Yesterday I opened the mains box on this old house and on the lid is wealth of information been written over the years .
It said ,lot 70 , so that would of been long before street numbers, Then it had all the paint codes and the dates when in was painted.
Other information too that I didn't under stand like, Frame ok /7/ 69 ?
Most of the paint codes were of paint you don't here much about anymore ,liker Berger .
It even had a small hand drawing of where the sewer Runs.
I guess people did this type of thing in the past ,I think it's a great idea.

Pete

I love the way that the lids on two boxes here contain Info on the underground cabling using material that is not going to last 10 years.

Here:

Sub boards; House; Pump shed; Shearing Shed; Chaff Shed (/ Workshed / Cars)

One Main Distribution box & the House comes off a box on another shed. So all up seven cable runs under ground. Longest abt 500m.

Mine just says Prospect County Council (which no longer exists), and a note about termite inspections from the pest control guy.

I think it's a good idea ,I opened it looking for something that may say the year the house was built.
I don't know why this trend of writing in the boxes ever stopped , top idea.
Pete

looking for something that may say the year the house was built.

If it still has lino flooring, you may find old newspapers underneath. Happened to a mate who bought an old weatherboard house in Collaroy. Paper was dated 1927.

Still has the original lino in it ,which many don't know is asbestos, but its safe it's in great condition. The walls are plaster not Asbestos.
Light switches and power points are bakelite
I'm painting it at the moment,slow job the hallway with all the doors .
7 doorways and arches in the hall ,all Enamel and boy it's a slow job .

Not all lino has asbestos backing on it. The older stuff did but more recently, it was dispensed with and laid directory on the floor.

Oh I'm not one of these people that are terrified of asbestos.
Actually it was a amazing versatile material that had many uses ,shame it killed people.But in its sealed form its safe , don't sand it ! Don't cut it and of course don't mine it.
Well that can also be said about many materials today ,just look at the kitchen bench drama that's going on today.
But some people see a bit of asbestos and the go into panic mode on mission to get rid of it .
If it's in good nick ,I leave it be .
I worked with 2k for years which frightens me a lot more

Asbestos is what killed steve mcqueen,he use to be navy and his job was to wrap the pipes on ships with it for insulation.
So it got into his lungs , probably like me fluffy stuff

As an apprentice electrician back in the early 60's I had to work with asbestos cutting,drilling,filing it to make arc shields for the crane contractors and resistor banks. Also used loads of asbestos tape wrapping armature coils on large drive motors for cranes and mill drive motors. I used to be covered in the dust from head to foot. We new no better then or were not told .I am still ok not sure how many of my colleagues survived . It killed a lot of people however others like me seemed to be ok.

I used to be covered in the dust from head to foot

In the 1970s, at my local pub, guys who made fire doors at a nearby factory used to rock in after work looking like they had just walked thorough a flour storm. I also wonder how many of those survived.

Just about every 1970s and 1980s block of flats has a 2-hour fire door for the front entrance to each flat. That's a lot of stoss in a lot of doors. I have a chest x-ray every year because I worked around the stuff during my apprenticeship years. Fortunately, so far I am still clear and I've just about passed the normal timeframe for it to start tearing into lung tissue. So it is a good sign of times ahead.

Modern fire doors have a cork filling surrounded by a layer of sheet metal, then a layer of plywood. Unfortunately, fire doors are not built to be opened and closed at refular intervals but architects usually manage to find ways for fire doors to be used for general security requirements in commercial buildings instead of having a set of fire doors for fire safety and a standard solid core door for security reasons. Fire doors are around $1,000 per leaf - so the extra money spent at construction time would well and truly make up for the ongoing maintenance costs down the track for replacing the far more expensive fire doors.

I had a service job to do in Sydney, in the 1960's near the Rosehill racecourse, I think it was a Hardie manufacturing division.
I walked into the area with a tech and as we walked in a thought we were walking in snow, it was inches thick on the floor and every flat surface.
I backed away and told him he was joking, I am an Asthma sufferer do you have a mask and doesnt anybody clean this s##t up?
Too hard he says it will cost too much.
From memory I tied a hanky onto my face, took one look at the drive belt on the MG set I was supposed to fix.
It and the pulleys were polished shiny, the belt was slack and slipping, hence the voltage and frequency down.
I took 30 seconds to spanner the jacking bolts tighter and got the HELL out of there.
That was the second place like that I went to. I told the boss never again, fire me, whatever, not going there again.

Almost as bad as the Firestone plant that was thick with black powder everywhere, never went back there either!

Fred.

There was indeed a Hardies factory there. They even had their own railway station. The whole area is a wasteground at the moment, probably due to all the soil contamination from the variety of factories that were once there. The corridor that was occupied by the Sandown line will be used by trams on the Parramatta Light Rail service that is being built now.

Heard that smoking multiplies the cancer risk of asbestos. And they used to use asbestos for cigarette filters...

It's hard to say and a theory I heard once makes me wonder. This would depend on when access to both substances came by someone but the hteory was that if a person started smoking well before he breathed in any asbestos dust then he may be immune to it due to the formation of tar on the lung tissue. This layer of tar would protect the lung tissue from the abrasive nature of the asbestos dust.

This, along with the idea that dust may affect some people more than others, probably is true. My boss during my apprenticeship years worked at the Garden Island Dockyard previously. He was a civilian electrician and worked quite often on the warships. In those times he would have worked on everything from submarines to aircraft carriers. His chest x-ray result is the same as mine, all clear for asbestos. Yet others, who breathe in only a few fibres end up copping it.