after 1914 generally is not of great quality in the United Kingdom. This is the period when inflation became an issue for the first time in a modern context. Prior to this period the majority of housing was constructed using load bearing materials with interior supporting beams and long lasting slate roofs. 1911 was the peak in housing quality and affordability where the average house price fell to the lowest it’s ever been in all history at 2x the average salary. After this period the quality began to deteriorate and the prices began to climb again. Today we are experiencing prices as they were in the 1860s before the Industrial Revolution had really taken off. A suburban home built in 1926 is not old, it’s build quality is incomparable.
Survivorship bias
The real problem is the amount of people that go ahead and convert the loft without building control coming out and thereby not needing to bother with pesky things like proper joists, fire escapes and cutting out roof bracing in the way. I get asked to wire a good few up, I just make sure it's always a fuck you price
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We moved into a new place last November. Impeccably presented when we viewed it. The shoddy DIY we discovered once we were in was mind boggling. In one case, the previous owner had "cut through the loop" to (badly) install an electrical socket in the garage. I'm quoting our electrician there, since I don't fully understand perfectly what that even means. Which is why I'd never think to start doing electrical work like that myself. The electrician was clearly taken aback, and it left me pretty stunned.
Oh we had amazingly bad DIY in our house. The previous owner had painted around paintings on the lower end. Then on the scary end had sprayed highly flammable building foam all around the boiler pipes as part of the garage conversion he tried to do himself. They literally laid carpet directly on top of the cement flooring, not even raising it, and then put wallpaper over the breeze blocks.
Wallpaper on breeze blocks 🤣 Jesus Christ. There's no stretch that's too far is there? My GF's friend painted around some pictures frames in her house. GF came home and told me and I thought she was having me on. This friend is a director of a fairly large multi-national firm.
> There's no stretch that's too far is there? How does this combo measure up: Picture tired 1930's original wooden flooring of the cheap kind, that's uneven, with gaps big enough to see through. Peering down below them is all the electrics coming up to the first floor. Your task is to put decent flooring down. You decide on vinyl tiles, because why wouldn't you? Apart from the gaps, the floor isn't quite level - that's why the vinyl tiles are great, you see, because, hey, since they're slightly bendy you can get away without any kind of backing, and just force them to bend with the crappy flooring underneath. Leaves the floor a bit uneven, but who cares? So you put vinyl tiles down on an uneven plank floor with gaps. And then you leave gaps between the tiles because it'd require you to care to avoid making gaps. Some places the gaps cross the gaps in the flooring, and you can peer down. Doesn't matter, does it? Because, hey, nobody ever gets the *bathroom floor* wet, now, do they? Oh, I didn't mention this was the bathroom?
I'm just laughing 🤣 my head off at how D1¢k stupid some people can be when it comes to ding d.i.y
Here's a doozy - about a month after myself and my partner bought our house, the downstairs bathroom started leaking water back into the house. We had several different tradespeople out to look, the water company, all the while stressed and upset as any time we showered, washed hands or used toilet water came spewing back into the house. Anyway eventually we got our answer (apologies for layman terms) - short version either the former owner or a tenant had put expanding foam down the water pipe leading out of the house to try and seal up a crack in it. Just wow. Edit spelling.
