The 1930s house is a design icon and the first truly modern British home, with over three million built. But many are now in need of 'essential repairs'. Problems like cavity wall tie failure, corroded metal windows, unstable bays, collapsing drains and subsidence are well-known, but how can you tell if your house has major defects or is just typical for its age? Forget 'makeovers': this easy-to-use manual shows where to look for danger signs, what's 'normal' and what isn't, and how to fix common defects. You'll also be able to talk the same language as builders and property professionals. This is the first book to cover logically all defects common to 1930s houses.

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Product Description

The 1930s house is a design icon and the first truly modern British home, with over three million built. But many are now in need of 'essential repairs'. Problems like cavity wall tie failure, corroded metal windows, unstable bays, collapsing drains and subsidence are well-known, but how can you tell if your house has major defects or is just typical for its age? Forget 'makeovers': this easy-to-use manual shows where to look for danger signs, what's 'normal' and what isn't, and how to fix common defects. You'll also be able to talk the same language as builders and property professionals. This is the first book to cover logically all defects common to 1930s houses.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12640 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-15
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 216 pages

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Customer Reviews

A Pleasant Surprise
Like most people, my experience of Haynes Manuals has been limited to their technically explicit, but dreadfully dull, tomes about cars. I was, therefore, very surprised and pleased to find that Ian Rock's house manual was far from the dry volume I had been dreading. His style throughout is relaxed and informal, even when describing the technical aspects of structures and features, and the inclusion of personal comments and asides makes the content very readable.

The 1930s was a boom period for house-building with a range of new materials used to construct the houses and all the mod-cons inside. Style-wise, the designs ranged from the conservative to the innovative, from one-foot-still-in-the-Victorian-era to the moderne cruise-liner look with its curved, sun-trap windows. Houses had never been so affordable for so many people or, in some cases, so shoddily built. Some houses were built in a mere four months and the need to keep costs low meant that corners were cut. Add to this the fact that building regulations were nowhere near as stringent as they are today and you can see why the current owner of a 1930s house may have many problems to deal with.

Ian Rock tackles these problems, chapter by chapter, in a very methodical fashion. He starts at the top of the house with the roof. The structure of a typical roof is described in depth with photos and diagrams to clarify the text and then he details the many types of tiles with which the roof might be covered. He continues with the various shapes which will be found in 1930s roofs such as valleys, bays, porches, eaves, gables, verges and flat roofs. Now that the reader knows what an ideal roof should look like, Ian Rock outlines the various defects which are likely to be found and their solutions. The chapter finishes with a DIY project - in this case how to replace a defective roof tile.

Each chapter follows a similar format so that the reader gradually builds up a picture of the features and structures which make up a 1930s house, and their variations. The defects and solutions section of each chapter also gives you clues about the way in which these problems have been solved so that you will know what you are looking at when you see it.

I found this book very readable, highly informative and, having been brought up in a 1930s house, rather nostalgic.