Yes, Jeff Howell did indeed work on a building site

Working on a building site is good for you

Jeff Howell's temporary work on a building site became permanent when he trained as bricklayer. He explains, “I loved working on building sites, and I was reasonably competent at most things, having done woodwork and metalwork at school. The one thing I could never master was bricklaying, so I signed up for a government training course. It was brilliant. It made me realise that anyone can acquire a skill if they are shown the tricks of the trade and spend enough time practicing it. Bricklaying is no different from playing the piano – you have lessons from an expert, you practice every day, and eventually you can make a reasonable stab at it. And then people tell you how lucky you are to be so talented!”

Why do we not value those who work with their hands?

This then led us onto an aside discussion as to how often we do not value “white van man” as much as we should, particularly when they are dealing with our most valuable asset, our home that we spend most of our lives paying for. This leads us back to the discussion with Jeff Howell where he advised us that although he achieved top grades in English and Maths at O-level, he was also very proud of his top grade in Metalwork!

North Wales, and the World Bricklaying

Jeff Howell explained how he had a great time bricklaying in North Wales, where he trained, Herefordshire, London , Germany and Holland and he experienced many different things – the university of life. He also got to question many standard practices in the building industry, which Jeff terms as witchcraft (things that are done without any real scientific reasoning).

This was in the 1970s when, just for those who were not about in that era we had...

Early 1970s British Property Boom

1973 Britain enters the European Economic Community (EEC)

1977 Elvis Presley Dies

1978-1979 The Winter of Discontent

1979-1991 The Thatcher Years

Jeff Howell would also add:-

cavity wall trays,

weep holes,

cavities getting wider

which all happened in the building trade. Jeff Howell also started to question whether we really knew what we were doing with this new technology. From one point of view this frustrated him as he could not just lay bricks anymore and from another point of view it fascinated him.

Please see following articles on party walls which may be of interest to you:

Party Wall Basics

Party Wall Who's Who

Party Wall Surveyors Being Unreasonable

Party Walls Look Like This 

Jeff Howell of course has limited time due to other commitments and we will arrange another surveyor with your approval if he is not available. Please see following relevant articles:

French Drains

Dampness in Buildings, The Basics

Dampness and condensation

Damp Walls

Condensation and Cold Bridging

Independent surveyors

If you truly do want an independent expert opinion from a surveyor with regard to building surveys, structural surveys, structural reports, engineers reports, specific defects report, dilapidations or any other property matters please contact via our website 1stAssociated.co.uk or telephone us on 0800 298 5424 for a surveyor to give you a call back. We hope you found the article of use and if you have any experiences that you feel should be added to this article that would benefit others, or you feel that some of the information that we have put is wrong then please do not hesitate to contact us (we are only human).

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