Every single building on earth is a new build, or at one point was, very hard for builders to put up 100 year old properties.
The guff about them being awful quality funny. Houses have always risked being low quality.
The idea that a 17 year old brickie in the 1920s was an artisan and put their heart and soul into it as opposed to just doing the minimum needed to get paid and clock off as early as possible is just rose tinted boomerism. They cared no more back then than they do now. At least now there are actual building codes to try and reign in the gashness
Good news is that in 50 years your house will have magically transformed into a high quality ‘best ‘tut’ Bri’ish’ house which is far better than the cheap muck ‘downt road fromt David Wilsons’
Only if successive owners spend the usual average of 5% the value of the property per year on maintenance and development.
By the 50 year point, the level of repairs, alterations and extensions etc often outweighs the original.
The 17 year old would have been carrying the bricks.
But look at the Victorian terraces still standing pretty strong, then go and look at a couple of snagging videos. Yes, old houses have the benefit of time and renovation, but the errors in new builds just shouldn’t happen. Some of these new builds, if left, wouldn’t last 50 years before requiring major structural work. Renovations on old houses on the other hand are mostly over the top of original structures.
They are shoddy, and it IS through a lack of training and development, but then also quality control. Houses are being signed off that simply aren’t built to the correct standard.
If the big companies cared, then the ethos from the top would trickle down - yeah, that brickie will still want to clock off early, but he would know that he won’t get to unless it’s right. Instead, it’s build it cheap, build it quick, and get out.
There’s no excuse for an alleged professional covering up (or even leaving) bodges and faking work to look regulation when it’s not. Time lost to doing it right would be minimal.
If contemporary new builds weren’t problematic, then there wouldn’t be an entire sub-industry of snagging inspection firms; their proliferation is a recent development.
We got our newly promoted NCO’s to arrange a fun night for ours. The night was brilliant, especially with our recent intake and we are thinking of having more fun nights in the future.
