"Mick6" wrote in message
...
The walls of our 1930's house appear to be thinner upstairs than
downstairs, most obvious on the landing where there's a shelf / second
window sill:

http://tinyurl.com/3a8tuo

Our neighbour told me that, when she had cavity wall insulation
recently, the installers were only able to do downstairs. She wasn't
sure whether this was because upstairs was solid or a thinner cavity.

Has anyone come across this type of construction before? Is it more
likely that it's solid or just a thinner cavity? I'd have thought that,
if a cavity existed, it could be filled with the kind of blown
insulation that's used today.


Yes very common (in spite of what some "tradesmen" may say). My last house
(1928) was exactly thus. They are usually rendered top half as well, to give
weatherproofing to the solid construction upstairs. There will be no cavity
in the top half. By the time we had built extensions there just wasn't
enough cavity to make cavity insulating remotely cost effective.

The ledge round the stairs is very useful when decorating: (a) it will
support a platform (old doors or whatever) to work from and (b) it means you
can decorate /wallpaper top half then bottom half separately. Almost ideal,
I would say!


--
Bob Mannix
(anti-spam is as easy as 1-2-3 - not)