I decided, probably foolhardily, a while back to clean out the cupboard
under our stairs and put some carpet left overs in over the boards to stop
draughts etc
We were happily using the vacuum over the cleared out area when my friends
hand went straight through a board and up to his shoulder.
On further inspection this particular board had rotted and I hoped for a
simple new bit of c board could be slotted in. However on pulling out the
offending rotted part, I noticed that the joist under it had been cut and a
bit of tatty old softwood screwed up against the two sidedes.
It looked to me as if at some time there had been a burst pipe there as a
length had been replaced. It was the lead type.
However instead of feeding the pipe through under the joist they had cut
about an inch out of the joist and dropped it through.
OK so we used a more robust piece of wood and braced the bits e with it,
after all nobody is going to be jumping up and down in a cupboard, but it
looked to me like the old classic of pulling the ends up to work on them
and ending up with the pip on top of the joist, and then cutting a hole to
pop it back. You know how wobbly lead pipe is.
Total drongo obviously, but lost in the mists of time, probably around the
time of the last war.

Brian

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On Mon, 07 Dec 2015 14:35:37 +0000, Brian-Gaff wrote:

I decided, probably foolhardily, a while back to clean out the cupboard
under our stairs and put some carpet left overs in over the boards to
stop draughts etc
We were happily using the vacuum over the cleared out area when my
friends
hand went straight through a board and up to his shoulder.
On further inspection this particular board had rotted and I hoped for
a
simple new bit of c board could be slotted in. However on pulling out
the offending rotted part, I noticed that the joist under it had been
cut and a bit of tatty old softwood screwed up against the two sidedes.
It looked to me as if at some time there had been a burst pipe there as
a
length had been replaced. It was the lead type.
However instead of feeding the pipe through under the joist they had
cut
about an inch out of the joist and dropped it through.
OK so we used a more robust piece of wood and braced the bits e with
it,
after all nobody is going to be jumping up and down in a cupboard, but
it looked to me like the old classic of pulling the ends up to work on
them and ending up with the pip on top of the joist, and then cutting a
hole to pop it back. You know how wobbly lead pipe is.
Total drongo obviously, but lost in the mists of time, probably around
the
time of the last war.

Brian

I've seen a similar outrage perpetrated against a semi back in the 60s.
Some "tradesman" had cut about 4/5 of a joist away at one point to enable
him to run a 4" soil pipe through the space created in an effort not to
expend too much energy in doing the job properly. Hopefully this sort of
thing doesn't still go on nowadays.