Near me there are some houses where the guttering appears to be a afterthought. I suppose it would make clearing the gutters out easy if only the gutters didn’t prevent the windows opening!
[url=https://flic.kr/p/Hcmqir]You gutter be kidding[/url] by Rob Johnson, on Flickr
[url=https://flic.kr/p/Go2U2p]You gutter be kidding[/url] by Rob Johnson, on Flickr

What examples have you got?

No photos, but my general frustration with the (lack of ergonomics in my house) lead me to consider the minimum number of doors I have to pass through to get from any bedroom to the outside:

Via front door: 3 doors
Via garage: 3 doors (incl garage door)
Via conservatory: 5 doors…!

What sort of idiot thinks that the best thing to do is make me zig-zag through the ground floor of the house if I want some fresh air in the back garden…?!!!

I think its the pipework that offends me the most in that first photo. Is the boiler snorkel really needed, looks far enough away from the non-openng side of the window? As for the mess of white pipes below, slap bang on the front of the house…

That whole extension just needs bulldozing.

I suspect the guttering “details” are due to the subbie saving some money on down pipes and the groundworkers/principal on rainwater drainage.

Ours was built by the builder for himself and he obviously made it up as he went along.

Random corner of the dining room has a ~1ft (1 breze block) square recess, presumably he started a wall at the other end and it didn’t line up where he thought it would.

Upstairs brezeblock walls aren’t above their downstairs counterparts, god knows what’s load bearing and what isn’t anymore.

Switches for the hallway – 1 by front door, 2 by the kitchen (one does the under stairs cupboard?), one in the middle of the hallway, which switches the one on the upstairs landing/stairs.

Every wall in the house seemingly has something on it (door, window, radiator, etc), which makes planning out furniture really difficult. He obviously planned the furniture first then put the heating in, so we now have to guess where he had his stuff and fit it in there.

Gas meter robs about a foot of the garage width because it’s by the door.

House is in the middle of a large-ish plot. Which means we have a huge front garden, and a fairly average rear one.

Errr … why did you buy it ? …. 😀

Our un-extended house has different ceiling heights due to the use of different depth joists.

Block walls built on top of floorboards.

A single window which is partly in the pantry and partly in the kitchen.

Windows and doors built right into the corner of rooms, so no room for a proper doorframe.

Main electric fuse for next door in our house, annoying when it starts to spark and need to call out the electricity board.

Errr … why did you buy it ? ….

‘Priced accordingly’ I think is the phrase.

It’s a nice house, on a street of houses worth probably 50% more on considerably smaller plots!

It’s a 4 bed 1 bathroom, probably used as much materials as a 5bed with en-suites, on a plot that could comfortably have held 2 houses.

Get planning permission and build two houses then – live in one, sell the other, have no mortgage.

on a plot that could comfortably have held 2 houses.

retirement plan ??

Oh you live right where I used to live. Has the riding around Ely improved recently? 🙂

I’ve come to the conclusion that most people who design and/or build houses are in fact idiots, or apparently have never lived in a house.

For a start there’s the general trend in modern houses that every bedroom is a different size, starting with a large master room and getting smaller and smaller down to a 6×6 box. Obviously everyone has sorted their children into preference order so the favourite kids get the better rooms, right?

Our current house has a mini-hallway into one of the bedrooms which is a few inches narrower than a standard door, so it feels really cramped.

Our old house had all the piping to the hot water tank on the *far side* of the tank, presumably someone did the plumbing before it was boxed in and the door went on the wrong side. The plumber who turned up to replace the T valve was not amused.

One house we looked at as a doer-upper had the mains entry point and fuse box in the bathroom.

Switches for the hallway

Oh yes, we have issues in this area as well:

One end of the hallway has a random selection of switches installed at different times.

The other end has a single panel with four switches. From the left to right:

Switch 1: Kitchen. This to light a room accessed via another room and two doors (two of the five required to exit..!).
Switch 2: Lights the right hand ceiling light in the sitting room
Switch 3: that’s right, lights the left hand sitting room ceiling light
Switch 4: Lights a light behind you in the hallway that already has another switch closer to it.