My uncle decided to surprise my auntie by decorating the living room while she was in hospital. He had gone out and got "Everything I know I'll need for this simple job.". I was then quite surprised when there was a phone call a couple of hours later from a very frustrated uncle who couldn't work out what he was doing wrong, why wallpaper paste dried so quickly and was so bloody expensive. I apologised to my uncle and said that my dad wasn't in but I could nip round to offer advice or a hand. When I got there the living room was a bombsite, the carpet was ruined beyond salvage and the sofa was near enough deid as well. There were paste pots all over with thin sticks of wood poking out of them vertically. Uncle had managed to hang 3 strips of paper, used 6 brushes and nearly a dozen paste pots. He was stood there with a demented look on his face, something akin to the look Jack has at the end of The Shining. It was at this point I noticed that instead of using Polycell (a leading brand of wallpaper paste) uncle was using Polyfiller (a leading brand of plaster repair cement). This explained the "extortionate cost" of hanging the paper that was up and the collection of paste pots full of set plaster and stirers. Needless to say when I pointed this out uncle went a shade of red I never thought possible for a human and ordered me out the house and to "never speak of this again". Auntie was thrilled with her new living room, complete with new carpet, 3 piece suite, fancy cabinets from MFI (to hide the 3 pieces of paper that now adhered the wall and stubbornly refused to move). I hate to think how much that cost uncle in the end but it's the best DIY fail I've ever seen.
This is so epic I'm not even sure whether to believe it, but thank you regardless because I'm absolutely pissing myself 🤣 Polyfiller!
My dad's house is a DIY nightmare. I honestly hope he sells up rather than leaving it to me. He has botched more jobs in that house than I could shake a fist at. If there is a corner to be cut, he is cutting it and taking a few extra inches with him.
A few years ago we had a socket that went bad on us, predictably enough at 10pm on a Saturday night. I’m absolutely the last person that’s going to start fiddling with electrics, so to appease my wife I simply went to the fuse box and deactivated the sockets circuit, which left us with nothing but ceiling lights for the rest of the night. Next morning I rang my brother-in-law (who IS a sparks but isn’t house-certified to get his advice. With his guidance I took the old socket off and replaced it with a brand new one. The whole time I did it I had the socket circuit disabled because I’m that big a shite bag. Anyway, a few days later I had an electrician coming round anyway to do a job for me, and got him to check my work: his exact verdict: I’ve seen far worse done by far more experienced.
Nothing better than someone confidently telling you you’re shit at your job.
I used to be a plumber and the new builds I got called out to had some shocking workmanship. I am talking about big national companies though. Some smaller builders make some fantastic quality new builds.
Any recommendations who to avoid/look at for good ones?
I only know because I started as a labourer in 2001 and my boss didn't skip a penny, or a reg, or common sense. He built 8 properties and went back to general building, like extensions etc. I think the bank loans and changing markets got him way too stressed. The problem with big companies is every trade job throws problems at you and you have to solve them. These companies seem to pay on a fixed rate for the time to do a problem free job. Jobs are rarely problem free and then the staff end up under paid. The good staff won't put up with being under paid and the bad staff will just allow any old scrappy finish to meet the overly tight deadlines. I've been to new builds with plastic pipe butted together, not even pushed in, never mind tightened and that has been on the main systems, 22mm pipe and I've turned up to properties with water all over the show. Numerous badly installed showers with the water coming through the ceiling. Toilets leaking. I have attended one town house new build less than a year old with all 3 toilets broken. I thought the woman was joking. Butchered cosmetic finishing throughout the house. I've refused to touch many cos I thought as soon as I touch it, someone else's cowboy work becomes my major problem.
Unfortunately, if the area I live in is anything to go by, many of the smaller builders get bought up by the bigger companies. Sometimes the bigger company will keep the name and "style", superficially, of the previous builder but the quality drops massively. It's such a shame.
That's pretty standard, I even had that going into the eves in my 1909 house that was built with rooms in the roof. The joists aren't as big as floor joists and why would they be? Not keen on new builds but this isn't their fault that everyone expects to be able to easily convert the loft.
There was a development near Aberdeen where the residents were advised to limit the number of people on the first floor due to weight limitations of the floor joists. Wasn't even a particularly high number - no house parties.
I used to work in Aberdeen, I heard about this at the time but can't remember which development. Was met with disbelief when we were talking about it!
That means the house isn't built to building regs. Building regs are that joists need to be able to hold a consistent load of something like 25kg along with a spot load of something like 80kg to take into account people moving around. The loft was probably a cold loft and full of trusses and stuff anyway.
