Bathroom wall to stairway partition very thin?

[nuzuki]

Weve bought a new house, a barrett box built in 1987 or so. My concern is the thickness of the bathroom wall partition. It is at most 4cms thick. The whole bathroom wall is tiled on this 4cm thick partition wall. Is this anything to be concerned about?

Other side of the wall is the stairs. I was thinking of poking about in the loft and seeing if I can tie the partition to a joist to stop is flexing. There is a crack at the top of the wall on the stiarwell side. If I push the wall I can see it flex a couple of mm.

I hope that explains it ok if not I can grab a pic sometime.

Thanks for your help

 

[KenGMac]

nuzuki, good evening.

Can I suggest you have a look for "paramount partitions"

These things were all the rage back in the day? much loved by local Authorities and some stingy Developers.

Ken

 

[nuzuki]

Thanks for your reply Ken. It seems it could be on of those. I was going to run a stud detector over it and see how many pings I get which might give away a bit about how its made.

I measured it last evening and it was 6cms wide

 

[opps]

My stepson is re-doing his bathroom at the moment. I guess that the house is about 18 years old.

He asked me to plumb in a towel rail on the 800mm wall to the side of the door way. I started by drilling a series of holes to find out where the joists are. There weren't any.

In the end, I had to get the Fein multitool out. The walls are little more than a core of 25mm plasterboard with 9.5mm plasterboard glued to it either side.

I provisionally ran the pipes but refused to hang the towel rail until he glues 18mm plywood to the wall and then tiles over it. The 18mm ply will also help to fill the gap at the end of the bath though, I wasn't just being an*l.

I was shocked by the poor quality of construction. The walls are internally framed with 25x25mm timber. My drilling 18mm holes through it to accommodate the pipes and the holes left by the original electricians means that as it stands the wall clearly moves if anyone leans against it.

 

[KenGMac]

nuzuki, good evening again.

There is a 99% chance you will only find timber studs in 3 places in any one Paramount panel, ceiling, floor, and junction to the next panel, no timber horizontals apart from floor and ceiling, no matter how wide the panel.

The routine to fix these things was as I recall, fit the first timber bearer to an external wall as needed, tun a floor batten and a ceiling batten. Introduce the Paramount panels themselves and "Slide" the panel along the floor straddling the floor and ceiling timbers.

Next move was to rip out the internal cardboard honeycomb panel core with the claw on your hammer, then fit another timber bearer so the timber was situated 50/50 in and out of the panel you had just fitted, to allow the next panel to get a hold on that bearer. fix a few plasterboard clout nails and job was done.

OK All of that was more than 50 Years ago, what I do recall was that if you were fast aqt it there was a reasonable "Bonus" that could be obtained.

As opps above one way of "reinforcing" the wall and giving youa t least something to fix to is to glue ply, and if possible carefully screw to the timbers of the paramount system.

As I recall there have been a few questions on the board as regards paramount.

Ken