airye house loft

[c20spit]

Hi,
I have an airey house that has been bricked up on the outside. I have just finished blocking up between the vertical columns. I basically took all of the internal plasterboard off and cut blocks to fit the gaps the tied them in to the columns with large 90 degree metal ties all the way from the ground to the wooden plate at the top of the spine wall. once at the top i filled the gap with a 2 part polyester resin rather than cement so that the top plate is actually resting on the blocks and not hovering 1cm above them. my hope is that now the spine wall should be strong enough and be load bearing to a higher degree than it was originally. I plan to make the attic into a useable space. it wont be to regs etc as i do not have the headroom to get it classed as an extra room so it will just be an office for myself with no permanent stairs.
Firslty do you think what i have done will improve the load bearing ability of the spine wall. Secondly , i was going to use i beams ,175mm ish to go across the entire span ( 6m, the spine wall divides the house into 2.5m and 3.5 m spans.) as they are light . My only concern is that my house doesnt have many right angles and it would be easier to get some 8 by 2 to fit and do it in 2 pieces and bolt together over the spinewall, this would weigh more though. My eaves are quit shallow , i'm not currently sure how much of an angle i would have to cut to get the wood to fit under them.Any one have a good idea of the best way to go forward.
As there are few fans of the Airey house i shall say that if it got knocked down i could probably put up betwwen 7 and 9 smaller houses which was the main reason i bought it. if i could buy my neighbours house from the council i reckon you could get between 13 and 15 in total. all i need is an earthquake now.

 

[tony1851]

Regardless of structural issues, you have to ensure that it complies with Building Regs. and make a proper application and allow for inspections etc. This is nothing to do with the headroom, but with the fact that you have created an extra space, irrespective of what you use it for or what you may call it.
You would need to consider issues such as insulation, staircase access and means of escape etc.

 

[c20spit]

Thanks for the reply, i have had an architect round to have a look who said it couldn't be done feasibly due to height issues , he also said that a structural engineer would just tell me to put a steel in. this cannot be done due to the construction of the house( i would need 3 steels). all i want to do is have a boarded out attic with some stuff on the floor a ladder up through the hatch and ill chuck a pc up there. I would just like it to be stronger than the 3x2 joists i have at the moment. If the spine wall is now fully load bearing then making the floor stronger is relatively simple. the problem is that neither the architect or a planning guy that came round know anything about Airey houses. I spoke to the firm responsible for overseeing the external rebuild ,Curtins consultancy and they said that bricking up in between was fine but i get the feeling they would say anything to get me off of the phone. i just wondered if anyone here had experience with Airey homes. Thanks.

 

[tony1851]

Along with a lot of the non-traditional houses built after the War, the Airey has had its share of problems and is also difficult to adapt.
Presumably the steels won't go in because of the post-and-panel construction.

I came across a not dissimilar problem some time ago, where the owner just wanted to stiffen the existing 3x2 ceiling joists. He got extra lengths of 3x2 and screwed them firmly to the tops of the existing joists, in line with them - not at right-angles. To do this, he used 4" x 12s screws, and countersunk the top of the new pieces by 1", every 12". He added some PVA glue as well. This had the effect of increasing the effective depth of the joists and so making them stiffer; not quite equivalent to 6x2 but not far off in practical terms. There was no need to take them right into the eaves, finished them a foot or so short. He did this both sides of the spine wall and got a good sturdy floor, finished with plywood I think.
It couldn't be used as a bedroom of course but it gave him a good floor for storage.

PS you mentioned 'bricking up in between'. Is this the party wall problem? a lot of Airey houses were open in the loft space and Inspectors used to call them Airey by name and airy by nature. I don't know about bricking up, though. Might be easier/safer to put some insulated studwork up.

 

[c20spit]

the party wall is still how it always has been. don't really mind that as they seem to be very good at insulating sound compared to all of the normally built house i have lived in before. i have bricked up the central wall of the house as in the pics, before and after. one of the biggest headaches i'm having at the moment is that i'm relaying all the floorboards upstairs. unfortunately all of the walls upstairs that run front to back are built from cinder block and have been built on top of the floorboards which are also on the metal floor joist . these houses were not meant to have any work done on them, otherwise no one in their right mind would have built them like they have. just putting in a new banister is looking to be a right pain but has to be finished tomorrow. I think ill put some 7x2 up there , overlap them by 1m and bolt them together over the spine wall. cheers

bricked up

• c20spit
• 6 May 2012
• 1

original

• c20spit
• 6 May 2012
• 1

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