Garald

@SteamyTeaStrange - can you see the following?

BTW, here is a good demonstration of how terrible single-glazing (even thick, good-quality single-glazing) is at heat insulation. What you see at 0.9C or 1.9C is not the outside air (which was at about 0C or perhaps -1C when I took the picture) but the thick single-glazed outside pane in my library windows. Conclusion: if I redo the windowpanes outside the stained glass, I should redo them in double-glazing (with less obtrusive frames than now). In the meantime - at least they trap air.

First snow day in Paris. Time to have fun with a thermal camera! Here are the main things I've observed. Perhaps you can make your own observations? a) (You can't see it in these pictures - I can post others.) My attempt at sealing air gaps seems to have been a success - some places where air used to come in are only slightly cooler than the rest, and others aren't at all. But then perhaps air gaps are not obvious on a thermal camera. b) In the main floor and the attic, the coldest spots are (in rough descending order of importance, i.e., ascending order of temperature) 1. Corners and sides of windows, especially skylights. Not sure I can do, other than the obvious thing - paste some cork (1cm might do); my girlfriend might kill me, but the worst offender is actually the old skylight left by the previous owners in her office. I can promise to use only the nicest cork there... 2. Joints and crevices. Is this normal? Is this inevitable? 3. The very low walls on the side of the attic, when not covered in books or bookcases with backs. This is puzzling, though I noticed it already next time - I've actually drilled into one of those walls and used some sort of snake camera to make sure that the contractor did a proper insulation job. Is this just an artifact of air not circulating much around there? (In the case of bookcases without backs, should I consider... cork? Bit of a waste of cork if there isn't a real problem - and there's only so much 1cm or 2cm worth of cork can do; it can eliminate a thermal bridge, but it adds only about 0.5 to existing R.) 4. The metal frame on the northeast attic side wall is noticeable - *very* noticeable on the side of the small staircase. Even if I were to decide, in the end, not to insulate the north wall from the outside, I should insulate this small wall properly from the outside (and then possibly make the small staircase less narrow; about 5cm of it - or a bit more - is hidden by the insulation). I'll have to contact the owner of the mystery kitchen somehow. c) The north wall (I've been asking for quotes for insulating it from the outside; I'm waiting for a second reasonable quote - one from a place that responds quickly) actually does not seem too bad, at least on the first floor. It's in the ground floor that one can see trouble, particularly under the main staircase. What are those black lines? Hidden beams? Poorly done joints? I had a mold problem on the vertical one a few months ago, as you may remember. d) The cork door (3cm of cork on an outside metal door - people here may remember that) is pretty much a success, though, as predicted, it is not quite as warm as the middle of a modern double-glazed window. You can actually see R calculations being validated: centre of a window, 3cm-thick cork, spots of 2cm-thick cork. The handle and hinges are clearly cold (ca. 10C) but they are not even close to the outside door temperature (0C or less), meaning their R is not near-zero. So, given their small area, I could just leave them alone. I should add some more weatherstripping to be safe. Notice the black lines. e) The main door (which opens onto an unheated corridor) is less cold than I thought. I was planning to cover it in two 1cm-thick layers of cork (in fact the cork arrived today is being flattened in the library right now) but I should probably reconsider and use only one layer. There are other possible uses for cork. f) If the single-pane windows outside the stained-glass windows help with insulation at all, it's because they trap air (but then the air layer is too thick to help much). They seem to have next to no R. If I insulate the north wall (and perhaps even if I don't), I should have them redone with double-glazing (by the guys who did the living-room outer windows, say). I don't have manufacturers' data on them at all. . A single-pane window outside, and the stained glass in front of it (both open): Oh, and I think my radiators are working correctly now? I see no cold parts.

Are you positive? We are talking about a place where a 3500m elevation is considered moderate. (The regions for hardy people start at 4000m. Old-style hard drives used to malfunction there.) Food gets cold noticeably faster, as evaporation is much easier. At 3500m, air pressure is less two-thirds of what it is at sea level. - If the colder season is the seriously sunny one, then obviously direct solar gain becomes more of a factor. - Would the efficiency of a heat pump be affected? - other questions I'm not thinking of?

Not sure where I'd drop those ducts. Perhaps the simplest thing is to have two systems - one for the right-hand of the first floor and possibly the right hand of the attic, housed in that empty hidden space in the attic, and the other one on the left side of the house. At the same time, it seems a bit of a waste not to use the garage at all - that would be the natural place for a potentially noisy machine.

A question has been going around my mind for some time: what about Passivhaus in *other* highlands? Say, in the Andes? Some of the conditions are similar (it gets chilly up there) but others are rather different: - tropical latitude - the colder season is also the one with clear skies and lots of sunlight (and UV) - ... which brings us to our next point: considerably thinner air There's a smattering of news about the matter (people are experimenting with Trombe walls, for instance) and a tiny handful of builders ("ours is the first Passivhaus project in the country" is more dispiriting than anything else) but I don't know of a good source of information.