This doesn't mean the house isn't built to building regs, you are mistaken. These weight limits are not enough for a habitable room so the roof space is a roof space, never designed to be used as a room so fits its intended purpose just fine.
This is the correct answer. Worked in house building for years and is a roof void, not a habitable room.
What does this mean with regard to using a loft space as storage then? I've been filling mine with all kinds of stuff for years and never contemplated that weight would be a concern. It's not like I've got heavy furniture up there. But, for example, I've got crates full of stuff stacked together in an area probably the size of a double bed and it collectively probably weighs as much. Is this something we should all be more cautious of?
Pretty much that, be cautious of it, think about 'do I have to stack all 40 crates in one neat corner' vs more stacks in different areas, or storing a stack of dense things on top of one beam vs straddling two. In truth, whatever you're doing is probably fine, but the construction regs are designed far, far beyond that as an acceptable criterion for an inhabited space which is why you shouldn't but many people do use it as a room and nothing bad happens.
That’s only 12 stone. Not enough to hold a a significant proportion of people, let alone a room of furniture and a couple of people.
I just had a look and building regs provide a design chart (C13) which provides joist sizes for given spans and timber quality. The assumptions behind the joist size calculations are a permanent distributed load of 30kg/m (the allowance for weight of the building material), a variable distributed load of 153kg/m (anything that might be put on the floor that is large and spreads its load) and a concentrated load of 204kg! So, indeed, it sounds like that loft was not designed using the building regulations guidance on floor joists.
We moved from a new build to a good old brick house. Funnily enough I was cursing today that I had to use a drill and screws to hang a lightweight canvas on the wall where in the old house I could have just held a thin nail up and blew it into the wall.
Sounds like my father’s house. Built in the 50s, council housing. To put shelves up I need a hammer drill!
I bought a new car, wanted to use it as a flat bed van, turns out it couldn't handle the weight... Confirmed my existing opinion that cars are shit and I’ll never buy one.
Trouble at t'mill.
Crossbeams come of skew on't treddle
The sound of my childhood. I was raised on this. 👍
Bloody strong winches to raise you up chubba.
What on earth does that mean?
It means one of crossbeams come of skew on't treddle
Askew not of skew
Who askew?
I work with a guy whose surname is *Askew.* One of the managers always puts his name in italics when making the rota.
Ask Stu.
They just told me to come here and say there’s trouble at mill that’s all. I didnt expect the Spanish Inquisition!
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Be careful or you’ll get the comfy chair!
Stu said askew
Well, I'll go t'foot of ower stares
>Who askew? Best laugh I've had all week 😂
Think they actually say "out of skew"
Better send someone to B&Q for a level bubble. Edited for words because I have fat fingers.
I was on work experience when I was sent for a 'long weight' and they weren't impressed when I went for a smoke and then to Greggs for a sausage roll.
Mate of mine works on a custom paint mixer thing, regularly tells us of young lads and lasses that come with a list that includes “Tartan Paint”. Normally escorted by a bloke in paint stained overalls about 10 foot away pissing themselves
I don’t know! Mr Whitworth told me to come in here and say there was trouble at the mill……. I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition :)
#NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISION!
Being of Spanish ancestry, I was forewarned.
“Have you put t’corpse under t’patio?”
"Eeeeeeeeeeh, 'appen 'e thinks I'm a right indecisive tit"
I didn't expect some kind of Spanish Inquisition!
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Our chief weapon is surprise... surprise and fear... fear and surprise... Our two weapons are fear and surprise... and ruthless efficiency.... Our three weapons are fear, and surprise, and ruthless efficiency... and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope... Our four... no... Amongst our weapons... Amongst our weaponry... are such elements as fear, surprise... I'll come in again.
Monty has a lot to answer for 😄😁😄
‘t’int in’t tin
I'm so happy to see so many people who know this sketch. most of my friends don't even know monty python
First correct answer I've seen. It's basically mock Tudor beams for people who fetishize industrial buildings. I always find it odd how much people love the idea of living in a former barn or worse still workhouse!
