Anti nostalgia

elbowloh

rjsterry said:

TheBigBean said:

rjsterry said:

TheBigBean said:

rjsterry said:

Pross said:

rjsterry said:

Single glazed sash windows should definitely go on the list. The trouble is that Local authority conservation officers prioritise historical authenticity over energy efficiency and comfort so these are still mandated over large swathes of London.

Having worked in offices based in several Georgian buildings in Bristol I certainly agree with this. I really don't see why sympathetic modern replacement windows can't be allowed considering the issues around emissions and climate change.

Me neither. Looking at the consultation coming through on how we get from here to the emissions targets, there will be a bust up between the building conservationists and the energy conservationists at some point. I hope there is some central government leadership on this, but worry that it'll be the usual "yes, these things are very important, but just not here".

You can replace the windows. It just costs more, and in some cases a lot more. I guess central government could say that window x is a suitable replacement for window y.

Double glazing is effectively banned in large areas of the capital due to Conservation Areas. So while you can replace the windows, the replacements must also be single glazed. From a heritage point of view it does look different; the question is whether that really is of more importance. We don't insist people still use outdoor toilets or chamber pots, though, and we've outlawed coal burning fires. These also have heritage value but we're quite happy to prioritise people's health in those instances. If we're all moving to air source heat pumps in the next 20 years, that'll really ruffle the heritage feathers.

I know you have much more expertise than me in this, but I know that you can replace single glazing in a grade 2 listed building with double glazing, so I would have thought it was possible everywhere. In that case, the existing window frames are kept, hence the cost, but it makes no sense to allow an entire window frame to be replaced and to not allow double glazing.

Sense has nothing to do with it. The rules are different authority by authority, but several of the inner London boroughs have a straight no double glazing policy in Conservation Areas, let alone listed buildings. That's not to say that people don't just do it without applying for consent or that there are some situations where it has been allowed - hence the need for clear guidance from above. I've even had a CO insist that we source reproduction crown glass for what was probably a 1980s replacement sash window.

That is weird, particularly with some of the double glazed sash windows you can get nowadays. You would seriously not notice the difference. You can even double glaze an existing sash window frame.

https://londonsashwindows.com/double-glazed-sash-windows/

Pross

From my (thankfully) limited experience of conservation officers they live in this strange past world and have no consideration on the wider issues around a construction project. Their insistence on using real stone kerbs and paving can add so much cost to a scheme that it no longer becomes financially viable and that's before trying to actually find a supplier of the materials they want. If you're lucky there'll be some available from where they have been taken up in other areas. Then you might have the added H&S issues of handling a 3' x 2' paving flag rather than smaller modern units.

rjsterry

Pross said:

From my (thankfully) limited experience of conservation officers they live in this strange past world and have no consideration on the wider issues around a construction project. Their insistence on using real stone kerbs and paving can add so much cost to a scheme that it no longer becomes financially viable and that's before trying to actually find a supplier of the materials they want. If you're lucky there'll be some available from where they have been taken up in other areas. Then you might have the added H&S issues of handling a 3' x 2' paving flag rather than smaller modern units.

The fetishising of anything that is old regardless of its utility or value is particularly depressing. It's also an entirely modern obsession. No other period worried about upgrading buildings to meet the latest fashion and technology.

seanoconn

Outside toilet. I don’t remember it as an inconvenience at the time but until I was 6 years old we didn’t have an indoor toilet or bathroom. Not sure l’d fancy a walk to the end of the garden to do my business these days or filling up the tin bath with pots of boiling water.

Dorset_Boy

rjsterry said:

Dorset_Boy said:

Pross said:

pblakeney said:

Ice on the inside of your bedroom window.

Growing up, before my parents got central heating installed, my sister used to get frost on the inside of her bedroom wall. From memory I think the only heating we had was a gas fire in the living room and a paraffin heater that would get used in the bathroom in winter so we didn't get hypothermia on getting out of the bath.

I would throw in emersion heaters, we could get one bath that was fairly warm out of the hot water tank but it was then either a case of waiting hours for the tank to heat back up or sharing the water. This was the late 70s / early 80s so not back in the dark ages!

We only got rid of the immersion heated hot water tank in 2013 when we had an air source heat pump installed and went from an 80 litre tank to 200 /2 50 litre tank. We had night storage and a woodburner. Cost us a small fortune to stay warm!

A (relatively) early adopter. How have you found it?

On the whole it has been good - a much more constant level of heat and plentiful hot water for a family our size. Only frustration can be if the water needs reheating that can mean the heating isn't on. Our total heating bills certainly reduced significantly from where they were (40% reduction). It also improved the water pressure in our showers and bath as we no longer needed a cold water storage tank. We live in an 1950s end of terrace (of 3) with a 1980s and a 1999 extension and so needed all the hardware installed as we had nothing so it was interesting running pipes. We went from nightly fires from October to April to one or two a week, usually at weekends only.

