Roger440

Not really, not on a decent thickness composite panel. We are not talking about single skin steel roofs.

Good info. Thanks for updating the thred.

Im good with the installation side. Used it before, so im not concerned about that aspect. Pretty much got everything i need both tools and consumables etc, just not the actual panels. Yes, checked the Kingspan load tables, and, handily, 3.6m was the max span for the sheets i considered using, though i will confess the load data im less clear on. Not my strong point. I appreciate its not a common solution for a house, but it works ok on commercial buildings and my own garage i built way back.

Why not for a small area? Its only 3.6m deep, so can span that without any supporting structure at all, other than the wall it attached to (existing) and the outer wall of the extension. 150mm panel would meet the regs i believe from an insulation perspective. Your latter suggestion is fine, except that it wont meet regs with the depth i have. Currently its not even insulated but has no ventilation as it has existing walls in 2 sides, so no easy route to do so. Ive yet to look in there and see how much mould there is.

All very interesting stuff. Especially as i have a small flat roofed extension which i want to enlarge. However, i only have circa 175mm to play with otherwise it will foul the door on the flat roof. It strikes me there is no "compliant" roof build up that i can use. So currently looking at composite steel cladding!!! Which makes all the problems of having timber in the build up go away. It does however creaye some other issues....................

This is disaster looking for somwhere to happen. Probably in your living room. Cob walls really, really dont like being wet. Plenty in devon and cornwall that have collapsed for this reason. If you do any of the things you have suggested, where do you think the moisture will go? Or put another way, if you washed your clothes, took them out of the washing machine, put them in a plastic back and hung it on the washing line, what do you think will happen? Ill give you the answer. They will stay wet. This is exactly what you are proposing to do, with the inevitable outcome. I gave you your only viable solution. It remains the only sensible one, especially with a cob wall.

Rather depends on how "bad" the damp is. Id be tempted to remove plaster and allow to dry out. If it does, ie, its dispering happily into the room, then simply replaster with lime plaster. (and lime paint) Sometimes the simple solutions are best. Worked for me.

No. Too much to do, so have moved this job to next year!

This ^^^^^ The important part of your build up, assuming its a a suitably old house is the geocell layer.

As has been pointed out, covering the wall in tanking, cement, gypsum plaster etc will stop it breathing/drying out. The net result will be the wall is wet. From your description of some of the mortar being like clay, id suggest its very wet already. Without a DPC in the walls, trying to stop moisture getting into the wall is pointless. Never going to work. Those rods? Forget about them, never going to work. If you want a dry wall its needs to dry out. Yes, some of that moisture will be inside the house. With good ventilation and or dehumidifiers it can be. But both sides of the wall need to be able to dry out or "breathe" as the traditionalists would say. Do this and it will likely dry out. I say likely, as this is reliant on the walls being able to disperse the moisture faster than the bottom of the wall is absorbing it. You cant know the answer to that until afterwards. Having done all this, i was astounded at the speed it all dried out. The DPC under your concrete is likely making the walls wetter than they might otherwise be, but short of digging up the floor (i did) theres not much you can do about that.

Does a cold damp outer wall matter if it is, to all intents a rainscreen? Granted, not many can sacrifice that much interior space, (ie, the air gap plus internal wall bild up) but its viable on bigger building like barn conversions.

I looked (briefly) at storage. Using old milk tankers. Buried. Rough calcs suggested id need 2 to keep house warm through winter. They are £5k a pop. Plus need burying. Additional complication was very high water table, so heat would be constantly sucked away unless significant work was done on drainage etc. Simply makes no sense in the real world.

Much as i dont like more laws, in this case, good.

Your existing planning is not "at risk" if you make another planning application. You can make as many as you want. That you have planning already in perpetuity means applying for more is a no risk option. Anything new will incur all current regs.

