In message ,
Grunff wrote:

Some of you may recall my previous posts about our very odd 1930s house
(back wall subsiding, damp, internal walls made of 2" thick block laid
directly on floorboards, lots of other interesting features).

We have (ok, had) walls like that too; two partition walls upstairs
built directly on the floorboards out of 3" thick "breezeblock"-type
blocks (someone called them cinderblocks). These were interesting in
that they had a toungue-and-groove arrangement on their narrow vertical
faces!

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What counts as plaster in this 1930s council-built semi is about a
half to threequarters of an inch of black coal dust capped with no more
than a sixteenth of cement render. This is further coated with gorgeous
Artex in much of the house (see pictures still up at
http://www.tridwr.demon.co.uk/danygraig/ )

[...]
we found that the wall which is part of the stair well is lined with
asbestos sheets! Four sheets of 4'x2'x5mm of grey asbestos sheet, very
hard amd brittle.

I thought that was a bit odd, given the age of the house, and given that
it looks like an original feature. I thought asbestos was only used
after the 40s.


All the ceilings in the house mentioned above are (or were) asbestos
sheet. As part of the refurbishment these are going - at least in the
half of the house we're doing at the moment.

So you're not in an entirely unique position :-) Obviously some odd
things went on in the 1930s. Like the ceiling joists upstairs (i.e.
attic joists) which are on 2ft or so centres and not properly supported
over their 6m span. Again, the support will be better when we've
refurbished, though I'm blowed if I'm adding extra joists just to make
putting a bit of board up there a bit easier.

Hwyl!

M.

--
Martin Angove: http://www.tridwr.demon.co.uk/
Two free issues: http://www.livtech.co.uk/ Living With Technology
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