TheBigBean

I don't miss fires. I'm convinced that anyone that thinks they are nice feature has never had to use them for heating.

bompington

TheBigBean said:

I don't miss fires. I'm convinced that anyone that thinks they are nice feature has never had to use them for heating.

I grew up having to use them for heating, and I do indeed think they are a nice feature, to the extent that I paid extra to have one in the living room when our current house was built.

elbowloh

Pross said:

From my (thankfully) limited experience of conservation officers they live in this strange past world and have no consideration on the wider issues around a construction project. Their insistence on using real stone kerbs and paving can add so much cost to a scheme that it no longer becomes financially viable and that's before trying to actually find a supplier of the materials they want. If you're lucky there'll be some available from where they have been taken up in other areas. Then you might have the added H&S issues of handling a 3' x 2' paving flag rather than smaller modern units.

Tbf, why would they? They are conservation officers, not development assistance officers. The planners/estimators/designers should/would have known the requirement before they started the scheme and price it up accordingly. They shouldn't assume that they can beat down the spec.

I worked on the project to redevelop Kings Cross Station, which also involved having to work on the bit of the underground station that is part of St Pancras (grade I listed), For the brickwork we had to reject 85% of the bricks that were delivered as they didn't sufficiently match the existing bricks.

Pross

elbowloh said:

Pross said:

From my (thankfully) limited experience of conservation officers they live in this strange past world and have no consideration on the wider issues around a construction project. Their insistence on using real stone kerbs and paving can add so much cost to a scheme that it no longer becomes financially viable and that's before trying to actually find a supplier of the materials they want. If you're lucky there'll be some available from where they have been taken up in other areas. Then you might have the added H&S issues of handling a 3' x 2' paving flag rather than smaller modern units.

Tbf, why would they? They are conservation officers, not development assistance officers. The planners/estimators/designers should/would have known the requirement before they started the scheme and price it up accordingly. They shouldn't assume that they can beat down the spec.

I worked on the project to redevelop Kings Cross Station, which also involved having to work on the bit of the underground station that is part of St Pancras (grade I listed), For the brickwork we had to reject 85% of the bricks that were delivered as they didn't sufficiently match the existing bricks.

I feel that all disciplines involved in a project need to have some willingness to be pragmatic and be prepared to compromise to a degree as the reality is that nothing gets done otherwise. It's fine to say "we want natural granite paving" but if some comes back and says they can't get hold of sufficient quantity and, for example, that it doesn't have sufficient skid resistance to be acceptable in safety terms then provides an alternative, very similar material, that addresses those requirements there needs to be some acceptance. It's not just a cost issue. We get similar issues with ecologists, even when they are supposedly working for the Developer.

surrey_commuter

elbowloh said:

Pross said:

From my (thankfully) limited experience of conservation officers they live in this strange past world and have no consideration on the wider issues around a construction project. Their insistence on using real stone kerbs and paving can add so much cost to a scheme that it no longer becomes financially viable and that's before trying to actually find a supplier of the materials they want. If you're lucky there'll be some available from where they have been taken up in other areas. Then you might have the added H&S issues of handling a 3' x 2' paving flag rather than smaller modern units.

Tbf, why would they? They are conservation officers, not development assistance officers. The planners/estimators/designers should/would have known the requirement before they started the scheme and price it up accordingly. They shouldn't assume that they can beat down the spec.

I worked on the project to redevelop Kings Cross Station, which also involved having to work on the bit of the underground station that is part of St Pancras (grade I listed), For the brickwork we had to reject 85% of the bricks that were delivered as they didn't sufficiently match the existing bricks.

and a fine job they did of Kings X. For years I would peer at the artists impressions on the hoardings and could not envisage what they were doing.

I have similar hopes for Bank underground station

elbowloh

Pross said:

elbowloh said:

Pross said:

From my (thankfully) limited experience of conservation officers they live in this strange past world and have no consideration on the wider issues around a construction project. Their insistence on using real stone kerbs and paving can add so much cost to a scheme that it no longer becomes financially viable and that's before trying to actually find a supplier of the materials they want. If you're lucky there'll be some available from where they have been taken up in other areas. Then you might have the added H&S issues of handling a 3' x 2' paving flag rather than smaller modern units.

Tbf, why would they? They are conservation officers, not development assistance officers. The planners/estimators/designers should/would have known the requirement before they started the scheme and price it up accordingly. They shouldn't assume that they can beat down the spec.

I worked on the project to redevelop Kings Cross Station, which also involved having to work on the bit of the underground station that is part of St Pancras (grade I listed), For the brickwork we had to reject 85% of the bricks that were delivered as they didn't sufficiently match the existing bricks.

