For Ever, For Everyone?

“Over the next five years the National Trust aims to renovate more than 5,000 buildings to meet a set of minimum environmental standards that include installing maximum loft insulation, water saving devices, rainwater storage, double or secondary glazing, thermostatic heating controls and efficient lighting systems.”
http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-global/w-news/w-latest_news/w-news-enviro-renovate.htm

It all sounds very lofty and ideal, but the reality is that, as a landlord with many tenanted properties large and small, the National Trust is being forced, usually by local government Environmental Health Officers whose understanding of esoteric issues such as breathability and traditional construction is minimal at best, to comply with a variety of “decent homes” standards which many private owners of historic buildings would find unacceptably harmful to the qualities that led them to buy in the first place.

The standards themselves are broad, and set out with the best of intentions, but achieving those standards is being left in the hands of people who simply do not understand the fundamental difference between what can be achieved in a modern, air-tight rabbit hutch by a volume housebuilder, and what can realistically be achieved without long-term damage in almost any property built before about 1920.

The first I knew of all this was when the NT's property manager phoned me querying the very specific nature of the remedial works being required by Environmental Health, to an unlisted 17th century cottage on one of their local estates. The property does indded have very serious damp problems, most of which are condensation-related as the bathroom and kitchen are internal and poorly ventilated, and the last tenant never opened the windows. Some choice extracts from the notice are reproduced below:

HOUSING ACT 2004
Sections 11 and 12
The Authority … serve this Improvement Notice under Section 11 and require you to take the remedial action specified. Details of the Category 1 hazards together with the remedial action required are contained in the Schedule attached.

A person, on whom an improvement notice is served, commits an offence if s/he fails to comply with it and is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale.

Nature of the hazard :- Excess Cold; Damp and Mould Growth; Falling on Stairs; etc (yes, they really did add “etc” as a hazard! Bit of a catch-all, that one)

The deficiency giving rise to the hazards:-
Absence of heating system; Defective windows; Rising damp to walls; Rising damp to floors; Insufficient insulation to walls and ceilings; Inadequate surface water drainage; Defective brickwork; Defective roof; Steep stairwell without banister; Absence of mechanical extraction to Kitchen


Nature of remedial action required to be taken:-

Insulate Loft Space
Increase insulation of loft space to 270mm using quilted insulation or apply equivalent to 1st floor ceiling to provide a 'U' value of not more than 0.16 and to comply with current Building Regulations.

Damp Proof/Insulate Walls
Treat all walls to the ground floor to prevent rising damp

Carefully remove for re-use, existing skirtings (where present), and door linings. Hack off all damp and defective plaster to a minimum of 1m above the proposed damp proof course, or 150mm above the level of the damp which ever is greater.

Key brickwork ready to receive new rendering. Inject a chemical horizontal/vertical damp proof course guaranteed by an insurance bond for a minimum 20 year period. This work must be carried out by a specialist contractor.

For internal walls:-
render exposed areas using a suitable sharp sand and cement mix, incorporating a waterproofing additive and salt inhibitor as instructed by the specialist contractor.

For external walls:- (Dry Line)
Hack off any loose, sodden or perished plaster to all the ground and 1st floor external walls. Provide tanalised softwood battens and fix vertically to full height using plastic wallplugs and brass screws. Battens to be suitably sized and spaced to allow for insulation slabs to be fitted to bring "U" value of walls up to current Building Regulations standard. Cover battens and insulation slabs with 9.5mm thick foil backed plasterboard, fixed with galvanised clout nails or corrosion resistant screws.

Scrim joints to plaster board and finish walls with a 3mm plaster setting coat, flush with existing plaster where applicable.

Lay New Damp Proof Floor
Remedy the ground floor dampness and for that purpose take up the existing surfaces of the rooms to the ground floor excavate to a sufficient depth and construct a new floor incorporating an efficient horizontal damp-proof membrane; the damp-proof membrane to be carried without a break vertically up the walls to a sufficient height above the DPC membrane, upon completion the interior surfaces of the walls to be re-plastered.


Repair Chimney Stack
Renew and re-point new brickwork to chimney in suitable cement.

Cut out defective brickwork from the chimney stack replace with new or sound second-hand bricks set in cement mortar, renew defective pointing, defective soakers, flashings, and fillets (soakers and flashings to be in code 5 lead, and fillets to be in suitable mortar mix incorporating a waterproofing additive.) Seal or cowl pot/s, leave roof sound and watertight on completion.

