Current obsession in the Tyred household is, well, a new household.

Going to see a load of different houses, both old and new, and beginning to get an idea of what we want and what we don’t.

Top of the list right now is one built in the 70s, described as ‘modern timber-framed construction clad with rendered brickwork’. Can’t find much on what this actually is, how likely it is to be well-insulated or if it would have cavity wall insulation etc. We’ve only ever lived in old houses, so I’m not really sure what to be on the lookout for.

Any pointers?

Mines 70s n shit. No insulation n rotten timbers. http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=207&t=905757

It’s ok now after a lot of work but I miss my solid victorian terrace

Ours is 70s, solid as a rock, all internal walls are blockwork too!

Unlike my last Victorian terrace, single skin walls, condensation literally ran down the walls in streams and the kitchen eventually fell through the rotting floor into the basement!

Hmm.

Our 1974 build was a right mess.
Both cheaply and badly built.
Very poor insulation.
Everything else either not to current safety specs or knackered.

Rewire, heating, top floor rebuild, roof, all floors, new walls, insulation, porch, windows etc.

Cheap though, we knew what was involved, got good advice and it’s lovely now.

Get one that needs doing up, not one that looks superficially nice – it’ll still need rebuilding and cost a lot more in the long run, as our new neighbours have just found out.

Ours really was appallingly built though, a real eye opener, but it’s all fixable.

Much prefer it to the dank 19th century stone built hovel I had before though, plenty of light and you can shift walls around and set it up exactly how you like.

Currently renovating a 60s house that was extended in the 70s, all the 70s additions are shite and we are having to demolish and redo quite a bit that we didn’t factor in.

built in the 70s, described as ‘modern timber-framed construction clad with rendered brickwork’.

It wasn’t until the early 1970s that timber-frame as a construction method for housing first made its mark in the UK. The idea came from the USA where it was/is a well-established traditional method of construction.

There were a lot of problems associated with early timber-frame houses in the UK, most famously with Barratt built timber-frame homes. So bad in fact that for a long time it was mostly abandoned as a method of construction by many UK house builders.

But the problems were primarily because UK house builders simply didn’t have the experience and expertise with what was a new and very different method of construction for the UK. There is absolutely nothing wrong with timber-frame as a method of construction.

It does however require diligence during the construction stages if dampness and fire risks are not to be an issue after completion.

In more recent times it has regained its popularity as the lessons which needed to be learnt have been learnt.

Don’t be put off by a modern timber-frame house. Personally I prefer them to the traditional British double-skin cavity construction.

IMHO

Why do you prefer them – what are the pros/cons etc?

From a tree hugging perspective they are more sustainable, better insulated and ultimately cheaper as they can be pretty much mass produced in a saw mill and shipped in sections for assembly in a very short space of time.

Everything else either not to current safety specs or knackered.

^^ this

My house was built in the 70’s.

Stone walls, smelly old joists, dark rooms…oh the 1870s

To be fair, there’s good and bad in every era.

My 1870’s stone back to back was quick build, cheap housing for Calderdale’s new millworkers.
Lots of beautiful buildings locally, but many built out of necessity and not really designed to last, even then.

In Manchester where I grew up, the late Victorian and Edwardian terraces that replaced the slums were amazing.
Craftsman built, designed to last.

And much of the 50’s ex Council housing stock was superb – huge rooms, simple, intelligent design, quality materials, pleasing proportions.

Lost it badly in the 60’s and 70’s though, small windowed grey boxes replacing perfectly decent housing.
Most of Harpurhey looks like a remand centre.

Most of Harpurhey looks like a remand centre.

TBH I thought it was….

🙂
Determinism at work innit?
Build people hutches, they behave like, er, sheep.

Most of Harpurhey was farmland.
There’s a few remaining bombproof (literally) Victorian gems left, Ash Street for example.
But it mostly seems to have been designed to punish people.

Hard to generalise but 70’s wasn’t the decade with the best quality of construction including insulation etc. Not to say you can’t rennovate, improve etc. I imagine windows may have already been replaced. Depends on price, location etc. I do know a number of houses of that vintage near where I used to live which have either been very nicely rennovated/extended (specialist companies to re-model them) or indeed demolished / new build as land value justifies that.