I feel that all disciplines involved in a project need to have some willingness to be pragmatic and be prepared to compromise to a degree as the reality is that nothing gets done otherwise. It's fine to say "we want natural granite paving" but if some comes back and says they can't get hold of sufficient quantity and, for example, that it doesn't have sufficient skid resistance to be acceptable in safety terms then provides an alternative, very similar material, that addresses those requirements there needs to be some acceptance. It's not just a cost issue. We get similar issues with ecologists, even when they are supposedly working for the Developer.

But conservations officers are not really part of the project, they are there to ensure you adhere to the conservation requirements (in my mind).

9 times out of ten, i bet you that those very similar materials are cheaper! Am i right?It's just the way it is:

1-This is my estimate, these are materials and methods i'm going to use, this is my price.
2. Win the job
3. Find ways to "value engineer" the design / job so we can increase our margin.

I'm not saying it's wrong, but there's innovation and there's just cutting corners.

Similar for ecologists. In many ways an ecologist is trying to protect you from the risk of prosecution / stop you from doing stuff that's illegal. You pay them for their expertise in how to prevent harm to the environment. It's the developer/construction firm/engineers job to find solutions that fit the requirements.

rjsterry

Dorset_Boy said:

rjsterry said:

Dorset_Boy said:

Pross said:

pblakeney said:

Ice on the inside of your bedroom window.

Growing up, before my parents got central heating installed, my sister used to get frost on the inside of her bedroom wall. From memory I think the only heating we had was a gas fire in the living room and a paraffin heater that would get used in the bathroom in winter so we didn't get hypothermia on getting out of the bath.

I would throw in emersion heaters, we could get one bath that was fairly warm out of the hot water tank but it was then either a case of waiting hours for the tank to heat back up or sharing the water. This was the late 70s / early 80s so not back in the dark ages!

We only got rid of the immersion heated hot water tank in 2013 when we had an air source heat pump installed and went from an 80 litre tank to 200 /2 50 litre tank. We had night storage and a woodburner. Cost us a small fortune to stay warm!

A (relatively) early adopter. How have you found it?

On the whole it has been good - a much more constant level of heat and plentiful hot water for a family our size. Only frustration can be if the water needs reheating that can mean the heating isn't on. Our total heating bills certainly reduced significantly from where they were (40% reduction). It also improved the water pressure in our showers and bath as we no longer needed a cold water storage tank. We live in an 1950s end of terrace (of 3) with a 1980s and a 1999 extension and so needed all the hardware installed as we had nothing so it was interesting running pipes. We went from nightly fires from October to April to one or two a week, usually at weekends only.

Thanks for the feedback. I grew up with storage heaters + woodburner which was effective but expensive. I guess going straight from that to the heat pump is a bit more straightforward than upgrading a conventional CH system as almost everything would need to be changed anyway to deal with the lower flow temperatures.

briantrumpet

Tangentissimo maximo!

Dorset_Boy

rjsterry said:

Dorset_Boy said:

rjsterry said:

Dorset_Boy said:

Pross said:

pblakeney said:

Ice on the inside of your bedroom window.

Growing up, before my parents got central heating installed, my sister used to get frost on the inside of her bedroom wall. From memory I think the only heating we had was a gas fire in the living room and a paraffin heater that would get used in the bathroom in winter so we didn't get hypothermia on getting out of the bath.

I would throw in emersion heaters, we could get one bath that was fairly warm out of the hot water tank but it was then either a case of waiting hours for the tank to heat back up or sharing the water. This was the late 70s / early 80s so not back in the dark ages!

We only got rid of the immersion heated hot water tank in 2013 when we had an air source heat pump installed and went from an 80 litre tank to 200 /2 50 litre tank. We had night storage and a woodburner. Cost us a small fortune to stay warm!

A (relatively) early adopter. How have you found it?

On the whole it has been good - a much more constant level of heat and plentiful hot water for a family our size. Only frustration can be if the water needs reheating that can mean the heating isn't on. Our total heating bills certainly reduced significantly from where they were (40% reduction). It also improved the water pressure in our showers and bath as we no longer needed a cold water storage tank. We live in an 1850s end of terrace (of 3) with a 1980s and a 1999 extension and so needed all the hardware installed as we had nothing so it was interesting running pipes. We went from nightly fires from October to April to one or two a week, usually at weekends only.

Thanks for the feedback. I grew up with storage heaters + woodburner which was effective but expensive. I guess going straight from that to the heat pump is a bit more straightforward than upgrading a conventional CH system as almost everything would need to be changed anyway to deal with the lower flow temperatures.

House is 1850s, not 1950s as I originally mistyped btw, with 2 foot thick external walls on the original part.
We had no infrastructure beyond the pipes to the various taps around the house, so in some ways easier as everything was new as far as the heating side goes. We still have a few holes left in the carpets from where the NSHs stood though!

rjsterry

briantrumpet said:

Tangentissimo maximo!

