So having spent last night watching the spooky #Uncanny, tonight I find myself sleeping in a 16th century coaching inn. Wobbly floors, low door frames and lots of wooden beams everywhere.
But as I go to sleep I see the past in a different way. My retrofit work brain kicks in. I see the water damage and cracks in the ceiling. Panels covering sections of wall painted over - how old and made of what exactly? The bottled water makes me wonder how bad is the lead piping as we clean our teeth?
I wish staying in such an old building didn’t fill me with fears of anthrax and asbestos…I tried to tell myself that hospitality places get checked regularly so would be safer than going into someone’s very old home…but then I saw the date that the next pac testing was due on the electrical appliances and it said 2019.
It’s things like this that make me think I would be better spending a lot less on the rare occasions we get to stay away and go to a chain like Premier Inn. Soulless, but safe.
@JugglingWithEggs They get checked regularly? By whom? I do vacation rental housekeeping in CA, so there’s nothing near as old as the 1600, but a LOT of the homes have deferred maintenance. Windows that don’t open, ants, loose cupboard doors, that sort of thing. A lot of the homes were built in the 80’s when it was easier to get housing, and haven’t had much done to them since.
@JugglingWithEggs To the best of my knowledge, and I used to manage a much smaller vacation rental business too, there’s no investigative authority for vacation homes, or else we’d have a way to for the cheep homeowners to fix things.
@samhainnight in the UK the AA and Visit England check and review hotels. I think cleanliness is probably a bigger factor in how they are judged than the bricks and mortar safety of the buildings, but I may be wrong. It’s not a legal requirement. Food hygiene inspections however are and any hotel, even if it only serves breakfast has to be reviewed regularly for this and put the result on public display - ratings go from 1 to 5 (5 being best).
@JugglingWithEggs We have food inspectors and hotel inspectors, but vacation rentals are under regulated. Honestly, a lot of things are under regulated. We haven't had a functioning Congress since Obama's second year.
@samhainnight regulation of services has nose dived here too during the Tory reign of the past 13 years…the privatisation of water being the worst. But I shall save that rant for another day.
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