The Night Mail

[pH]

1 hour ago, Northmoor said:

 

As an engineer I am disgusted by what the building trade considers acceptable tolerances.

 

57 minutes ago, J. S. Bach said:

More importantly, what the building "inspectors" allow them to get away with!

 

37 minutes ago, Winslow Boy said:

Individual builds I can't comment on ...

 

Having worked as a labourer on a couple of building sites in the UK, and a couple in Canada, I can comment. Maybe it was just the sites I worked on, but I don't really think so.

 

You might be surprised about what is got away with (pardon the grammar). Some things are done on the basis of:

- If it's a problem, the inspector should catch it. If not we're OK.

- Hide that before the inspector sees it. 

- We're too far on beyond that, we can't go back.

- It's not important, leave it as it is.

 

I could give chapter and verse, but nothing fell down (or hasn't yet), so I won't.

 

[J. S. Bach]

This just might be a problem:

[J. S. Bach]

This did not stay up for very long:

[J. S. Bach]

And with those, Night Owl from the Piedmont.

[AndyID]

Home again after a longish drive. Just under 7 hours mostly on a two-lane highway, but quite relaxing and beautiful with all the snow on the mountains. There is also about four inches of the stuff on our driveway 😄

 

This was at the top of Bald Mountain. The wind was blowing quite hard up there.

 

 

A bit lower on the mountain now. In the pic that ski run does not look too steep but it was quite steep enough!

 

 

 

 

Edited March 7, 2023 by AndyID
Typhoo

[BR60103]

When our subdivision (previous) was being built, one of our friends was told that she could scavenge leftover bricks from the newly built houses. She managed to pave most of her backyard.

One of our neighbours, who did shingles, said that the plywood on the back slope of the roofs was sub-spec. He said that the front slope was to spec and suspected that the builder expected the inspectors to drive by and check things from the street.

 

[Winslow Boy]

7 hours ago, pH said:

 

 

 

Having worked as a labourer on a couple of building sites in the UK, and a couple in Canada, I can comment. Maybe it was just the sites I worked on, but I don't really think so.

 

You might be surprised about what is got away with (pardon the grammar). Some things are done on the basis of:

- If it's a problem, the inspector should catch it. If not we're OK.

- Hide that before the inspector sees it. 

- We're too far on beyond that, we can't go back.

- It's not important, leave it as it is.

 

I could give chapter and verse, but nothing fell down (or hasn't yet), so I won't.

 

 

Now that doesn't surprise me at all I'm afraid. Having inspected ie walked around some 'parks' that have been provided by developers it was a wonder how they expected them to be passed as fit for purpose. Remember one particular one which I refused to accept which was a play area situated on top of some kind of electricity substation as there got there measurements 'wrong'.

[TheQ]

When I worked at Tess and Coes, they rebuilt / extended to store 3 times, in all I brought back 6 tons of bricks blocks and slabs that otherwise would have been skipped. They were cheaper to dump than transport to the next project.

I found a " bandolier" light chain cemented across the internal walls above the ceiling.

The pavement collapsed where the outside down pipe just ended beneath the path, it had never been plumbed in.

One cash office, had the armoured doors as usual. But the walls were made of very soft brick, I had to glue fixings in place as normal fixings wouldn't hold..

[Dave Hunt]

Today being Jill’s XX birthday (actual figure highly classified) we are staying at a very nice hotel in Saltburn as she wants to be beside the seaside. She must have been good for the last year as instead of the sleet, snow and ice forecast it is a lovely sunny day albeit a bit chilly and breezy. It’s obviously doing her good as she has no heart murmurs and isn’t feeling at all faint; in fact she’s striding out like a good’un and leaving the old crock (me) trailing in her wake. It’s good to see, though, and I’m glad we came as a week ago it looked as if we may have to cancel.

 

Dave

Edited March 7, 2023 by Dave Hunt

[jamie92208]

4 hours ago, Winslow Boy said:

 

Now that doesn't surprise me at all I'm afraid. Having inspected ie walked around some 'parks' that have been provided by developers it was a wonder how they expected them to be passed as fit for purpose. Remember one particular one which I refused to accept which was a play area situated on top of some kind of electricity substation as there got there measurements 'wrong'.

