Currently in the middle of another DIY huge scope creep job which has gone from the Mrs wanting to hang some curtains in our hallway to me tearing out a bathroom, ripping up a floor, removing stud walls. Blah blah blah.
Old houses, got to love them, especially when the local cowboys have been crawling all over it.
Top 5 bodges in my mind at the moment (I've already forgotten plenty more - must be a defence mechanism):
1. All the stop cocks for a downstairs bathroom and heating hidden under the floor with a engineered oak floor on top and a toilet installed. Some leaking naturally.
2. Waste pipe sloping the wrong way so sewage pools under the shower - shower waste trap installed with a part missing to let odours in of course. Shower leaks - see #4
3. Opening widened to fit a small porch leaving a large load bearing lintel sitting on about 1cm of stone. Excellent work dickheads.
4. Deliberate removal of joist support to create a slope in a floor - don't ask why, this post is long enough already. Plenty of rot from joists sitting on damp ground.
5. Old doorway bricked up but didn't bother to support the bricks above that have now sunk into the void above the new block work because you couldn't be arsed to rake out a bit of mortar and point it up. All plaster on that wall a mess of cracks.
Another weekend evaporated in endless jobs repairing the work of cack handed idiots🤬
I helped my brother remodel his flat in a converted townhouse - 1850s building converted to flats in the 1950s. We wanted to move a stud wall between the kitchen and the bathroom - were about to start knocking through from the kitchen side, but for some reason changed out minds and started from the bathroom side instead.
Stripping off the bathroom plasterboard we discovered all the kitchen wiring had been connected by twist bare ends of wire together then instead of a junction box the bare wires were just stuck in a blob of plaster on the back for the drywall.
Back in my early 20s I was driving home from a late finish at work and realised I'd left my house keys, wallet etc locked in the building. It was past midnight and in a time before mobile phones the best solution I could think of was to to basically drive around past houses of people I knew and see if anyones lights were still on.
Passing my friend Martin's new house I saw his kitchen light was on - what luck! Rang the bell - it seemed to take a long time for him to appear and when he did he looked a bit bewildered and surprised. Explained the situation - could I crash out, how lucky that I'd seen his light was on and he was up.
"The light is always on - when the landlord had the building rewired they didn't fit a light switch"
Helped a mate do work, when we lifted the floor boards there was a long (18ft ) L shaped gas pipe running under the floor all the way across the room, , it was fixed at both sides of the room but nowhere else , and on the L corner, was an old ever ready rubberised torch, exactly the right height, glass down on the concrete underneath with the gas pipe neatly balanced on the end. 👍
whist drilling holes in a wall in a new to me house, first hole, as expected, moved across, zipppp, took 1 second to go through what should have been 4 inches through brick. It was a bundle of chicken mesh and papier mache with a wee plaster crust. 👍
sorry, but one of the best Xmas I ever had, mum and dads prefab had a little bit of damp at the bottom of a couple of walls, , investigation revealed that the large areas of gravel that surrounded the house had been laid on very thick, heavy duty, multiple layers of very waterproof plastic, so spent Xmas cutting it back around the house and dug a bit of a trench and lip. Was ok after that.
The light is always on - when the landlord had the building rewired they didn't fit a light switch"
Around 7 years ago I was working and staying in a fairly new hotel in Dubai. First night I was trying to find a switch anywhere that would turn half the bathroom lights off. Best I could do was half of them, absolutely no way of turning the rest off. The local techs I was working with weren't in the least surprised, said nothing was built with any intention of it being there for long, volume and speed was everything
whist drilling holes in a wall in a new to me house, first hole, as expected, moved across, zipppp, took 1 second to go through what should have been 4 inches through brick. It was a bundle of chicken mesh and papier mache with a wee plaster crust.
This one reminds me of a leak we had coming in over the top of a window in certain wind directions. Renovated the whole sash, new mastic - quite pleased with myself. Next time we had that wind it still leaked. When I finally got up there (one scaffold tower purchase later) I discovered a cricket ball sized lump of silicone sealant filling a hole above the stone lintel. Pulled it out and there was a giant void behind that I could put my whole arm in.
Son's first house a "Persimmon shit build" had a hot water flushing toilet, site agent wanted to cut access hole in living room ceiling to access pipe rather than lift upstairs floor/carpet. Told him that's not happening so the did lift the floor/carpet swapped pipes over refitted floor/carpet. Next day leak in ceiling due to leaking joint they just fitted 🤠 🤡
The people who had our house before us played a couple of blinders. They removed an upstairs fireplace and the chimney breast above it to the height of the ceiling. The massive chimney stack above it was then supported on a chipboard shelf. They then turned the staircase round, removing a supporting wall, leaving the upper storey wall and roof trusses supported by a piece of 4x3 wood which was twisting under the load. We replaced all of this with some massive steels.
