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Do Buildings Deteriorate When No One Is There?

This is pissing me off now. I thought I'd show the house I mean on Google Maps but it took me bloody ages to find any trace of it even though a) it's very visible from the road and b)I know exactly where it is. Now I can't get Google Maps to work properly. I can only assume some nefarious agency is trying to stop me sharing its location!
So here it is - as I say, it's normally really visible from the road. The metal barn a little further up the hill is now even more dilapidated so this must be an old image which is extra weird since I drove past here a couple of weeks ago and the house I'm talking about didn't look as ruined as it does here!

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@55.9...4!1sprocF8MdhBl2Gzae0zRGyQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
 
XEPER_ said:
This is pissing me off now. I thought I'd show the house I mean on Google Maps but it took me bloody ages to find any trace of it even though a) it's very visible from the road and b)I know exactly where it is. Now I can't get Google Maps to work properly. I can only assume some nefarious agency is trying to stop me sharing its location!
So here it is - as I say, it's normally really visible from the road. The metal barn a little further up the hill is now even more dilapidated so this must be an old image which is extra weird since I drove past here a couple of weeks ago and the house I'm talking about didn't look as ruined as it does here!

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@55.9...4!1sprocF8MdhBl2Gzae0zRGyQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
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Moving between alternate universes/time streams, perhaps?
 
XEPER_,

..It's not vandalism I'm sure of that. So what is it?..

Just natural decay. Nature taking it's world back.

We live in a very artificial environment, and have to constantly work at keeping it useable.

The concrete pavers (flags) in my garden will disappear in one season if I don't keep clearing the grass away).

INT21
 
henry said:
this is the main factor, water needs to move through pipes, hinges need to open, people naturally maintain a narrow range of temperature ... cars are the same, they need to be driven to prevent fast decline, even if theyre maintained in situ, without regularly fulfilling their primary function they become difficult to recommission, you lose them, ...
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It's a bit like rare old violins in collections, they still need to be played every once in a while.
 
dreeness . said:
It's a bit like rare old violins in collections, they still need to be played every once in a while.
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as i understand it from my vintage guitar expert pal hollow bodied wooden instruments will actually sound more resonant and more harmonically pleasing the more they are played, as the materials become attuned to resounding ... especially over the course of a hundred years or more
 
henry said:
as i understand it from my vintage guitar expert pal hollow bodied wooden instruments will actually sound more resonant and more harmonically pleasing the more they are played, as the materials become attuned to resounding ... especially over the course of a hundred years or more
Click to expand...

That's true. I have a 30 year old acoustic guitar which has developed a much richer tone over the years. A brand new mandolin I bought a couple of years ago is still, unfortunately, just the opposite. Still has a tinny sound. :(
 
Wood is a remarkable material.

I have a beautiful umbrella that has a handle-body carved from a single piece of wood and is cut to my precise height. It isn't really that old, but yearly use has given the wood a slight degree of flexibility that it did not originally possess as well as a pleasant patina.

It's impossible not to employ it as a swagger stick when the rain has abated as the object is a pleasure to handle.

Would it retain these qualities if left to stand?

To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use...
 
Apparently Yamaha are using vibrating machines to artificially age their instruments, I saw an interview with Billy Sheehan talking about it yesterday.
 
interesting, are they simulating longterm playing or vibrating across a range of frequencies ? i wonder if the acoustic net effect is different based on how the instrument is played, ie could it be predisposed to a particular key, or to a, eg., minor scale ?
 
henry said:
as i understand it from my vintage guitar expert pal hollow bodied wooden instruments will actually sound more resonant and more harmonically pleasing the more they are played, as the materials become attuned to resounding ... especially over the course of a hundred years or more
Click to expand...

You probably have to start off with a well made instrument with decent woods in the first place, but I think there's definitely something to this. An acoustic instrument is a box that wants to vibrate & resonate & must surely respond to the way it's played over time. Wood dries out & probably vibrates more or at least differently as a result, add in more wear to specific areas played more than others, which could also have some effect on the sound over years. There's a definite 'played in' vibe with some older guitars. All those hands it's been through before you have somehow added something.

