Work often takes me to the parts of buildings that others would prefer to ignore. Some of the things I see see are annoying and frustrating.! 

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Building work is expensive, it not easy to get hold of good contractors and it causes a lot of disruption. Naturally, once we have committed to a project, we would like to get it over and done. “Fit and forget” was the marketing mantra of the construction product reps, ,selling plastic windows and guttering.

Like all good marketing spin, there is a grain of truth in there, to get you hooked and this is supplemented by a whole load of hokum, green wash and nonsense.

The truth is – do it right first time, with the right materials, and avoid the pain of discovering problems that need to be put right later.

The nonsense bit is – you can forget about it once it is done. Most plastic products have a much shorter life than traditional materials, fail in less predictable ways and are environmentally unfriendly.

Even if everybody does everything right, buildings will always need to be maintained. Externally the weather takes its toll. Internally, services such as heating and electrics have a limited lifespan and need to be replaced. The fit and forget attitude, means that we ignore this. When the building work finished, everything looks great, but access to the building fabric is sealed up and there is no way get access to the wiring and pipework in the future without tearing the building apart again.

The second problem is that not everybody is as skilled and as conscientious as you might hope them to be. Sorry, but it is true. Over time, flaws in their workmanship becomes apparent, but again, you cant put it right because access hasn’t been considered or designed in.

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This photograph is typical, a mix of cabling, some is current (live) some is old wiring, which couldn't be removed and was left. We can see part of it here but the rest is inaccessible and it is created a barrier to the installation of insulation, so the installers just ignored the problem and left a gap, which allows warm air from the room below to escape freely. Creating a cold patch which could give rise to mould on the ceiling below and meaning that all the work that was done to insulate the property to reduce energy costs was critically compromised. The cost of coming back to resolve this will be many times more expensive than if the work had been planned and executed correctly in the first place.

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Historic buildings often have awkward corners, they weren’t design with modern services and living standards in mind. So sometimes future access issues can’t be avoided, but at least, if you are aware of the problems, you might make an extra effort to ensure that you plan ahead;

• Plan service routes carefully
• Avoid putting services in these awkward areas in the first place, and
• Ensure that work that must be done in the hard to reach places is done to the highest standard to reduce the risk of having to deal with problems later.

These are hard lessons to learn, and when I was young architect I was as guilty as others of trying to cleverly hide everything from view, but after years of surveying building problems, the lesson has been driven in.

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MAAC studio are accredited conservation architects, PAS 2035 Retrofit Co-ordinators and Principal Designers working with traditional buildings throughout Scotland. 

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