Modern House Building Survey

What are Modern Houses?

We term modern as being between 1970s to 2000, which was an era when we moved to modern materials and also re-looked at how the house was designed both from a speed of construction point of view and also room requirements with more of a focus on the kitchen and the bathroom areas.  Some materials changed in this era such as floors moved from timber to concrete.

During 1971 to 1973 there was a boom in house prices and house prices went up considerably followed by a bust in 1973 when house prices crashed.  This had a few impacts on the quality of construction during the boom period when there was a rush to develop and build which led to, we believe, the lowering of standards. 

It was also an era when there was a focus on heating from traditional open fires to central heating systems, originally using the chimneys with back-boilers.  In this era there were vast improvements to the heating and electrics within buildings

Probably one of the main things that changed how we constructed is the Oil Crisis in the 1970s when we started to look at energy efficiency more.  This resulted in a move away from single glazed windows to double glazing first with metal windows and then later with plastic windows and also the adding of insulation in the form of cavity walls with insulation, etc.  Some of these changes were carried out well and with some unintended consequences occurring, which we look at and consider in this report.

As is often the case, these buildings have often been extended and amended over the years with different eras of construction which sometimes affects how the original building works.  Vertical extensions into the roof space became particularly popular.