Buying a Wimpey No-Fines house, any experience?

Smodlet

intmilkbrilliant wrote: »

Yep, the Romans pioneered concrete and used lots of it. The Colosseum is faced in stone, but they used concrete underneath, same as most of their fancy aqueducts and villas. They figured out it was cheap, flexible and nigh-on indestructible.

A link might be interesting... That would account for all the concrete castles, huh?

gld73

I've been in a Wimpey NFC house for 4.5 years now (my previous homes have all been more traditional brick ones), a lot of streets around me are all that build too and they sell no problem. I don't have any problems with hanging pictures, or condensation. It doesn't always feel like the warmest house, but that's more due to my old storage heaters that I need to replace! I don't have gas central heating, so that means I got external insulation added to the house with a grant.

If I moved house to another area in the future, and it happened to be a Wimpey No-Fines Concrete house that was in a convenient location for me, I wouldn't have concerns about buying one again. Mine certainly has more room for the money than new build ones!

SusieT

Smodlet wrote: »

A link might be interesting... That would account for all the concrete castles, huh?

Yes Romans used their own type of concrete Link

Mandalorian17

Thanks guys appreciate your replies! Keen on hearing other peoples experience on living in a WNF house

John_Smith_2019

I've previously lived in a concrete (PRC) flat. Looking at the walls (when drilling) it seemed similar to WNF, with larger stones in the concrete - but I don't know if it was officially WNF. Built by the council in the 1960s.

Hanging pictures was no problem, as you can easily use the 'solid wall' picture hooks. They consist of a hard plastic hook with three short metal pins. You just bang them in with a hammer and they are secure. Much more secure than a plaster board hook, where you need to use a plastic rawl plug to get a secure fixing.

BUT - when I wanted to do anything more than hanging a picture, I found drilling into the walls a complete nightmare. I hired the most powerful drill I could, together with a mains transformer unit and brand new diamond tipped drill bits. Still the drill bit would hit a hard stone and move sideways.
I often ended up taking chunks of the wall out - because the wall seemed to come away in chunks, rather than allow a smooth hole to be drilled through it.

I ended up taking out chucks of the wall and then repairing with smooth cement. Then waiting a few weeks before drilling into the smooth cement to get a fixing.

I also noticed the council had obviously had similar problems (so it wasn't my workmanship!) before I moved in. Because where the pipes were coming through the walls for kitchen plumbing etc, there were huge holes smashed through. Obviously they could have tidied these up with cement filler. But they didn't bother.

So my advice would be to sort out any work / drilling you need doing before moving in and decorating etc.

John_Smith_2019

Smodlet wrote: »

Concrete houses were built to be temporary. In my humble opinion, they should all have been demolished and replaced with brick houses by now. Yet another epic failure by the government of the day and every successive one but hardly a surprise.

Imho, concrete houses are an abomination which should never have been built in the first place. They were used as a quick fix after so many homes were destroyed in WW2. 70-odd years later, people are still having to deal with those poor decisions. I think we all deserve better.

My understanding is that the factories building aircraft and munitions etc in WW2, were used to build the PRC panels for the houses and flats. These PRC panels were delivered on lorries - some of which were left over from WW2 army / RAF units etc.