MOSO

Does anyone know anything about old lockwood homes - are they warm/cold, good quality etc? Can you easily cover the internal walls with plasterboard to stop the rooms looking like saunas? Any info gratefully received.

Hokey-pokey

Older Lockwoods are inclined to make unusual night sounds - creaks and banging noises due to the wood contracting with the drop in air temperature. ( no longer an issue with modern Locks )
However this " problem " can be experienced in many old wood constructed villas.
They certainly have a reputation for being well constructed, solid and low maintenance. I spoke to an elderly couple recently who built theirs 40 years ago , they reckoned it was still as good as the day they moved in.
I think my main concern would be for the roof and also the piles ( if any ) the house is built on - these are easily dealt with.
Beware of imitation Lockwoods. Some houses are advertised as " Lockwood style " , make sure the one you are looking at is the real deal. Also Lockwood make a cheaper version - the " Initial ". Again this can be advertised as a Lockwood Home - which isn't really the case.
Im not sure about gibbing the walls, but can see no reason why not. Some people simply paint over the wood.
We are giving serious consideration to building a Lockwood. They certainly rate highly with me. Checkout their website. Lockwood.NZ

MissSunshine

We rent a lockwood home which is lovely and big. When we first arrive in January we thought it was wonderful all this space, sliders opening out on to the decking lovely. Then it started getting colder and man is it cold indoors. At 9.30am the other morning my son told me he could see my breath coming out of my mouth as I was speaking. I'm not really sure why it is so cold some people have advised that it is because it is not insulated others as there no underfloor heating. We have one fixed heater in the house and had to buy three other mobile oil heaters just to keep warm - needless to say the electricity bill has shot up. As for the condensation on the windows don't even go there - we had to get a dehumidifer as well to soak up some of the moisture. I love the size of the house but as for the lack of heat and damp a definite no no

BEVS

Do what we did when we were renting. Change your rental. If you have a periodic tenancy then you only need give 3 weeks notice.

Not sure why you accepted a rental without strategically placed heat pumps or at least a wood burner .

Kiwi-Irish

My parents had a lockwood on their farm. It was the older style and my god did it "humm" at night - banging and creaking and you'd swear someone was in the house it was that noisy. Cold as f**k as well, underfloor heating was there but it was too expensive to run. Also, and I'm not sure if this is just a rumour or whether its true, but underfloor heating from what I've heard in NZ is installed completely differently from the rest of the world. Normally you have 10cm of concrete THEN the electric heating wires, then the floor, but in NZ apparently you have the wires THEN the 10cm concrete, so you can turn it on but you never feel the heat as it can't get through the concrete. I don't know, maybe a builder can clarify that? I'm not sure how true that is, just what we were told at the time when we were firing up the electrics and felt no heat. Our wallets felt it however Thats the problem we had with our lockwood. We had a woodburner in it which was a small compensation. I don't know how well it was insulated - possibly not at all. It was a bit warmer than our other house farmhouse which was an old cottage. My mum cursed the lockwood because every few years you had to "oil it"? Huge job, huge undertaking.

Persephone

I'm living in an old Lockwood, I think it's around 20 years old. Got to admit it is very cold and as far as I can tell there is no insulation but other than that it does seem solid.
Hokey Pokey is right about the noises at night, it can be surprisingly loud; you'd think there was an elephant crashing around at times I'm getting used to it now but it freaked me out for ages especially if I was in on my own. The noises are nothing like houses make back in the UK-we get loud bangs and crashes We did look at some new ones recently and the builders assured us that the noise problem had been dealt with
Not sure about the internal walls but I would have thought it was easy enough to plaster them? Ours does have that authentic Scandinavian sauna look throughout which does get a bit samey

sparkie down under

Barge pole and touch are the two words I'd use

MOSO

Thanks very much for all your comments, it's been really helpful getting info from people 'in the know'.