Talk:Airey house

Page has multiple issues - unsupported assertions, irrelevant links, lacks NPOV
Although nobody would deny that Airey houses, along with other prefabricated homes, have had their problems over the years, a lot of information on this page is either false or heavily skewed, possibly for the commercial benefit of those who are in the business of renovating Airey homes for mortgage purposes.

The scare about Airey homes began in the 1980s, when it was noticed at the scene of a house that had burned down that the steel structural supports encased in concrete had corroded, giving rise to concerns about 'concrete cancer'. This was at a time when the Thatcher government's Right To Buy policy was taking off - so the prospect of ex-council houses that may subsequently prove difficult to sell was a political hot potato at the time, leading to the passing of new laws and the intorduction of a generous renovation grants scheme for Right To Buy homebuyers. This contextual information is completely absent in the article and needs to be inserted. I will do this myself if there are no other takers, but will give people the opportunity to view this talk page first before wading in.

As someone who now lives in Seacroft, an area of Leeds that has around a thousand such homes, I see plenty of Airey houses that still have their original concrete panels and are still standing and in use. I therefore find the claim that "today many of the Airey houses; being over 50 years old, are in disrepair" to be an assertion that is lacking in evidence. It is true that some mortgage companies are nervous about investing in homes of non-standard construction, although they are generally fine if the proper paperwork is there for a re-bricked home or a satisfactory engineer's report is produced. I was able to buy one such house in Seacroft myself without any real difficulty. This leads me to suspect that a lot of 'trashing' of Airey-type houses is a case of talking up a problem in order to sell a solution. So I view the final paragraph, concluding that a particular type of repair is best, to be somewhat suspicious and un-encyclopedic.

I propose that the entire article needs demolishing and rebuilding from scratch - the very solution that some vested interests would suggest for the houses themselves. ;) --Archstanton (talk) 22:19, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Do Aireys ever display concrete cancer?
 * AIUI, concrete cancer is a chemical reaction between the concrete and the iron reinforcement, usually caused by a poor (with hindsight) selection of materials in the concrete mix. Aireys display something similar, in that their steel reinforcement can rust and expand, causing cracking. However the root cause is different - for the Aireys it's the steel which is causing the problem, not the concrete. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:18, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Prefabricated?
Is it correct to describe an Airey as "prefabricated", rather than "precast"?

The Airey, AIUI, was built on-site, from pre-cast concrete components. These were large panels, just small enough to be handleable. That's different from the full-blown prefabs of the period, which were built and fitted out in factories, then delivered as a single unit, or in large sections. The Airey (and the Cornish, and a few others) required the same first and second fix work as a traditional construction.

We should still include them under Prefabs in the United Kingdom, but shouldn't describe them with the same term quite so freely. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:14, 25 November 2019 (UTC)