2008 The Year Everything Stopped
The credit crunch cancelled the maintenance schedules. Biology moved in while the budgets were frozen.
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2008 — The financial crisis of 2008 created a maintenance gap that the biology on your property exploited without pause. The organisms colonising exterior surfaces in 2007 continued their work through 2008, 2009 and 2010 with no interruption. What was a surface condition in 2007 became a substrate condition by 2010, and a structural concern by 2015. The gap was two years of deferred maintenance. The compounded consequence is still visible on properties across this region today.
The Maintenance Gap Opens
The Credit Crunch Maintenance Gap and What Biology Did Next
Storms 2008 — 2 significant events (pre-naming era) — Autumn and winter frontal systems; a wet but not dramatically stormy year
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Work at Related Height
Wet Days
Windy Days
ONS Consumer Spending
ONS: UK household discretionary spending fell 3.2% in 2008 as the financial crisis took hold. Property maintenance was the first category cancelled. The biological load on untreated surfaces compounded accordingly.
The financial crisis of 2008 created what we now call the Maintenance Gap — a period of two to four years in which property maintenance schedules were suspended across the country as household budgets collapsed. For exterior surfaces that had been biologically colonised since 2006/07, the absence of treatment during 2008, 2009, and 2010 allowed the colonisation to transition from surface to structural. The organisms — green algae, black mould, Trentepohlia — penetrated beyond the surface of the render into the porous substrate. Removal at this stage requires soft washing with biocidal treatment and an extended dwell time of four to six hours, followed by a secondary visit. Properties maintained regularly throughout this period are visually indistinguishable from their neighbours. Properties that were not treated during the Maintenance Gap are the properties we now receive emergency calls about.
Nice weather... for ducks and bankruptcy lawyers. 2008 was the year the British moan became genuinely dark. We stopped talking about the weather and started talking about the economy. The drizzle continued, as it always does, but nobody had the energy to complain about it. The collective mood was too low. The classic 2008 gripe — said quietly, usually in a supermarket — was: everything's gone wrong, hasn't it. And then: still raining.
The Maintenance Gap begins; untreated surfaces from 2006-07 continue colonising unchallenged as household budgets collapse; biological bloom velocity high on neglected surfaces (BBV 7/10); infrastructure stress moderate from persistent damp; approximately 380 stewardship hours available but demand collapsed with the economy.
BIO-BLOOM VELOCITY
BBV 7/10 — High. Maintenance Gap allows 2006-07 colonisation to penetrate substrate unchallenged.
INFRASTRUCTURE STRESS COEFFICIENT
Primary Stress: Substrate Penetration — 75%. Maintenance Gap allows unchecked colonisation to transition from surface to structural substrate.
STEWARDSHIP WINDOW
380 hours. The Maintenance Gap was financial, not meteorological. Adequate windows existed. The budgets did not.
MOAN-O-METER
7/10. The weather became secondary to the economy. Two simultaneous national catastrophes. The moan was quiet and dark rather than performatively British.