Manual for a post-war British bungalow

I'm on holidays in Wales, at my in-laws' cottage, in a little coastal town where my wife and her family seem to make up a substantial chunk of the local population. One set of cousins have a 1950s prefab bungalow just down the hill, built by Woolaways of Taunton. This weekend, they unearthed the manual that Woolaways provided to all the new bungalow owners -- and it's a masterpiece of oddly stilted technical writing, effusive sell-copy, and dire warnings about the depredations of damp. I took photos of the booklet and stuck 'em in my Flickr stream so everyone could enjoy 'em. The Care of Your New Bungalow

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Book • Funny • Old school

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

dogmatique

Your love of gill sans should be coloured by knowledge of its creator, Eric Gill.

Not a nice chap – “His personal diaries describe his sexual activity in great detail including the fact that Gill sexually abused his own children, had an incestuous relationship with his sister and performed sexual acts on his dog.”

Still, a greatly admired sculptor who’s works adorn some of Britain’s great buildings.

Waddaya gonna do?
- Antinous
  
  There’s a gag version of Patti Page’s hit Old Cape Cod that runs:
  
  If you want pneumonia from the frosty air,
  Strange smelling cottages and mildewed hair,
  You’re sure to fall in love with Old Cape Cod.
Michael Leddy

@16: I know about Gill’s private life. But Gills Sans is a great font (and very British — Penguin paperbacks, etc.).
buddy66

Any more of the Patti parody? Never heard it before. It’s funny.
- Antinous
  
  That’s the only verse that I ever heard, back in Boston in the 70s.
buddy66

I can’t raise it. I’m leery of Google anywayâ€”scared of itâ€”ever since I googled myself and learned a lot of shit I didn’t really want to kmow.
the specialist

uh, riveting.
kaosdevice

Too bad you don’t have bongos. Everyone staying in a bungalow should have some bongos with them
dculberson

humor.html

error404

resource not found
dainel

Houses in the UK comes with user manuals?
buddy66

What went on in barber shops back in the day?

Bookies and bawdy jokes.
Simon Bradshaw

Dainel @ 2:

Actually, my last one (built in 2003) did, in the form of a loose-leaf folder. A lot of it was information on how not do make a mess of your place with misguided DIY, and guidance on what did and didn’t come within the mandatory two-year warranty.

However, in the case Cory’s talking about, this would almost certainly have been one of the vast number of prefab houses built to cope with the destruction of housing in World War 2. As this Wikipedia entry notes, some 160,000 were built by 1948 throughout the UK. Whilst valuable as an accommodation stopgap, and indeed often better-equipped than the slum housing they often substituted for, they did have issues (such as a tendency to condensation) unfamiliar to people used to living in brick-built houses. Think of this manual as a FAQ for people being moved into a prefab for the first time.

And now of course prefab houses are making a comeback, with Moco Loco regularly posting examples of eco-friendly house kits.
Little John

“All-night coal fires?” Wow.

Next to shrinkage, condensation is the most common problem in bungalows

Heh. I would have thought the most common would be, say, arguments and marital strife because of too much “shrinkage.”

Often condensation is the cause of dampness

Well, you know, I read that and I think, “Isn’t dampness really the cause of condensation?” If there were no moisture in the air, it wouldn’t condense. Or maybe I’m incorrectly equating moisture with dampness. Or maybe I’m just not British.

I do love the word bungalow, though.
Anonymous

OMG!! I was just asking my wife if the if she thought the leaky skylight in our bathroom could be responsible for all the wood (handrails, etc) in our house seeming damp. the wood was mega feet away from the leak so I couldn’t see how.

although I only now stumble on this post, it was about half an hour before he posted that I asked my wife the question. I will go get my tin foil hat now so Cory stops sneaking a peek at my thoughts..

;)
error404

#9 travelina

wrote….

The warning that “Even BREATHING causes condensation” makes me wonder why these bungalows were inhabited at all.

Small matter of WORLD WAR 2?

Little thing called the BLITZ?

Countless dead.

hundreds of thousands of people homeless?

Also

#13 dculberson

“How very British to build something that leaks.”

Ho ho ho, shucks you’re so funny.

Ah well, I suppose we can’t all live outside the range of the Luftwaffe,and have the luxury of sneering at the people who died while your own nation was still supplying the NAzis.

