House washing for older and rebuilt homes in Davistown

What should be checked before washing a 1950s to 1980s Davistown house?

Davistown is named after the Davis family: the father taught school at Kincumber, and his son Benjamin gave his name to nearby Bensville. The suburb has a small shopping centre, Paringa Mall, and the Davistown RSL, and the Woy Woy to Empire Bay ferry calls here on its run.

Those decades fall inside the period, roughly the 1940s to the late 1980s, when SafeWork NSW says asbestos cement sheeting was widely used, and its rule is that asbestos is never hit with high-pressure water. Eaves and wall sheets on a house of that age therefore get a house soft wash at low pressure. The rebuilds stand beside them, and not everything is detached: in 2021 the Census counted 73.5% separate houses, 18.1% flats or apartments and 9.0% semi-detached homes or townhouses among occupied dwellings.

Key figures

1950s

to the 1980s: when most older homes were built

18.1%

of occupied dwellings were flats or apartments

Sources

• Wikipedia, Davistown
• Wikipedia, Bensville
• Wikipedia, Empire Bay, New South Wales
• ABS 2021 Census QuickStats, Davistown
• SafeWork NSW, Asbestos
• NSW Spatial Services, Administrative Boundaries (postcode, council, distance, neighbours)