In the 70s the problems of condensation in insulation were not well understood. (At a given point, warm moist air from inside will reach a ‘dew point’ and condense, as it crosses insulation – today this is avoided by using a type of goretex vapour barrier).

70s timber framed houses are likely using a design from the USA, as noted in a reply above. NB the design life of the frame may well only be 50 years. I.e only 10yrs to go before major renovation can be expected to be necessary.

Get it surveyed carefully by someone who knows about timber framed construction

Sensible advice above.

There’s a generalised view in the UK that old = better and anything post war is a hideous carbuncle.

I don’t subscribe to that, but as with all building periods the collision of build quality/amenity/price is ever present. It may be a great house for one or two, but if you don’t get all three then you need to be happy where the compromise sits.

Exciting though!

True.
We were lucky.
We found that the most dilapidated, cheapest house in the area was pretty much perfect in every other respect.

I took a lot of convincing, wanting to cling on to something old and ‘characterful’, but I’m glad I changed my mind.
View it as a blank canvas and it can be fun and make economic sense.

I grew up in a house built in the 70s, the stereotypical 3 bed suburban semi, my extended family bought 4 houses dotted around the same estate and they’ve still got theirs.

They’re not much to look at, but I prefer them to the 80s and beyond houses – when they started making them from those yellow/red bricks – locally at least they’ve got bigger gardens, they’re bigger over-all and they’ve got garages usually. The internal walls were all brick in ours though.

The only issues I know of my family’s ones are they originally came with ‘back boilers’ tucked behind a fireplace, both of which seem a waste of space in the modern world and of course means a large water tank in the attic, oh and for whatever reason the smallest rooms used to get mould growing on the ceilings – that might be linked to the attic full of water tank though because since they’ve all got combi boilers now, it’s not an issue.

They’re not much to look at, but I prefer them to the 80s and beyond houses – when they started making them from those yellow/red bricks – locally at least they’ve got bigger gardens, they’re bigger over-all and they’ve got garages usually.

This. If memory serves it was Thatcher’s government that removed the minimum room and window size regulations around 1980 too.

Good reference on room / house size
https://www.architecture.com/files/ribaholdings/policyandinternationalrelations/homewise/caseforspace.pdf

Interesting footflaps – I’ll give that a read later.

I look at old houses and consider many to be pretty small (and I assume many of the smallest have been flattened as well). Then there seemed to be a peak in the 60s where both houses and their gardens were bigger with better shaped rooms.

Now, houses (in their desperate designed-by-committee to be faux GeorVictorEdwardian) all seem to be smaller and have zero outdoor space.

(And we all get to blame Fatcha!)

pretty much all houses have an element of bodging and shoddy construction (we are in the UK after all and the construction industry is a bunch of cheapskate money grabbng basterds) but i wouldnt touch a 70’s timber framed house. im still not totally sold on new ones now and i’m involved in alot of sites building them.

‘modern timber-framed construction clad with rendered brickwork’

work in a lot of houses and these are the worst, if something isnt square and plumb you can bet the rest is out of square and plumb, theyre a huge fire risk, and i believe timber frame construction for flats is banned in london due to this fact.

Once damp or moisture attacks the timber its a costly and difficult thing to remedy due to the construction and basicly all waklls being load bearing.

http://www.building.co.uk/fire-report-throws-future-of-timber-frame-into-doubt/3084886.article

and in liverpool a 3 storey block of flats was destroyed, a new green market opposite a fiore station in toxteth was destroyed and a block of new flats in Birkenhead was also destroyed in minutes due to fire.

Run away quickly.

the construction industry is a bunch of cheapskate money grabbng basterds

Or, the procurement of construction work on the basis of lowest price, irrespective of quality, has forced the development of culture of poor quality and low investment.

I remember a time when construction companies were debating whether to bid on a 1.2% or 1.4% profit – for an industry that runs the risk of weather and ground conditions. When Microsoft were declaring a profit of 49% of turnover.

the government recons it gets a return of 50p in teh pound in the construction industry. as a designer we get shafted on fees, subcontractors are let on a cheapest wins basis and teh main contractor director drives a Bentley.

the money goes somewhere and its not in innovation or the products.