I've got a parlour guitar around 100 years old which, although battered as feck & frankly looks something of a wreck, has a great & distinctive voice even in the state it's in. Action is a bit high but you'd have to take it apart to fix that.
 
hunck said:
I've got a parlour guitar around 100 years old which, although battered as feck & frankly looks something of a wreck, has a great & distinctive voice even in the state it's in. Action is a bit high but you'd have to take it apart to fix that.
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without wishing to derail, would love to see it, i have a 31 maybell parlour archtop, just a thing of beauty, but tough to play
 
My drums are Yamaha, and their sound has definitely 'worn in'. They were very musical at first, lots of overtones, they've become more flat-sounding over time, which I think is a good thing.
 
henry said:
without wishing to derail, would love to see it, i have a 31 maybell parlour archtop, just a thing of beauty, but tough to play
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Here it is. There's quite a lot of binding missing which doesn't show that well here & also several cracks in both top and back as well as the gouges but the top has taken on a lovely aged patina. Also has an old style V shaped neck. It has to be teased into tune but once there, it holds it quite well.

parlour.jpg
Pic of your Maybell?..
 
the maybell ... huge neck like a baseball bat, tiny body with 12" lower bout ... had a extrawide jazzmaster pickup overwound and surface mounted without drilling the top ... bit of a devil to play, strings are a tad heavy, but the acoustic voice is really rich and deep, plus sounds like the end of the world through my selmer rig
WP_20170710_21_34_57_Pro.jpg
 
XEPER_ said:
This is a cool thread! My day job is as a meter reader and I've been doing it in the same areas in the west of Scotland for about 14 years now. I go to places out in the sticks and see cool old houses that have become vacant then I maybe only pass them again a couple of times over the next few years.
It always shocks me how quickly they decline. I'm not talking about wallpaper stripping, I'm talking about roofs and walls caving in. There's one particular house on the road to Kilcreggan which, when I started the job, was a regular little cottage on its own. It became vacant probably eight years or so ago and I've probably passed it every three or four years since. It's not just a couple of walls - everything else has gone.
That's just one example but I see it a lot and it always makes me wonder WTF is going on. It's not vandalism I'm sure of that. So what is it?
It seems to affect properties that are isolated more than ones that are close to others with people living in them.
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Could it be other locals, stripping the 'usable' parts to mend and rebuild their own dwellings? Like the stones from medieval castles and abbeys were taken to buld new houses, thus hastening the decline into ruin.
 
hunck said:
... There's quite a lot of binding missing ... also several cracks in both top and back as well as the gouges but the top has taken on a lovely aged patina ... It has to be teased into tune but once there, it holds it quite well.
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i love seeing old instruments played, always commands my attention and respect ... i wandered through the milf the other day (manchester international festival) and there was a young girl onstage playing either a hofner senator or congress, wasnt close enough, but i instantly stopped and checked her out ...
 
its either a collocation or idiom widely used all over manchester to refer to the festival ...
 
I may try google to see if I can get some images of 'milf', I'm sure I will find some of the festival......eventually.
 
Yeah. Leave something alone and it begins to rot. Has anyone else noticed that? I am of the opinion that maintaining systems is pretty much the main thing humans do. Now that system could be a house or a car, or your clothes, or your body but it all comes down to maintenance jobs. Your own body is primarily involved in maintenance jobs. And why do we do this? Well the answer for me is the meaning of life... to stave off and hopefully eventually defeat the principle of Entropy in the Universe through the cultivation of information systems.
 
cf. one board members observation on the really-old-people thread that those who have a rigid quotidien routine seem to outlive everyone else
 
I recently had to go two months without power at home due to financial financial issues. After getting it turned back on, I was amazed at how much mold and general rot of dry goods had set in.
Nothing more to add really, just an observation.
 
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