Our new house (new to us – it’s twelve years old) can make some ferocious noises sometimes. It has some huge steel beams supporting the roof – these being held up as far as I can tell partly by steel supports and partly by concrete walls. I’ve been trying to work out just what is supporting what in the house – for example there appears to be one beam that is held up only at one end. That can’t be right – there must be some kind of structure buried away that I can’t see – but it does look a bit odd.<\/p>\n
With all that steel, and warm days and cool nights, there’s a lot of thermal expansion and contraction going on. At about the time you want to start sleeping, the house can start banging as the steel moves slightly to relieve stresses that are beginning to build up. I’m sure the architect knew what he was doing, but it it’s a bit disconcerting sometimes.<\/p>\n