The play area in my granddaughters estate, which is built on the site of the former coal mine, has a large circular area with swings and a climbing frame.  We worked out that it is sited on one of the former mineshafts.  At least this one is marked.  There were several instances in the 70's of unmarked ones collapsing, one of them in somebody's front garden.

 

As to Sq Leader Hunt I'm glad that the memsahib is doing well.

 

Jamie

[Happy Hippo]

Yesterday, having announced that she was feeling so much better, and how she was  now going to do xyz in short order, the only thing that Nyda has managed to do this morning...

 

Is her back!

 

It is only a pulled muscle, so no panic stations.  It's just the short order tasks are currently running slightly slower than a glacier.

 

After lunch, having made sure she is comfortably ensconced doing some craft work, I will adjourn to the garage for a session on the railway.

 

Although if the weather turns, I might find it more comfortable to bring the board I'm currently working on into the house.

 

 

[Winslow Boy]

51 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

The play area in my granddaughters estate, which is built on the site of the former coal mine, has a large circular area with swings and a climbing frame.  We worked out that it is sited on one of the former mineshafts.  At least this one is marked.  There were several instances in the 70's of unmarked ones collapsing, one of them in somebody's front garden.

 

As to Sq Leader Hunt I'm glad that the memsahib is doing well.

 

Jamie

 

I think it was given away somewhat as you could hear/feel the electric buzz. They were still fighting over it when I left the council's employ.

 

Yes good to hear that Jamie's Memsahib is okay. It helps when you have got a diagnosis I think.

[iL Dottore]

14 hours ago, Northmoor said:

My house is on an estate built in the 1970s and shows that "build 'em quick an' cheap has been normal amongst developers for many years.  The non-structural (well not much) walls around the garden have almost no mortar holding them together anymore, what minimal cement went in the mix washed out long ago.  I think the moss is holding the bricks together now.

In the roof is where the builder used the blocks he didn't want to waste, out of sight of most homeowners.  Never mind 2mm square, some of them have a few cubic inch of material missing off corners and no real effort at pointing.  When I started building a layout I found the 2' spaced rafters were actually 2' plus/minus a half-inch.  

As an engineer I am disgusted by what the building trade considers acceptable tolerances.

I suppose that it is inevitable that such things happen, when you build down to a price as opposed to building up to a specification.

 

From watching the TV programme Grand Designs  I get a number of impressions (rightly or wrongly) of the building trade in the UK. Firstly, such are the vagaries of the building trade in the UK, that no budget is ever final; furthermore, no matter how much you have budgeted, it is never enough. Secondly, there seems to be a huge variability in the quality and the ability of the companies. and individuals hired to do building work: some are superb craftsmen and companies, others quickly get fired by the person building the property for not being/performing to an adequate standard.

 

Thirdly, and probably somewhat contentiously, the UK building trade seems to be stuck in the past. Grand Designs is always referring to high-tech this and high-tech that having to be imported from Germany or Switzerland or Scandinavia. And very many processes, which now seem to be pretty much mainstream in Germany (and elsewhere on the continent) remain pretty much niche in the UK (such as factory-fabricated houses that are energy-efficient with a low carbon footprint and which are simply assembled on site in a few days)

Of course, Grand Designs is a program to take with a very large pinch of salt, not only just because of the humongous budgets they are playing with (£1 million, £2 million or more), but also because a lot of what is trumpeted as “bold design” or “cutting edge” are simply long established architectural clichés.

 

The Grand Designs presenter might rhapsodise over a square glass and steel framed box with a flat roof and open plan everything as being “architecture at its finest”; but it’s really just architectural onanism by self-indulgent and indulged-in architects.

 

[New Haven Neil]

There is a reluctance over here to anything building that isn't bricks and mortar.  There have been a couple of those 'lego' houses built recently here, the poured concrete in polystyrene block jobs - they can't sell them, not interested - 'it'll fall down, no bricks'.  Equally anything thing wooden - viewed with derision.  We live in a timber frame house, been fine for 20 years so far.....

 

As for those glass boxes - eeuw, I agree!

[Gwiwer]

51 minutes ago, New Haven Neil said:

We live in a timber frame house, been fine for 20 years so far.....

