Hi everyone found this forum and decided to join as I have a great interest in DIY as well as being a professional sparky.
My cousin is a builder by trade but he really slipped up when he bought a house for himself. Apart from needing a rewire We found the chimney breasts had been removed in the bedrooms and lounge but the stack was still up top unsupported apart from the party wall, so frantic installation of gallows brackets and suitable brickwork to take the 5 ton of masonry load before the party wall collapsed.
The kitchen was nice but we were suspicious as it was clad in wall panels which look very nice but hide lots. The kitchen was a single story extension out the back, the back of the house it turned out was supported on a massive RSJ which was good, except at one end it was sitting on a bit of old pine which had crushed down under the weight and the other a pillar of bricks that was obviously part of the original back wall and had a none too subtle lack of mortar, in fact without thinking I pulled one of the bricks from the middle and everything wobbled alarmingly so we legged it fast to my cousins storage to collect Acro props to support the back of the house, once we had done this the old lady next door came out to chat and told us what a nice man had lived there before he had done her extension! More acro props were collected before we gave her a visit, they were needed! Other than that I found a bit of old and manky cable connected to the immersion heater and a 30A fuse at the other end, the cable was nowhere near 30A and let us not worry about a switch! I found live cables under the floors just sitting there, and sockets with dead cables that went nowhere! Needless to say my cousin became very busy before they all moved in!
My cousin is a builder by trade but he really slipped up when he bought a house for himself. Apart from needing a rewire We found the chimney breasts had been removed in the bedrooms and lounge but the stack was still up top unsupported apart from the party wall, so frantic installation of gallows brackets and suitable brickwork to take the 5 ton of masonry load before the party wall collapsed.
The kitchen was nice but we were suspicious as it was clad in wall panels which look very nice but hide lots. The kitchen was a single story extension out the back, the back of the house it turned out was supported on a massive RSJ which was good, except at one end it was sitting on a bit of old pine which had crushed down under the weight and the other a pillar of bricks that was obviously part of the original back wall and had a none too subtle lack of mortar, in fact without thinking I pulled one of the bricks from the middle and everything wobbled alarmingly so we legged it fast to my cousins storage to collect Acro props to support the back of the house, once we had done this the old lady next door came out to chat and told us what a nice man had lived there before he had done her extension! More acro props were collected before we gave her a visit, they were needed! Other than that I found a bit of old and manky cable connected to the immersion heater and a 30A fuse at the other end, the cable was nowhere near 30A and let us not worry about a switch! I found live cables under the floors just sitting there, and sockets with dead cables that went nowhere! Needless to say my cousin became very busy before they all moved in!