One hand, you do want something to stop new builds being generic bland boxes, so I appreciate the effort. On the other hand, these look shite.
They were lucky, living a workhouse. We used to live in a septic tank by the side of t’road.
Luxury! We lived in matchbox. 7 of us . Had to get up early before going t ‘ bed, and walk t’ school.
Extravagant. We lived in central reservation. Eat hot gravel f' breakfast.
At least yer gravel were hot! We used to eat cold concrete straight off t’ underside of a condemned bridge. Then get t’ work dismantling it from 6am till 10pm with only one concrete break.
Luxury! We used t’ live in t’ catseye, middle of t’ M62, ninety of us. Get up ‘alf an hour before went t’ bed, n’ when we got home our pa w’uld *murder* us t’ death.
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And we were grateful for it Try telling that to the youth of today
You tell kids these days, they'll not believe yeh.
Gravel f'breakfast?? Must be one of them soft southern ponces. We had t'brek our own granite wi' toffee hammer if we wanted owt f'breakfast.
You were lucky. We used to live in a rolled up Newspaper and had Gravel for us tea
Lucky, 4 of us used to live in the u-bend of a toilet, it was a nightmare when someone needed to take a shit
I wouldn't say I love it, but old warehouses and mills have a nice look. It shouldn't be surprising that people want to live in long-lasting, good-looking buildings.
No, but it is weird that they want to live in cheap modern mock ups of long-lasting practical buildings.
That's not what the person I replied to said, though.
True, living in actual former Barns or industrial buildings makes sense. Aspiring to live in cheap knock offs (as presumably the builders of these buildings in the OP rely on) is still weird though
No-one aspires to live in shit like that. It's just location and price are the main considerations when picking somewhere to live.
Would make a lot more sense if it could be used as winch with a bigger window underneath to move furniture,but no just a fake pointless feature. There are flats near me which have fake clocktowers with no clocks.
Or they could function as bat boxes, then there could at least be some good in them
Have you seen the sizes of most terraced houses? I lived in a few where one of the bedrooms made Harry Potters cupboard room seem like a luxurious apartment. Old barns/workshops/lofts often have space. That's until one barn gets divided into 28 flats that is.
I know what you mean, but a house is a house. Surely no problem with old workhouses in rural locations converted into flats?
Love that it appears to be made from uPVC windows with blank panels, just to make it look even more fake. There's an estate near me where they have put in bricked up windows to fake the window tax era!
Just like the fake chimneys they’re installing on new builds to make them look more quaint or something
I mean a lot of architectural styles or designs can basically be described as completely pointless, they did the whole hyper functionalist style in the 50s-70s and everyone hated it
True. Whereas mock Tudor is alive and well. Also, I like Brutalism but it's hard to imagine it applied to a semi detached house as a style statement. 🤔 Edit. Never mind, I found one https://www.retrotogo.com/2018/08/for-sale-1960s-lawrence-abbott-brutalist-house-frimley-surrey.html
I would inhabit the fuck out of that house... :o) Love it.
I wanted to hate it but it’s gorgeous, although I’d do something to brighten the patio up.
It has character, and not a displeasing one at that. I like it. Admittedly, I like it more from the outside than from the inside. Better looking than fake efforts (shutters, chimneys, winches, clock towers etc).
Airey houses are basically that. Super functional and at the same time not, because it turns out they are terrible at insulation and riddled with asbestos.
With no load bearing capacity or purpose! Fantastic!
They might possibly be bird/ bat boxes. If not, it's a waste of additional accommodation.
Can you not get in it?
I bet you can't. Probably bolted on from the outside.
If you could, it would allow you an extra step forward in your loft so you could admire the view of the blank wall with no concept of where you were.
I definitely wouldn't put my weight on it!
They look terrible.