Re-point Wall
Rake out all loose and perished brickwork pointing to all facades of the property, specifically to the right façade of the property as you look on from the adjacent road, to a depth of 20mm. Brush out debris, wet and re-point in suitable mortar, with the joints finished to match existing in all respects.

Fascinating, isn’t it?

What really concerns me is how many people (who don't have the NT's experience) would meekly comply and therefore do more harm than good to their properties? Not long after this notice was served, I chanced across another notice from Env Health requiring PVCu windows to be installed in a listed building, with cement repointing and plastic gutters being specified too. The bullying manner and prescriptive “tick box” way in which some EHOs are approaching the task is bad enough when pushed at the NT, but where private landlords are concerned, threats of legal action if specific treatments – often injected damp proof courses, double glazing and dry-lining – are not carried out, lead to all manner of terribly damaging works being done, “on council orders” and therefore often without the necessary consents.

The Joy of Listing

With around 350,000 Listed Buildings in England you'd think that most of what was worth protecting had been identified by now. Certainly that's the subtext of the Government's cynical treatment of the whole Historic Environment business over the last few years - a result of never going outside the M25. And of course, those of us who think that nowhere near enough is listed should remember that even if we pulled them down at a rate of one a day, it would take a thousand years to erase them all - part of Gordon's plan, no doubt, and it would create significant employment in the vitally important demolition sector, as, naturally, did the removal of the removal of the Liverpool Customs House (above) in the years after the Second World War - "relieving unemployment" really was given as the reason for demolition. That unemployment might also have been relieved by repairing it (it had been bomb-damaged but was structurally largely intact) escaped the notice of the City Fathers, which in itself says much of what you need to know about our elected representatives.

Another city that suffered badly in the War was Plymouth, where the same pattern of hasty clearance after the bombing gives the impression, in photos from 1945, of total destruction by the enemy, rather than the truth, which was total destruction by the City Engineer. At least in Plymouth the rebuilding followed a vision (albeit one rapidly watered down by economics and political expediency). It is the legacy of that vision which is now being disparaged and destroyed.

You may laugh, but Plymouth is Britain's only Art Deco city - the architectural language chosen when the rebuilding started in the late 1940s was an already rather charmingly old-fashioned Clarice Cliff mode, and the first stage of the rebuilding followed this diligently all the way along Royal Parade, the new grand avenue crossing from east to west, and up the first part of Armada Way, the great north-south vista from the railway station to the sea (that Plymouth Hoe interrupts the view and prevents a view of salt water was just a mnor inconvenience).

Having had such vision 60 years ago, the successors to that city council are now busy finding ways to smash it all up. Their "vision" can be found in video form here: http://www.plymouth.gov.uk/homepage/environmentandplanning/planning/planningpolicy/ldf/aaps/ldfcitycentreuniversityaap/citycentreuniversityissuesandpreferredoptions/ldfcitycentreflythrough.htm


A very loaded consultation has made it quite clear that the council see any further listings as a "constraint" (the City were livid at the listing of their own offices - which are admittedly difficult to like at first glance but are, on close inspection, excellent of their type and date http://www.plymouth.gov.uk/civiccentrereasons http://www.c20society.org.uk/docs/casework/2007_plymouth.html)

And declaring a conservation area has been ruled out too, despite two independent reports (one by English Heritage and CABE) strongly suggesting that much of the city centre should be designated.

But I digress, as always. The protection of Post-War buildings is, for reaons of fashion, going to be a controversial issue for a few more years - Laver's Law of clothing fashion applies just as much to architecture http://www.fashion-era.com/lavers_law.htm

In the meantime, I commend these websites:
http://www.nicebuildings.com/ which is a bit over-enthusiastic even for my tastes at time, but does show that the tide might be turning, and: http://www.nicebuildings.com/gh/home, which deals with Plymouth and is very good on how later alterations, rather than the original designs, are to blame for the tattiness which is all the City Council can see (though the photos don't quite do justice to the experience of being there).

Well, here we go

New to this whole blogging lark, so please bear with me (I know that'll be taken as an invitation to pick holes and fling abuse)
Expect, if I can make it work, laughter, tears, tantrums, hideous breaches of professional confidentiality, a fair degree of ranting, and perhaps some useful information about the life of a Conservation Officer at a small English local council, dealing with people who've bought a historic building, and want to know "what can I do with it?" (Standard first answer, "What have you done that for? go and buy a nice new house on a Barratt estate and never darken my in-tray again" - you wouldn't believe how much time and heartache that can save)