Thread: Inspiration/ insight for 1970s/1980s shed

what about Readers Digest DIY manuals from the 70s or 80s ? There are many copies online or Peter Harris's odd job book

I subscribed to a full series of 24 hardcover The Knack books in the mid 80's after we had had our first home built and I was considering options for shedding etc. These seemed to be based on a pommy magazine and I would date the material to late 60's/early 70's. I am generally very sentimental about books, magazines etc that I have acquired over time, but these and a few individual electronics mags were the only literature that didn't make the trip when we moved 8 years ago, they were of interest when being acquired, as a newbie to home ownership, but just how dated they were became apparent over the years.

I would suggest that you want to make sure that the fibro on your shed does not contain asbestos, not just assume that it does not, it sounds like it was built around the time when asbestos was being phased out, but that in itself is not a guarantee that it is asbestos free.

With regard to repairs etc to the shed, they could be made using similar structure etc and modern materials, (pine framing and current generation cement sheet cladding etc).

Thanks both, appreciate the responses.

The Reader's Digest books look like they might have some useful material, I've now bookmarked a few of those and some similar titles on archive.org to check out. Can't find much on the Peter Harris book, but the few records Google returns say it was from 1998 so possibly not what I'm after.

I did read something on another forum about there being two encyclopaedia-style sets called The Knack, one a cutdown of this magazine and another entirely separate. But the magazine is definitely British and according to my 1984 Australian copies was originally published in the UK in 1981. The photography shows a lot of things like tools, fashion, and furniture that look late 70s to me so I assume it was either written or revised then. Sounds like it might be interesting to see the books you had and compare them.

There's no asbestos, I had it tested before buying the property. Who would assume something like that? I'm no pinnacle of health but I'm pretty happy to keep my lungs as they are.

That is indeed the plan. Helpfully I have access to some surprisingly good second hand treated pine. Though there's a partition wall toward one end of the shed which I intend to remove, it's still sound and has the same sheeting as the exterior so if it comes apart in good condition I may reuse some of the material.

Originally Posted by rassilon256

There's no asbestos, I had it tested before buying the property. Who would assume something like that? I'm no pinnacle of health but I'm pretty happy to keep my lungs as they are.

Not that I doubt whoever tested your shed for asbestos, but as malb said, your shed was apparently built around the time asbestos was being phased out, at least in NSW. (I'm not sure of the phase out dates in other parts of Australia.)

Personally I'd not be confident that a fibro shed was truly "asbestos free" until I knew that every "fibro" sheet had been individually tested and declared "OK".
To my mind, your shed was built during the phase out period, so there is a risk that some of your sheet's sheeting contains asbestos and some does not. If your asbestos tester only tested one or two sheets, the chance that the sheet(s) tested just happened to be the "asbestos free" ones is too great for my personal peace of mind.

That's how I felt too. I ensured samples were taken from every sheet and tested by a NATA accredited lab. Health and safety is central part of my day job and I work in a NATA accredited lab, so I'm familiar with both of those things. Incidentally, although sheeting was one of the first products to be phased out, the phase-out period in Australia only began around 1983 (as ian referred to, states took action at slightly different rates) and the total ban didn't occur until 2003. If I'm being pedantic, blue asbestos was banned in 1967 but white and brown remained in use to different degrees until the total ban. All of which led me to being very thorough when dealing with a structure I believed to have been built prior to 1983.

Another moral of that story is - pay attention to insurance companies' actuaries. Their premiums reflected concerns about climate change, tobacco smoking, leaded petrol, and yes, asbestos, long before anyone else started worrying about these things.

While I applaud that everyone is concerned about safety issues, this is not a thread about asbestos, and I have made it clear that asbestos is not something I need to deal with. Does anyone else have advice related to my far more trivial and somewhat odd query?