Night storage heaters qualify for sure. Perhaps I should add log burners. A real fire is lovely, but goodness knows how much PM2.5 I inhaled as a child. My folks sacked off the Jøtul after they set the chimney tar on fire for the third time and changed to gas. Only to revert to an admittedly far superior and much cleaner burning stove in their new place. Difficult to find a substitute for such a primal thing as sitting around a fire.

Charlie_Croker

rjsterry said:

briantrumpet said:

Tangentissimo maximo!

Night storage heaters qualify for sure. Perhaps I should add log burners. A real fire is lovely, but goodness knows how much PM2.5 I inhaled as a child. My folks sacked off the Jøtul after they set the chimney tar on fire for the third time and changed to gas. Only to revert to an admittedly far superior and much cleaner burning stove in their new place. Difficult to find a substitute for such a primal thing as sitting around a fire.

I think the increase in motor vehicles and the baggage that brings will have more than compensated for your missing particulate matter and obverted any withdrawal symptoms you may have felt, not that I’m aware of any that is progress eh!

ballysmate

I remember my mother getting a fridge. (Yeah, I know, luxury). It ran on gas. Anyone remember them?

bompington

Time to rename this the 'ome to us were 'ole in the road thread

Charlie_Croker

ballysmate said:

I remember my mother getting a fridge. (Yeah, I know, luxury). It ran on gas. Anyone remember them?

Ay, they still make them for caravans and the like.

Technically they all run on gas

capt_slog

I'm not sure if it was a gas fridge, but when my mum married my dad and moved into this house, they had a fridge and it was a bit of rare luxury for the time.

When they'd not been married long, dad came home one day to see a hammer on the kitchen table. When asked what it doing there, mum answered that she had been "defrosting the fridge". He thought at first she was joking, but she was quite serious, and didn't know that to defrost a fridge you turned it off and waited. He had visions of it all being bent and ruined, but she knocked all the ice off without damaging it.

Re water heating.
The Slog's second home had an immersion tank (as did the first). Mrs Slog had always had tanks where she lived before she met me. I though, had grown up with a multi-point water heater. A bit like a combi but only does the hot water, you turn the tap, the boiler lights.

So, I wanted to get rid of the tank in MY house, and put in a multipoint. Mrs Slog could not get how it worked, thought it must be a 'tank on the wall' and still didn't understand to the point it was plumbed in. The first time she ran a bath, she came downstairs all excited because it had been running for 10 minutes and was still hot.

bompington

I still shudder a little bit remembering our first flat - a top floor flat with a cold header tank in the loft.

It was the feathers floating in the bath that first warned me.
It was fine once I'd removed the dead pigeon.

briantrumpet

Twin tub washing machines, in which the clothes just got more and more twisted up, and the washing water got dirtier and dirtier. Lovely.

rjsterry

bompington said:

I still shudder a little bit remembering our first flat - a top floor flat with a cold header tank in the loft.

It was the feathers floating in the bath that first warned me.
It was fine once I'd removed the dead pigeon.

The origin of the instruction to only drink water from the kitchen tap.

Charlie_Croker

rjsterry said:

bompington said:

I still shudder a little bit remembering our first flat - a top floor flat with a cold header tank in the loft.

It was the feathers floating in the bath that first warned me.
It was fine once I'd removed the dead pigeon.

The origin of the instruction to only drink water from the kitchen tap.

...and never fill the kettle from the hot tap

rjsterry

That was more the risk of nicely incubated pathogens, no?

Charlie_Croker

Could be that too, the reason I was always given was the possibility of a rodent or its faeces ending up rotting away in the header tank, unknown and unseen

rjsterry

Charlie_Croker said:

Could be that too, the reason I was always given was the possibility of a rodent or its faeces ending up rotting away in the header tank, unknown and unseen

I never understood why they so rarely had such a basic safety feature as a lid.

Wheelspinner

briantrumpet said:

Twin tub washing machines, in which the clothes just got more and more twisted up, and the washing water got dirtier and dirtier. Lovely.

There was an almost legendary student party house when I was at university, largely because one of the guys had re-purposed an old twin tub washing machine into a margarita mixer. Worked a treat.

briantrumpet

Wheelspinner said:

briantrumpet said:

Twin tub washing machines, in which the clothes just got more and more twisted up, and the washing water got dirtier and dirtier. Lovely.

There was an almost legendary student party house when I was at university, largely because one of the guys had re-purposed an old twin tub washing machine into a margarita mixer. Worked a treat.

With just the slightest hint of rubber?

secretsam

briantrumpet said:

Twin tub washing machines, in which the clothes just got more and more twisted up, and the washing water got dirtier and dirtier. Lovely.

We had one, and later at university my house had one. Dreadful. The colour of the waste water!!! Still, better than washing by hand...