[Taf]

The houses on our side of the road, and on several other locations around the country, were all built to the same design and with the same materials. Brick facing and clinker block interior walls, held together with steel ties. Several showed signs of the ties failing, and it was found that they were not of the specified steel required and were rusting to nothing.

So in the late 80s, the walls were removed, leaving the buildings as shells, with the first floor ceiling and roof held up by props. The walls were then replaced with hardened brick exteriors with lightweight insulation blocks inside. Because of the fragility of the insulation blocks, standard ties could not be used, so a stanless steel framework "caged-in" the blocks, and that cage was then tied to the exterior brickwork.

I suspect that this metal framework has effectively made them into Faraday cages. Radio reception in the houses is hopeless, except near to windows. The meter boxes are all sunk into the exterior walls, so are probably shielded against RF signals.

The techs, stood outside, can get good 2-way comms, but I've yet to see one of them try the transceiver inside the meter boxes.

I know a few of these houses that have interior water meters, so I wonder how they communicate to the repeaters out on the pavements.