But yes Brits, what are they like, with their finite resources and mounting lists of civilian dead, the manufacturing base being bombed to smithereens on a nightly basis, it’s SOOOO like them to build a pre faricated temporary house that may leak.

IOh and did I mention that we all have terrible teeth and live in castles?
error404

Yes bungalow is a good word.

English English is peppered with Hindi words like that.

I was shampooing my hair out on the veranda of my bungalow when I spilled the water all over my pyjamas.
travelina

Golly, Error404, I didn’t intend to knock the Brits of WWII or the situation that made these bungalows necessary, I only thought the wording on the instructions was funny.
travelina

Speaking of odd houses in Wales reminds me of the bizarre faux Mediterranean village of Portmeirion, where the TV show “The Prisoner” was filmed in the late ’60s and where fans of the show still convene once a year. The village was constructed in a grab-bag of styles:
“The second period was typically classical or Palladian in style in contrast to the Arts and Crafts style of his earlier work. Several buildings were salvaged from demolition sites, giving rise to Cloughâ€™s description of the place as â€œa home for fallen buildingsâ€.
http://www.portmeirion-village.com/content.php?nID=41;lID=1
The unofficial website is more interesting:
http://www.virtualportmeirion.com/
Little John

And did those teeth
in ancient time
walk upon England’s mountains green?

Lighten up, Francis.
RichSPK

I’m confused. The bungalows were built by Woolaways and suffered shrinkage from condensation. Were they made of wool? I can’t imagine a wool building!
travelina

The warning that “Even BREATHING causes condensation” makes me wonder why these bungalows were inhabited at all.
OM

…All this needs is a testimonial from Alf and Else on whether or not it lives up to their previous housing as supplied by the council.

“OI! Thad poofter darkie fop gets twice the room we do! Wot’s up wit dot,eh?”
dainel

4. Men teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes …

But there’s no allowance for women teachers. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the men were supposed to court each other …
Michael Leddy

Nice Gill Sans — very British.
Ryan Rapolsive

This post reminds me of something I found hidden in my college apartment that was equally funny. I found a copy of 1872 school rules for teachers. Now the copy was found in college notes from the 70′s but it felt nostalgic like buried treasure.

Here is a copy of them online, you might of saw them before: http://www.nhhistory.org/edu/support/nhgrowingup/teacherrules.pdf

My favorite #8
“Any teacher who smokes, uses liquor in any form,
frequents pool or public halls, or gets shaved in a barber shop will give good reason to suspect his worth, intention, integrity and honesty.”

What went on in barber shops back in the day?
mattxb

#4:

Well, you know, I read that and I think, “Isn’t dampness really the cause of condensation?” If there were no moisture in the air, it wouldn’t condense. Or maybe I’m incorrectly equating moisture with dampness. Or maybe I’m just not British.

It means damp like rising damp (or, etc).

And sorry if you were being facetious.
Anonymous

TV Announcer: Previously on Condensation.

Johnny: Helen, there’s moisture on the outside of my glass.
Helen: It’s condensation Johnny.
Johnny: But what about the fog on the windows?
Helen: It’s not fog Johnny, it too is called condensation.
Johnny: Con-den-sation-sation-sation-sation.
dculberson

How very British to build something that leaks.
trr

Kiln-dried lumber is great, innit?
error404

travelina.

that’s cool, I was actually only pointing out that if they could have made them better, they’d have been made better.

The UK had nearly had it’s back and will broken during the war.

And we do appreciate the help that the US gave, but we just find it to be the height of poor manners to help someone out and then harp on and on and on about it for the next 60 plus years.

The UK only paid off it’s war debts to the US last year.

Yes it took over 60 years to pay off the financially crippling war loans.
MaximusNYC

@#10: Love the Gill Sans!
Takuan

@26
they paid them so little you’d have to be stealing to have someone else shave you.
mpb

In Los Alamos, NM the government-issued housing built in the late 50s and 60s (pre-open town) also comes with instructions from the Zia Co. (the construction arm of the old science lab and the original army lab). The labels were pasted inside the kitchen cabinets.

I never could quite understand the monster called Rising Damp which was always mentioned (including the metal rail built into outside housewalls to keep rising damp away) during the year I spent at Oxford. Gave me nightmares (I was at the brand new Wolfson College)