When we bought the house the previous owner was most proud of his Greek style fitted kitchen a local artisan had done for him. I wasn't but we dicide to live with it. Then water started seeping out from under a boxed-in section. I cut a section out to crawl in and fix the plumbing leak and found:
A plumber's nightmare
The spot light cabling had bare wires twisted together.
The central heating exhaust was ventilation trunking running to just under the open chimney.
there was a gap of a cm or or so between the floor boards and the wall (no wonder the room was always cold)
The whole area behind the cupboards was full of chip fat as the hob extractor vented into the space rather than the chimney. yuk.
No more fancy Greek kitchen now.
Nothing surprises me in the building trade anymore.
I’m currently working on a £2.5m new build project, and the quality of work is absolutely shocking. There’s a team of Lithuanian plasterers and joiners that clearly haven’t worked on residential before and have some very interesting solutions.
A previous owner had re-routed the gas pipe to the fire in our front room, running it down the dead centre of the fireplace from overhead. He covered it with about 5mm of plaster, which meant the entire wall bowed out by about 20mm over its length.
The worst i ever heard of from my father in law builder was when he was working on a kitchen that has already had the chimney removed by previous builders...
He removed some plasterboard to find the entire upper section of the chimney supported by a couple of accro supports that has been entombed behind the plaster.
They had to evacuated the house while he sorted it.
The water supply to my house was 'upgraded' by the previous owners 20+ years ago with the idea that somehow a bigger diameter pipe would increase the less than impressive pressure. For reasons probably financial they decided to use a rural irrigation poly pipe that I believe is not supposed to be used for domestic water.
There's a 350m run of it all the way down the centre of our gravel driveway, neatly laid on top of the power supply. One of the reasons you're not supposed to use this pipe is because the wall is fairly thin - definitely thinner than the correct pipe. And I know this because every year or two I have to call out a leak detector to find a leak somewhere on that line, dig a section up, cut a section out and replace it. I know I should probably bite the bullet and replace the lot, but it's a bit daunting when i'd really rather ride bikes in my spare time!
Anyway, when our house was rebuilt the council building inspector came to check and noticed the horseshoe valve on the driveway that sticks up out of the ground and enables the leak detector to pressurise the line. He saw the pipe and said it would have to be replaced. The plumber (who obviously hadn't quoted for this!) proceeded to get some oversize pipe of an acceptable variety and use it to clad the two 50cm sections of pipe sticking out of the ground! And somehow that was acceptable when the inspector came back.
Homeopathic insulation, stud work by the wood butcher and unique plumbing . It’s sodding everywhere
Homeopathic insulation, stud work by the wood butcher and unique plumbing . It’s sodding everywhere
Having worked on NHBC guarantee work, nothing will surprise me.
Probably the worst I have seen are soil pipes not connected to drainage so that the space beneath the block and beam floor became a cesspit. Along with some steels that weren’t supported properly.
Not a bodge but a feature - sound deadening material between upper floor joists. A secondary supporting floor built above the lath and plaster ceiling of the room below. Filled with 'deadening' material - sand, fire ash, waste plaster etc etc. Basically the messiest material possible. Circa 80Kg/M2. From an era before plumbing and electrics so gets in the way of all modern services. Horrible to remove. I thought it was lazy trades throwing rubbish in the void when I first came across it. A Scottish speciality I believe.
1. All the stop cocks for a downstairs bathroom and heating hidden under the floor with a engineered oak floor on top and a toilet installed. Some leaking naturally.
Given that nearly all local stop cocks have failed by the time you need them so they leak not a great loss. We've got a central manifold so easy to isolate stuff but it's nearly always quicker and easier just to turn off the main stop cock for the house - we fitted a big quarter turn ball valve that's easy to get to.
not so easy in my parents house as *they* had tiled the main stop cock into the wall - when their toilets started free flowing I had to did out all the filth from the in street manhold and turn off the supply at the water meter.
While I was there dealing with the toilets I had a look at the toilet extractor fan that has stopped working. Took it off the ceiling to discover it just extracted into the first floor cavity - nothing behind it. No vent in an outside wall...