Definitely installed by Mr S. Wonder, Electrical Contractor.

you make the mistake to assume that that house was ‘designed’ in the first place.

Not so much physical design, but “street” layout.
Effectively they built our block of 8 semi’s back to front.
So there is no street at the street address, but is a street to the back of the house, that naturally is not our street but another one.
Yodel don’t stand a chance. Other delivery guys will just say sod it and carry a washing machine over a village green and thru the house when you tell them left, 2nd left, 2nd left (or is is 3rd left?) to get the truck round the back of the house.

bargain house though, and 3x the amount of off-street parking of the newer houses in the village. and garden 4x the size.

retirement plan ??

The builder built next door first, then sold off ~50% of the land of the garden at the back to another developer (which I suppose would have made the front more in proportion) and built ours.

If I had a big enough windfall I’d buy next door and do just that, I reckon you could fit 3 houses on the combined plot comfortably, 4 if you could negotiate access from the private road to the side, and if better designed you could have more bedrooms, en-suites etc.

Oh you live right where I used to live. Has the riding around Ely improved recently?

Yep, haven’t you heard about the new trail centre between Witchford and Chatteris? They’ve shipped in a whole Welsh valley (the terrain that is not the scag addicts). 😉

[quote]I’ve come to the conclusion that most people who design and/or build houses are in fact idiots, or apparently have never lived in a house

We’re not all bad. In fact ive just sold my mum and dad a house we built so hopefully that’s sound as itll be mine one day…

Ours has many sins.
Damp proof strip dips below the patio level.
Stupidly small windows.
A back boiler.
A garden that is unbelievably steep (hover mower on a rope).
etc, etc.

It’s away from a road and has a great view though!

Wierd thing is I’ve lived in loads of houses from a small terraced cottage in north Yorkshire, to a 300 year old flat with 20ft ceilings in a National trust house. And it’s only new-ish houses that are this bad.

I think the problem is that old (<1930’s) houses were built to a very small number of similar layouts so it was hard for the builder to go wrong. They didn’t have CH (or electric if you go back further) so all those niggling things like light switches were put where you wanted them when they were installed.

Then the 60’s/70’s happened, and suburbs, and suddenly builders had enough space to really cock things up, and they weren’t architects so didn’t get it right, this is why my house is so damn odd.

Then we get to the 80’s and the beginnings of the modern Tesco/Morrisons/Asda/Taylor Whimpey houses. Turning out perfect houses first time every time, because your house is actually the 865th identical one they’ve built on your street alone.

Then people move in, and realise there’s no storage anywhere so put built in wardrobes in, obscuring light switches, convert the garage to a random bedroom off the kitchen, add extensions, meaning there’s now 5 doors front to back and no light in half the house and generally ruin everything.

Yep, haven’t you heard about the new trail centre between Witchford and Chatteris? They’ve shipped in a whole Welsh valley (the terrain that is not the scag addicts).

Excellent. I knew the Cambridgeshire Mountain Rescue would find that lost mountain and rescue it someday!

The number of times I have seen ‘site solution required’ written on architect’s drawings on a particularly difficult to imagine detail, probably explains everything and it’s not just the builder and / or project manager 😀

I rented an upstairs flat owned by a plumber who had put the heating in himself. The pipes had been run through the loft space and dropped down from the ceilings to the radiators. You couldn’t close the door in the smallest bedroom as the door was right in the corner of the room and the pipes dropped down too close to the door on the wall at 90° to the door frame. I used to wonder what he would have done if he’d put the pipes in with the door closed.

I think its the pipework that offends me the most in that first photo. Is the boiler snorkel really needed, looks far enough away from the non-openng side of the window? As for the mess of white pipes below, slap bang on the front of the house… That whole extension just needs bulldozing.

Glad it’s not just me then, why did the council allow a completely different brick to the one next door?

the gutter has been run across the window because the tightarse builder hasn’t thought how to run both sides of the drain to the downpipe so he’s not cut it. what a bodge.

Oh yes. “Tbc by M.C.”

To be confirmed by main contractor. Quite a few of those on our architect designed self build. Source of most of our disagreements when I pointed out that I was going to be the main contractor and I wanted a build able design.