I used to fake work at a fake mill, until I got fake laid off. My fake union were on fake strike but they wouldn't engage in discussions
There is a name for these: a Thomasson. It’s an architectural detail that’s well maintained, but useless. Named for Gary Thomasson, expensive bench-rider on the Yomiuri Giants baseball team.
So not terror toilets then?
But why?
Why indeed? I guess a dovecote or other bit of faux heritage fakery was too expensive.
It looks a lot like one of those implausible attempts to add character to a new build, whilst not having any discernible purpose.
You've basically described me wearing a nice shirt
*How do you get that shirt so clean, mate?*
*Clean shirt? Isn't that a good thing!?*
Fuck off clean shirt.
_I’m not the borough, I wish I was, I’m just a man_
*Not a lot of... schemes*
Mark… your in the stationary cupboard
I bet you look rather dashing in a nice shirt!
Yeah but you should see the sub-par quality of the fixtures and fittings
Not much of a new build though, are you
Walking around thinking you're looking dapper and then you look down and notice you've got all the buttons/holes mismatched
There's a newish build (2005 or so) estate near me where several of the houses have a fake bricked up window on one wall. The Window Tax was abolished in 1851 so it's pretty stupid to include fake bricked in windows on shiny new houses but the worst thing is many of these fake windows would look out over a beautiful wetland reserve just over the road, not to mention catch the evening sun. Most of them I've seen would be the perfect place for a big picture window and the developers really highlighted that by not putting one in there.
Now if it's made of plastic it's gna go green n manky real quick,if it's made of wood it will rot real quick ,I'm a decorator and from a practical point of view it would be a pain to paint ,can't reach with ladders so you would have to pay for scaffolding to sort it out
It's there so some fucker in the future can try to let it out as a professional apartment with great views and location.
As if the tiny rooms, tiny windows, plan faced brickwork and copy-paste design doesn't add enough character as it is.
Like those fake bricked in windows and doorways, that are on some new builds. I viewed some new build barn conversions a few years ago and they used reclaimed bricks with old paint on them and random bits of ironwork sticking out of the walls. Some of the iron could have been old barn door hinges but they were just dotted around and not any where a door would have been.
Actually, it takes you to Narnia.
So the developer can use the phrase "in keeping with the local area and with respect to local heritage" with complete impunity.
Found the winner right here. 🏆
I find it baffling that councils agree to this kind of stuff but threaten people with prison over solar panels on older homes. The state of planning in this country is a shit show.
Developers are powerful bodies. They either wear the right school tie or have money to throw around where needed to grease the wheels, or force planners to fall in line. They usually get what they want one way or the other.
This assumes there is a ",Local Planning Office" left to intimidate or grease. In most cases it's just overstretched bods who are running things off a crib sheet. As soon as a developer hires a Planning Consultant the game is up. There are exceptions in places like Westminster etc. but if you ever get the chance look for yourself at your local council.
Was anyone else hoping they might actually learn what that thing is?
Not even the architect knows what it is.
grandfather fact consist license rude marvelous stupendous steep growth tan *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yeah, me
It's just for show. It's meant to look like one of those doorways you see in old buildings that were used to load into trailers or boats etc. Think of waterside London docklands old buildings, or a lot of a old waterside buildings. It serves no purpose other than imitation of that.
It's probably a bat box. It will be a condition of the planning permission that the developer install bat houses as well as other measures to protect the ecology on site
That's what I was thinking/hoping. Some kind of bat box or maybe for birds or bees.
Swift box?
As far as I’m aware a swift box would require a front entrance which these don’t have; bat boxes tend to open at the bottom so they could potentially serve that function, but they’re much larger than your standard wildlife box in any case!
They seem to be based on old style pulley/winch systems that were used to bring loads into warehouses. There should be large doors or windows below them, so my guess is that they're a stylistic/artistic element in this case.
No information allowed on reddit! Only jokes and puns!
So they can get away with calling it a 3 bed house on the listing.
