Strange Airbricks!

[111mart111]

Hi all,

Whilst digging my French Ditch I uncovered an airbrick a lot lower than the original airbrick. It looks totally different in style and rather haphazardly placed in the brick work! Can anyone shed any light on why this 2nd airbrick would be so much lower than the top one? And the difference in styles? I can't find any more of the 2nd brick type around the other walls, and the top airbrick is in consistent in height with the other airbricks elsewhere in the house.

Thanks!

 

[thiambal]

hard to tell from the photo - but the lower one is almost identical design to the original airbricks on our house - the one above looks more modern.

 

[Penners]

Pure speculation: maybe the original one kept getting blocked with earth, etc., because it's so low. So at a later date someone fitted a new one higher up.

 

[BMcD]

As Penners suggests the (original) bottom air brick kept getting blocked so the higher ones were installed although they look more like perforated (as opposed to solid or frogged) bricks on edge rather than proper air bricks but they still serve the same purpose

 

[Lime]

I believe the red airbrick is an earlier one too.
I think that many people would be very surprised just how houses are "buried" as they age.
At old school I once owned, when excavating to find drains, I found that below the playground entrance there was not one old stone step buried but two.
The playground and everywhere else has increased in height another 2ft in relation to the building.
I found airbricks similar to the threads and another even further below that level.
The building was only 100 years old at the time.

 

[essexbearhunter]

All of the replies above regarding the age of the beautifully formed red block and the reason why a higher block might be inserted are good and valid.

The puzzle still remaining is that the red (lower) brick is "so haphazardly placed" as to suggest that it (rather than the upper one) was not part of the original build. If the lower brick is of engineering brick quality, this would explain the almost pristine condition compared to that of the adjacent brick. If the brick were set in a lime mortar (which might not adhere to the more impervious surface of an engineering brick as easily as to a soft red), the partial failure of the mortar could bring the brick out of position.

Further inspection could be advantageous.

Kind regards
EBH

 

[Penners]

OK, here's the explanation.

The house was at one time infested with rats. The owner found a rathole in the soil near the outside wall and decided to dig down to see if he could find out where they were getting in.

Down near the bottom of the brick plinth, he found one brick that had crumbled away, leaving a gap for the rats to get in under the floor.

"Aha!", he thought. "I happen to have an old clay airbrick that would just fit that hole in place of the dodgy brick. That'll keep the little b*ggers out!"

So he set to work and hacked out the crumbled brick to replace it with the air brick. While he was doing this 16 rats nipped into the house through the back door, that he'd left open.



Or make up a similar story - it's as close as you'll ever get to knowing!
:wink:

 

[Nemesis]

Hmmm... I think actually we have rats in the house...

 

[essexbearhunter]

OK, here's the explanation.

The house was at one time infested with rats. The owner found a rathole in the soil near the outside wall and decided to dig down to see if he could find out where they were getting in.

Down near the bottom of the brick plinth, he found one brick that had crumbled away, leaving a gap for the rats to get in under the floor.

So he set to work and hacked out the crumbled brick to replace it with the air brick.

Or make up a similar story - it's as close as you'll ever get to knowing!
:wink:

Not necessarily Penners (or archaeology would be dead) - though I grant you that total certainty is unlikely. Using standard scientific practise of promulgating several hypotheses (based the observable evidence) and testing them, you should achieve some answers that are "suggested by the evidence and fully consistent with it".

Thus, using your own playful proposition, we would look for tool marks on the mortared faces of the surrounding bricks and rat droppings underneath the floorboards, plus damage such as gnawing and erosion by small claws in the floor cavity. The more indicators found, the higher the probability of the hypothesis being valid.

(I used to do post-mortems on failed engines as a major part of my job for a decade and a half....the approach to buildings no different)

 

[worms]

(I used to do post-mortems on failed engines as a major part of my job for a decade and a half....the approach to buildings no different)

Crikey! Visions of the house completely dismantled and in pieces on the workshop bench, sprayed with WD40 and put back together to see if it works!

 

[Lime]

(I used to do post-mortems on failed engines as a major part of my job for a decade and a half....the approach to buildings no different)

Crikey! Visions of the house completely dismantled and in pieces on the workshop bench, sprayed with WD40 and put back together to see if it works!

(Together with the whistling of a tired tune in the background)

 

[Penners]

Crikey! Visions of the house completely dismantled and in pieces on the workshop bench, sprayed with WD40 and put back together to see if it works!

...and you always have a few bits left over.

 

[Moo]

...and you always have a few bits left over.

My mother dismantled our old Goblin cylinder vacuum cleaner several times in its long life.
She, too, always had a few bits left over. And it still worked perfectly.

 

[Penners]

My mother dismantled our old Goblin cylinder vacuum cleaner several times in its long life.
She, too, always had a few bits left over. And it still worked perfectly.

Back in the says when you could lift the bonnet of a car and recognise the various components thereunder - block, distributor, coil, etc - I used to do all my own car maintenance.

Whatever job I did, I always had a few leftover bits. I used to keep them all in a big box and I vowed that one day I would build a car out of the contents of that box.

I wonder whatever became of it?

 

[BMcD]

I think I'm driving it

 

[Penners]

I think I'm driving it

Nah - there isn't a hope in hell it would ever have actually worked...

... or have I just described your car?