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Schnitzel with noodles - what made you smile today?


amateurstuntman

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Oh, yeah. Internal diving walls have always been flimsy things unless they needed to carry part of the weight of upper floors.

 

The oldest house I've lived in had lath-and-plaster walls for internal rooms, sturdier than the stuff they're using nowadays but still not much support there.

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Maybe in the US, but I'm pretty sure every house I've seen under construction around here is mainly composed of breeze blocks with red bricks on the outside.

 

My parents' old house which was built about 2004 was just a wooden frame with a brick veneer. Insulation was via pre-formed panels.

It creaked whenever someone walked around, and in theory you could chop your way into next door with an axe.

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My first house was a newbuild timber frame with brick veneer.

 

It was properly solid though, and big for the money. 3 bed semi, but all bedrooms were decent sizes as it was on 3 floors.

 

My house now is about 95 years old. All dividing walls are brick. The ceilings are latt and plaster :)

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Where is that?

 

That's awful - hope it was extremely cheap.

 

Sandhills estate in Leighton Buzzard, "built" by Bryant Homes. 3 story town houses. The front windows sagged after 10 years and had to be re-fitted and re-sealed.

Not long after my parents moved in we heard stories of them not having enough ties to pin the veneer to the frame so they spread them out more and some houses veneers were bulging out, while other areas suffered a bit of subsidence (it was built on an old sand pit).

 

Here's my parents' house being built.

wall.jpg

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Most new builds are *fruitcage* shocking, even 'proper' brick/block ones.

 

Whilst mine was solid, the snagging list was huge, and most people I know who have bought one, they have had numerous issues. Including having to move out whilst internal walls were rebuilt, and sections of roofing replaced.

 

Construction standards are generally really bad on new houses.

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Mate of mine moved into a new build "eco house" its 10 years later and there are still issues half the estate has had to literally be rebuilt I think there are people on the estate that are in hotels even now!

 

Ah, John Prescott's flagship Eco Homes. Brought to you from the same guy who primised Bedfordshire council that if they built a new massively cramped estate in Leighton Buzzard the government would pay for an upgrade to the infrastructure. Of course he wouldn't put anything in writing becuase you could trust him and promptly lost his job as housing minister. At some point he was transport minister and tried slagging off Milton Keynes for it's grid system with "X this and Y that", so the interviewer pointed out it was H and V, for horizontal and vertical.

 

I'm not in a position to buy, but if I did I'd be very wary of buying a new build for these sort of reasons.

 

Our Barratt home is structurally well built, breeze block walls with brick exterior, and loads of insulation, especially between us and next door. The interor was OK with a few issues, like the dish washer had a big dent in the front (we got an upgrade for that), and the en suite towel warmer had a bent rung where it had been dropped. Basically they were hurrying to get the house completed before they finished for xmas so didn't have time to replace the damaged items before we moved in.

The worst thing was they used a manky old flexible hose to plumb in the dishwasher, it didn't fit the mains pipe properly which leaked a fine mist out over night, so when I arrived the next morning, I was greeted by a flooded hallway and kitchen. Took a year to get sorted, not because of Barratts, but because the manager from Symphony the kitchen company had a breakdown and did no work for a year before their regional manager found out. Because we were on good terms with the work men, they'd do things which on their own Barratts wouldn't have considered sending someone out for, like when the plaster covering the board nails pops. Barratts did prefer to send a handy man rather than a specialist, and whilst trying to fix creaking floorboards on the middle floor landing with expanding foam, they damaged the carpet, which resulted in us getting it upgraded.

 

Another house on the estate, more expensive and by a different builder used to have rain water blown under the front door. The builder told them there was nothing wrong, claimed someone from the door would inspect it, but actually just sent their handyman pretending to be from the door company, who told them it was to be expected!

They called the door company to say they dissagreed with what their engineer had said and the door company replied "What engineer?" so they sent one out and discovered the door frame hadn't been fitted properly so the door wasn't sealing right. The builder blamed the door manufacturer, while the door manufacturer pointed out it was installed wrong by the builder. Nightmare for them.

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Heh, makes me glad I live in an old apartment block, if anything fails here (like the sewage main), it's because of old age and the homeowners' association spent a shitload of dinero getting everything up to date.

 

Tapped out with Tapatalk.

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Heh, makes me glad I live in an old apartment block, if anything fails here (like the sewage main), it's because of old age and the homeowners' association spent a shitload of dinero getting everything up to date.

 

Tapped out with Tapatalk.

 

In my case it was a choice between a 1950's 3 bedroom house with the bathroom off the downstairs hallway, needing work and a 95% mortgage, or a new build using the government's Help to Buy scheme to give me an extra 20% deposit on a 4 bedroom new house with 5 year warranty on the internals, needing only a 75% mortgage which saved us over £150 a month (so we overpaid the mortgage)

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I've not really watched any Motorsport for years. Gave up on F1 back when it switched to ITV, watched some touring car etc.

 

However, I stumbled across stadium super trucks and it. Is. AWESOME!

 

It's like a computer game made into real life and I love it! Give it a look, there's tons on YouTube :)

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I had some seriously interesting beers last week... Wish I recalled what they were specifically, tho. Was a beer and whiskey tasting arranged by my boss for our customers and team, there were some really nifty combinations of beer and whiskey that go together like CO2 and GBBr... :D

 

One was a Flanders Pale Ale that was pretty sour, but having bit of that and a sip of the accompanied whiskey was really nice experience.

 

Personal favorite was Moor Old Freddy Walker with Springbank 15 year old...

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