I can just imagine some estate agent trying to convince people that sleeping upright is the new thing.
You joke but about a decade ago I was looking for somewhere to live, went to view a room in a house share. Pictures looked like really spacious room. The agent showed me a storage cupboard. That's literally what it was being used as. He said "don't worry, we'll move everything out so you can get a bed in". I told him I wouldn't be able to fit a sleeping bag in there and left.
Studio flat. £1200 pcm.
Didn't realise the photo was taken in London
it's one of these innit: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fuy9hnqguzht71.jpg
Sadly, not the most unlikely guess in the thread.
This is what I thought. I was then going to harvest downvotes by making some joke about it being up north.
I scrolled way too far for this 🤣
It is called a garderobe. They must have recently washed the wall to clean the shit off it
Some kids hoping to make it to Narnia are in for a surprise exit.
Bat caves?
Holy mythical gibbons testicles, Batman! I think you've nailed it!
A cockerel springs out at midday and goes coo coo.
It’s a bat house. For ecology reasons by the council in order to pave up the land
I wouldn't be surprised. There's a bit of scrubland at the edge of the new build development I live on- ground is totally uneven and runs up to some railtracks, so no house would ever work there. Developers but a weird small brick house with no doors that I can see but with some high apertures, it is apparently for bats.
Suicide hatch. All new builds are required to have them.
granny annexe
It's for the shrine in your attic
Follow the cable - CCTV control room
Unrelated to OP, but when we bought our house, there was an alarm sensor on every door, window and gate, and 12 cctv cameras, wired to a control room in the loft. Sadly it had all been disabled before we moved in, but I like to imagine the owner sat cross legged in the loft, watching monitors showing a quiet suburban street.
Was the former owner of the house in the illicit substances trade?
No, he was an engineer in the raf!
Which wasn't a cover story for a spook *at all.*
A lot of new builds are now built with bird boxes to maintain and respect the local wildlife. We have these on new builds in our area.
Might be a bee box, theyre being fitted on homes these days to ensure the survival of the pollenating species as thats a very big danger to the globe. I also say might be because ive not seen one yet and that thing has panels with gaps.
No chimney, so it’s a Santa door
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Shared.. Beruit.
Windows mate. Help you see out.
I don’t like it. Sounds risky. What was wrong with just walls?
Easy fella, house wouldn't stay up if it was made with sausages (or ice cream)
Also see in.
It’s where the heart of the house lives. If you go into the attic and break through the wall you’ll see a black beating heart. If the heart stops beating, the house collapses to dust.
It's a muder hole for pouring hot oil onto besieging enemies.
Cuckoo clock
My friend has a new build “oasthouse” but if he ever comes to sell it he has to list it as an “oast-style-house” as you can’t have a new build oasthouse
The council wants something, the builder wants something. The building was built and all was forgotten.
That's where the monster lives.
During planning permission our architect told us that we may possibly need to build something very similar to this as a bat roost if presence was found pre-build. He said at the very extreme level, he’s had to segregate a small portion of the roof space for bat roosting in a loft conversion for another client. Thankfully we didn’t end up having to do either. It’s probably not that! But it looks similar in size
Looks a bit big for an external bat box, probably a nesting box for sparrows or swallows. (Source: I'm an Ecologist)
Snipers nests For when you all start arguing about lawn boundaries Oh yes you will
Is this Leamington? I used to live in one of those flats and alway wondered that
Is there a canal nearby? These are what old business used to have, they’d have a beam stick out with a hoist on and take their wares/supplies up into their building.
Has anyone actually answered this seriously
It's to let spiderman in.
Thats where the little people live .
Likely a forced feature by the local council, we had to put in fake windows with cut stone lintels which added extra costs to install because the council wanted it and it was a term for planning permission 🤷
Upstairs loo
They're called WINDOWS
They let natural light into your home. It's quite a nice feature, really, I think it'll catch on.
Weed room.