Are walls INBETWEEN Terraced houses a different type?

[Udhi]

Hi all,
There are some odd looking houses coming up for sale near a friend's house;

Basically, it looks like a row of terraces had been knocked down, leaving one of the mid terraced houses standing on its own - looks like a really odd, skinny, detached property.

The house is from about early last century. One of the locals was saying that it is a bad idea to buy one of these if you did not know how to build walls, as the walls that separate the terraced houses are a different design/build compared to the walls that are built facing the open air??!! (front and rear walls).

Is this true?? The argument made sense, as it might be cheaper for the builders to use a lower quality brick or motar to build the separations as they would not encounter the nevironment.

Regards
Udhi

 

[Newboy]

Although it's possible that a row of terraced house has been demolished to leave just one standing it's very unlikely!

The party walls of a 1900 terrace would probably be single brick thickness, would incorporate chimney breasts and, in a lot of cases, would not extend full height to the roof (quite often finishing at the 1st floor ceiling level.

To leave one mid terrace standing by itself would mean laying additional founndations, building an outer skin, some re-roofing - unless there was a reason to preserve the house it's a lot of effort for little gain.

 

[^woody^]

Older houses commonly have a 'nicer' face brick to the front, and common bricks to the sides and rear. Party walls were generally common brick too. The common bricks don't look nice, but take the weather just the same.

Party walls would be 9" so the same as the external walls.

The only issue with buying a property like this, is ensuring that the making good from the demolition has been done properly, and the party walls pointed up properly too.

I can't understand this local guys belief that you need to be able to build walls if you want to buy it. If he knows so much, ask him to do the building survey on it.

Or if I was a local, and wanted to put someone off a cheap house, then I may say something similar

It would be prudent to find out why all the other houses were knocked down though. You don't want to find that the area is plagued by chavs bent on reorganising the local environment

 

[Udhi]

Thanks for that - good observation re lack of chimney bits and looking for possible reasons why the Terraced house's "companions" were taken down.

It was just academic interest about buying this kind of weird house that brought up the question - thanks guys!

Udhi