That house was built in the early 80s.
unique plumbing
It's not the neatest, but using a manifold makes a lot of sense with plastic pipe - no joints you can't access so nowhere to leak. You're also not splitting a pipe feed between 'things' so less pressure loss across taps.
I did ours with a manifold behind a bookshelf and a shutoff valve on each pipe. It's easier just to turn off the main supply if it's something you can fix quickly though, only bother taking the books off the shelf if somethings going to be isolated for a while
My old house had a downstairs loo and laundry room.
The hot water pipes went from boiler to the attic, around half the attic, down to the tap on sink, back up and then down to shower and bath tap, across ceiling, down next to the soil pipe, across the floor, up to the sink in downstairs loo, down under the floor and up to the washing machine (because hot feed to washing machine, obvs), then across the floor again to the kitchen where it was capped under the kitchen sink because the sink was about 2m from the boiler and someone had finally worked out that long uninsulated pipe legs = cold water...
All in all there was about 35-40m of uninsulated hot water pipe to get to a tap and about 20-25m to get to the shower.
When I changed them for a 'direct' route, that was cut down to about 3.5m and 7m of insulated pipework.
Seems the previous occupants had cold showers and no hot water in the loo and laundry for 12 years...
"The light is always on - when the landlord had the building rewired they didn't fit a light switch"
I have one of them in my halway.
E27 edison screw bulbs (rather than bayonet) FTW 😉
Means I can twist the bulb a bit to turn it on/off, although I leave it just slightly undone/off all the time. I think it goes off when I turn off all the breakers.
1. All the stop cocks for a downstairs bathroom and heating hidden under the floor with a engineered oak floor on top and a toilet installed. Some leaking naturally.
Given that nearly all local stop cocks have failed by the time you need them so they leak not a great loss. We've got a central manifold so easy to isolate stuff but it's nearly always quicker and easier just to turn off the main stop cock for the house - we fitted a big quarter turn ball valve that's easy to get to.
I meant the compression joints between the pipework and the valve body were leaking. But as it was under a suspended floor with earth below I had no idea, just the normal slight pressure loss at the boiler from f#ck knows where. And as I wasn't the one who hid them there I had no idea of there existence so doubly useless. Oh and all the microbore was lying directly on the earth - sucking heat out of the heating too.
Edit: The valves did actually still work, quite useful to be able to shut off hot water to a downstairs bathroom in isolation from the rest of the house, unless you take the spur for the shower off before the valve...
"The light is always on - when the landlord had the building rewired they didn't fit a light switch"
I have one of them in my halway.
E27 edison screw bulbs (rather than bayonet) FTW 😉
Means I can twist the bulb a bit to turn it on/off, although I leave it just slightly undone/off all the time. I think it goes off when I turn off all the breakers.
It's actually an easy problem to solve now - lots of options.
1) bulb with built in movement sensor (though can be annoying)
2) smart wifi bulb and switch on wall
3) battery free switch and the receiver stuffed in above the ceiling. these are brilliant - friend fitted one when they reversed a door opening that put the switch on the wrong side.
https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/QUWS1W.html?
hot water flushing toilet
I had that one! Local plumber who had a horse and his own theme tune fitted a new bathroom after I'd moved in with my now-wife so I could sell it. Mum noticed some time later when we were in painting it. Cheeky sod then made a lowball offer when I finally got it to a state where it could be sold...
Current issue here is that we have a load bearing wall through the middle of the house that I suspect has a load of steel in it, as we can have wifi on one side or other, but not both. My bodge here is going to involve a very short run of Cat6 through the wall with sockets on both sides, router on one side, AP on the other.
Our house was previously owned by a retired gas engineer. He replaced all the the pipes but capped the old pipework and left it in place.
The kitchen cooker was a spur off the lights. Old kitchen wiring was left in the kitchen wall. That was an easy fix as they put the wall units on the wall then plasterboarded the spaces between them and the base units then placed tiles on top. Removing them was simple as the tiles and board came off in one piece.
My parents house has, in the kitchen, a wall that is 4inches deeper on one side of the window than the other. Simply boxed a new wall around the pipes and electrics then fitted the kitchen.
My downstairs loo developed a leak from the cistern, looked outside no water from the overflow. Back inside couldn't spot the issue then realized there was no link from the bottom of the cistern to the overflow, which was neatly boxed in.
My downstairs loo developed a leak from the cistern, looked outside no water from the overflow.
This reminds me that in the current house, the downstairs loo overflow was through the wall onto the garage floor.