I made it out of bits of XPS insulation board, glued and screwed together so it was a snug fit over the entry point and the 2 return pipes. What i never did do was sort out the open pipe from on the settled sludge return. I was going to put a pipe on this so instead of it just splashing about, it would run downhill into the water and hence be quiet.. The downside of that, is that you then cant really see if you have that set at the right rate, so it would need to be easily removable. Like Joe90, i fitted some foam to the inside too. Addtionally i had decking over the top. Still wasnt happy with it. Ive moved since, but there is no way id locate a plant anywhere near the house again. Fortunately im on a septic tank now. The vortex might be good in some respects, but it has some obvious flaws, one of which is noise, the other is the tendancy for the settled sludge return to get blocked. The noise issue would be easy for them to solve. I wouldnt buy another.

Dont remember the pic. But it was much the same back at my old place in Bucks. We were the only house without one, but i got all the "benefits" apart from heat from everyone else. Absolutely no need for it. No one was doing it to save money or as primary heating. No such problems where we are now, though we do have one local who burns everything and anything. Fortunately for me, we are upwind of them and 1/4 mile away. If i lived next door to them id be rather unhappy.

No WBS here. But a small gen set instead. Ideally, that would be paired with batteries for max efficency. Not only will it create way less pollution, everything in the house will work too. Really need to get my auto switch over system installed.........

Not sure what this posts contributes. This is about DIY installation. I for one couldnt be less interested in building regs approval in this scenario.

If the house was 100% air tight and theres no "leaks of water, then yes, in theory it will stay at 50% However, no house is air tight, and an older house probably very much NOT air tight. My house, even with 2 people living in it, takes a week to go fro 50 to 60% , which, logically is our prescence plus some degree of infiltration from outside, where its currently 99%. A de-humidifier will have a dial to set what level you are targetting. Set it to, say, 50% and just let it sort itself out. Any heat it generates, just means less heat required from whatever other source of heat the house has. If theres no actual water leaks into the house, then to be honest, its a cheap simple fix. You original post suggests the structure is dry, in which case, not much else to do. More technical, clever solutions are of course available. Edited to add, if its been damp for a long time, it will take a long time to bring it under control as everything thats absorbent in any way, so all the sift furnisjhing, carper, anything made of wood, plasterwork etc will all have settled at the background level. Some of this will take months to dry out.

Indeed. But the problem here is simple, so keeping it simple.

As a short term fix, get a couple of de-humidifiers. If you get dessicant ones, they generate a degree of heat too. Eventually, you will get to a sensible number, say 50%. Once there, see how long it takes to start to rise. If its rapid, then you really need to understand why. Several have said ventilate. Thats great, so long as its lower humidity outside than in. To an extent, thats going to depend where it is, but its been pretty much 90% and over here since mid July here (mid wales) apart from a few notable days. Opening the windows to ventilate would make things worse, not better. I suspect, a lack of ventilation management of any sort just sees the humidity climb ever higher. The above is what i did, the house was humid, mainly as not inhabited for 10 years. It took 6 months of running 2 de-humidifiers to get to the point, where it now sits at 50% and requires, maybe a couple of ours a week of one de-humidifier to keep it there.

This is exactly the approach that causes ever increasing amounts of flooding. Having lived in a flood prone house the willingness people have to ignore Suds, for that is what you are doing, im well aware of what goes on, and how useless most of the schemes, signed off as they are, are. All your attenuation tank needs is a one way valve on the outlet so it cannot "back fill". They cost a tenner. I see no excuse here for just dumpng the rainwater straight to the brook. Which is what Suds is supposed to prevent. You may be able to persuade the BCO it is OK, but that just highlights how useless the system is, becuase you will have circumvented Suds,.

Absolutely this. Putting your house, things in it and other things you have at the mercy of organisations whose only motive is profit. Have we all forgotton rings little expoilts. Once you invertor is built in, whats to stop them taking control, and demanding £5 a month for having it working? Im afraid its a no from me. As Nailbiter says, without consumer pushback, we will see more and more of it. Sadly, i doubt we will see consumer pushback, people seem completely relaxed about it.

The problem is you go can never really know how good response will be. Yes, some compnies reputation is better than others, but quite often that counts for nothing, or its some bizarre fault they dont understand. Id rather not put myself in that position in the first place.

Im with you 100%. If i cant fix it myself, or at the very least, identify the defect myself, then it isnt getting fitted. Well, certainly not for anything important, like heat and power. Being reliant on "support" likely means whatever it is wont be working for extended periods if it goes wrong. I get that limits my options, but so be it.