Right. The guy who did the renovation said that he's using 'the old chimney ducts' for an extractor that was noisy and turned out to be pointless (just had it turned off) - I was never sure what he had in mind; the ducts of a chimney that went the way of the dodo? I suspect a bit of the red space on the left may already be used in part for the PIV ducts - the attic PIV outlet is just outside it, in front of the leftmost part of the computer desk in the above drawing. But yes, I think it's mostly empty space (which could not be used otherwise; I had no desire to crouch while using the toilet, as would have had to be the case if the toilet had been set further back). I also think the red space on the top right is empty. It's right above the kitchen - I imagine what lies under it must be used as ducts for the extractor above the stove. But how could it be connected to the rest of the ventilation system? Would there be a different heat exchanger here?

While we wait for @Mike to respond to nudging, here are some photos of what I've been up to, with a friend's help (meaning he did a lot of it). After a lot of trying, we managed to stick a stopper made out of sheep's wool up the bedroom chimney. Now I wonder whether I should get an even bigger stopper, to make sure there are no airgaps. I did some weatherstripping a couple of days ago. (I had already done plenty of weatherstripping some months ago, but one has to be thorough - the airtightness testers noticed every missing bit, and even parts where the weatherstripping had been deformed. This is an inside door leading to the garage.) My visiting friend was particularly neat when caulking the staircases with acrylic. He let me do two steps. A bit of cork and some acrylic was enough here. All of this is of course hidden from view ordinarily. Now for the major gap in the attic ceiling (hidden between two rafters): This was a very big hole (about 14cm by 8cm)! It's a good thing the roof insulation is mostly rockwool - imagine if it had been fiberglass or some other severe irritant. I put together a made-to-measure stopper made out of two differently sized cork layers, 2cm thick each, and then my visitor sealed it with acrylic.

I thought: should I say « carpenter » or « joiner » here? The French word is « menuisier « . A menuisier takes care of small wooden things rather than large wooden beams; he also takes care of other finicky stuff, such as windows.

@Mike Considered yourself nudged. I've already implemented the suggestions for the ground floor (mainly further weatherstripping); a carpenter came to fix the leaky first-floor window today, and he seems to have done a good job. An electrician will come in a few hours to look at all those electrical fixtures in the attic.

This is going to be awkward: I don't think it's going to work unless I either remove the cork panels first (no thanks) or drill holes at the top of the door (and take the door off its hinges, which I also don't want to do).

Here are some examples of graphite- and non-graphite-coated balls: https://www.leroymerlin.fr/produits/materiaux/isolation/plaque-polystyrene/polystyrene-expanse/250-litres-billes-de-polystyrene-m1-anti-feu-isolation-poly-xpansion-85633522.html https://www.materiaux-naturels.fr/produit-decl/5798-billes-isolantes-polystyrene-graphitees-200-litres The problem of graphite-coated balls is that they catch fire quickly (within a metal door, would that be a non-issue or a death trap?) The other issue is that one apparently needs some sort of gun to blow them in, though that doesn't seem to be necessarily all that every expensive: https://www.materiaux-naturels.fr/produit/1238-pistolet-propulseur-de-billes-isolantes I guess the manically consistent choice would be to blow in cork bits. The cork bits from materiaux-naturels seem too large (the "pistolet" works only with spheres up diameter up to 2mm), and even those from here may be: https://www.natureliege.fr/granulat/6-granulat-de-liege-naturel-en-vrac-pour-l-isolation-thermique-et-acoustique.html#/268-epaisseur-2_a_5mm/696-conditionnement-sac_de_100l Of course cork gives only 3/4 the insulation of polystyrene, but it's probably wiser to have a bag of cork rather than a bag of polystyrene in the garage.

Oh, this is a metal door leading directly to the (now rather cold) courtyard. That's why I am so obsessed with insulating it well! The room used to be a laundry - now it's my parents' studio when they visit. Oh, I've got plenty of adhesive-backed cork. As I said, there's a 2cm-thick layer and then a 1cm-thick layer on the door by now. I'm not sure I can put on any more without making the door even odder-looking and hard to close. That's why I'm wondering what to put inside the door. Yes. Someone came with a fan door last week and pointed out some weak spots in the weather-stripping - just fixed it I think. I've also had to pare down the cork a bit with a utility knife to make sure the door closes well and the cork doesn't come off.

Right, if I knew any carpentry, I might have considered PIR, except putting in PIR is unkind to the fireman who comes to drag out one’s charred remains. Also, bare cork does not look that bad if you are not my girlfriend. Bare anything else is not really an option.

3cm-thick cork is already not bad, but my girlfriend hates it. What I’m proposing is meant to complement that, though, not replace it.