In another lifetime we lived in a typical Aussie "brick veneer" house.  One which we are in the process of selling as we speak.  That's a timber frame covered with a single course of bricks.  The UK style is often referred to as "double-brick" over there and is very much the rarity.  A case of supply and demand combined with climate really.  Not much suitable brick-building clay and (at one time) a seemingly unlimited supply of timber.  

 

They work well.  Many have lasted 50 - 100 years though the mid-range of that is about average before they get tired and replaced by something new. They don't hold as much heat as double-brick (and boy can bricks hold the heat in 40+ degrees) and the structure allows air to circulate.  

 

But they burn swiftly and fiercely.  A property which is fundamentally dry wood stands little chance in a bush-fire (of which that land has more than its fair share) and it only takes one airborne ember to ignite a fire several kilometres from the original.  Trust me - it happens.  Roof voids full of dry leaf litter, homes full of dry wood, a hot dry climate and sometimes with searing gale-force hot winds.  Even in leafy suburbia I learned to fire-spot and fire-watch very early on.  There were a couple of days when I was up on the roof watching very carefully for events up-wind and any stray embers.  

 

Too often all that's left after a fire is a tin roof lying in ash, and a brick chimney standing as a memorial to the former home and as a reminder of where the only fire should have been.  And a family hoping they were suitably insured or in deep doo-doo and reliant upon the generosity of others if they were not.  

 

We had log fires in our open fireplace on cool winter days.  There was always enough natural-fall and arborist-cut wood that we never needed to buy.  There's no domestic coal so it was a wood-fire or rug up.  

 

 

[DenysW]

3 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

such as factory-fabricated houses that are energy-efficient with a low carbon footprint and which are simply assembled on site in a few days

All true - but success is then determined by the exactness of the concrete slab onto which you position the lego-blocks when they arrive. Cheapest sub-contractor (for the pour) not recommended.

[Compound2632]

O hippo:

https://www.scale3d.co.uk/collections/animals/products/mma030-angry-charging-hippo?variant=43317182496988

 

[Happy Hippo]

Stephen,

 

Thank you for the heads up on the Hippo.

 

I've ordered one and he will be able to grace the the overbridge on Pantmawr North when we take it to Welshpool  later on in the year.

 

If PN has to go in terminal mode (one fiddle yard left behind), then will instead be seen under the bridge, acting as a buffer stop.

[PhilJ W]

Do they do a polar bear as well?

[polybear]

7 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

Do they do a polar bear as well?

 

oh yes...

 

https://www.scale3d.co.uk/products/mm047-polar-bear-exclusive?_pos=1&_psq=bear&_ss=e&_v=1.0

 

....at a guess I'd say he's got a pawly paw though (see what bear did there?)

[Hroth]

10 minutes ago, polybear said:

at a guess I'd say he's got a pawly paw though

 

Sick as a parrot, I'd say....

 

[Hroth]

7 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

The Grand Designs presenter might rhapsodise over a square glass and steel framed box with a flat roof and open plan everything as being “architecture at its finest”; but it’s really just architectural onanism by self-indulgent and indulged-in architects.

 

There's a "Grand Designs" property near us that eventually got the thumbs-up.  Locally it's referred to as "The Wooden Shoebox".

 

'nuff said....

 

[AndyID]

7 minutes ago, Hroth said:

 

There's a "Grand Designs" property near us that eventually got the thumbs-up.  Locally it's referred to as "The Wooden Shoebox".

 

'nuff said....

 

At least it's not made out of ticky-tacky.

 

[Dave Hunt]

3 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

O hippo:

https://www.scale3d.co.uk/collections/animals/products/mma030-angry-charging-hippo?variant=43317182496988

 

 

At last, just what I’ve always wanted - an S7 hippo! And it’s my birthday in six weeks’ time. Whoopeedoo!

 

Dave

[Dave Hunt]

1 hour ago, polybear said:

 

oh yes...

 

https://www.scale3d.co.uk/products/mm047-polar-bear-exclusive?_pos=1&_psq=bear&_ss=e&_v=1.0

 

....at a guess I'd say he's got a pawly paw though (see what bear did there?)

 

Oh, frabjious day, an S7 Polybear as well. Can life get any better? All I need now is some 7mm scale LDC and we’ve got perfection!

 

Dave