Garald

I've been thinking of protecting the grout in my shower-room/kitchen tilings (I'm surprised that the people who did an otherwise good job of laying the tile only protected some key bits (top, corner)). It's not as if there were mold or anything, but why wait until there is a serious problem. (In the wettest wall in the shower, the grout seems to be already starting to change color a bit - and in the kitchen backsplash, things are if anything more visible, according to someone who just helped me clean.) I've been advised to dry things with a hair dryer and then apply some sort of silicon protection (the French phrase is "mastic silicone"). (a) What sort of protection exactly? Something like this? https://www.leroymerlin.fr/produits/materiaux/etancheite-des-murs-et-sols/silicone-et-mastic-etancheite/silicone/silicone-bain-et-cuisine-rubson-blanc-280-ml-69962781.html?megaBoost&at_medium=Sea-Paid&at_campaign=PD-11-PEINTURE-PMAX-SHP-PLA-Tier1-Toprevenue&at_source=google&at_market=M4&at_section=R11&at_campaign_id=20536653576&at_campaign_type=PMAX&at_campaign_sub_type=PLA&at_account=FIL-ROUGE-SHOPPING&at_account_id=921-620-5076&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiAyKurBhD5ARIsALamXaH4xtNsscOSrx4vkdN3ccZsOcbF9fr7pOiCEz01xkODu5ZoChdrZz4aAryWEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds Is it non-toxic? (Thinking of whether I have to remove things from the kitchen first.) (b) Of course I don't have a hair-dryer (why would I?). How many W would be enough - is a regular hair-dryer at 2100W enough? Also, if the information on a hair-dryer says "dries your hair at a lower temperature" (this is the case for a Philips model), is that a good or a bad thing for this purpose?

At any rate - would something like this suffice? It would actually overstep the edges of the cat flap slightly - I'd just need to tape it to the open flap. https://www.amazon.fr/Domo-Tafelventilator-23-Cm-Do8138/dp/B01FK2Z9IA/ref=sr_1_5?__mk_fr_FR=ÅMÅŽÕÑ&crid=3TYPHSRK81KAS&keywords=ventilateur&qid=1701206870&sprefix=ventilateur%2Caps%2C131&sr=8-5&th=1

I am also in a historic area, and had to ask for planning permission to install awnings - and it was granted. Of course this is just the couronne rouge - things may be different in the 5th.

*Rotation*.

I think these two 2-second videos give you a fair idea of how cat flap, staircase and attic are laid out. 20231128_092338.mp4

More seriously: I have a cat flap in the door in front of the little staircase going up to the attic. Could I try to depressurize the attic simply by taping a fan to the open cat flap (presumably on the staircase size), or is the scale off? How powerful a fan do I need? Also: how does the fan know which side to depressurize? 20231128_092159.mp4

Daughter? Is she the joss stick provider?

I'm really ignorant: how does one set things up so that the fan extracts air rather than pull air in? Also, should I turn the PIV off first?

But how would that work? Yes, smoking the entire atmosphere (minus your house) would work, but I take that's not an option.

Interesting. Explain what to do with it?

Explain?

Ah wow. I already have VMI - can both be combined? (I'd think VMI is a good idea even just for its filtering effect - Paris air is not the best.) Ah, you don't have a courtyard to install a heat-pump in? I also got an A for CO2 emissions.

This is not really an introduction, but I didn't formally introduce myself when I got into buildhub more than a year ago. Work is basically done, and it's now official: my place has gone from having an energy rating of F to having an energy rating of B! In particular, this counts as "bâtiment basse consommation en rénovation". French energy rating is insanely hard; of the roughly sixty places I visited when I was buying, only two had a B - one was new, and the other one had town heating (still a rarity) due to being next to an incinerator. This is just to say that I am very, very grateful to everybody who helped here. I don't know what I would have done otherwise. The diagnostician's only recommendations are: - to install MVHR (not sure that's feasible in a house from 1930?) - to check on airtightness (I'll borrow a thermal imagining camera once it gets seriously cold - is there anything else I should do?). When asked, he also said that installing solar panels and hooking them up to hot water generation could be interesting. (Local peculiarities: it's sunny only in summer, and it is no longer possible to sell excess electricity back to the State.) Thank you again!

Right. That's why I won't consider doing it myself, and I'm trying to do this with a specialist rather than with my usual contractor. Just got a quote from the said specialist - now I'm trying to bargain... The most annoying thing by far is road traffic noise, and particularly motorbikes. Large buses and the occasional lorry do not bother me much, which is just as well, as there's only so much I can do against the low frequencies, in part perhaps for the reason you mention. One can occasionally hear people talking loudly, but, if I manage to basically get rid of motorbike noise, I take chattering humans will be taken care of as well.

Of course the ash or oak one get on Pickawood and the like is really small blocks pasted together. Sigh. I just don't know whether made-to-order solid wood bookcases are in my future I've got and put together a couple of solid pine and solid oak bookcases - they were not expensive at all, but everything is either too small or too large.

Ah! I'm not sure it's cross, though, so - glued laminated timber, veneered? I'm finding precious little about its use in furniture, though. Sure, there's furniture made of rectangular bits of hardwood pasted together (I have a table like that - plenty of furniture sold online is like that). But glulam with hardwood veneer? I didn't even know that was a thing, and can't find much on it.

I went to a carpenter today to ask about possibly having some bookcases made. Making them out of solid ash is an option (less expensive than solid oak), but the carpenter said that, given that solid wood changes shape over time, he prefers making bookcases out of something called "panneau latté plaqué chêne" (literally: "slatted panel with oak veneer"). He showed me it consists of a core of long, thick pine strips glued together, with what looked to be about 2-3mm thick oak veneer on both sides. What is the name for that in English? I know of plywood or MDF covered with veneer, and didn't want either - but I did not know about this option, and would like to know more about it.

Cool, thanks - this agrees with the data on the sheet. The motivation for all of this was to get the right data so as to decide whether to improve on the sound insulation. The windows are good, but we are talking about a first floor right in front of a two-way street that can get reasonably busy. A window specialist (https://www.different-projet.com/) visited today - he seemed to know his stuff. He recommended adding sliding windows on the outside, with single glazing (designed for sound protection - the term was "feuilleté", which makes me think of croissant dough). That's what I had thought. Now waiting for the quote. Steeling myself...

I was writing a long post and apparently it got lost. Let me be more succinct. The line "CLIMAPLUS SILENCE PLANITHERM XN F3 44.1Si(20 argon)10" at the top of the page gives the specifications: one layer of 44.1Si glass 20mm of argon, one 10mm-thick layer of glass. Here 44.1 is a standard, and 44.1Si is some sort of magical 8mm glass from Saint Gobain, with "Si" standing for "Silence" - see https://www.saint-gobain-glass.fr/fr/produits/stadip-silence#performances While the table at https://www.saint-gobain-glass.fr/fr/produits/stadip-silence#performances doesn't quite have a configuration that is exactly equal to that, it has one that is slightly worse (less spacing) and one that is a bit better (somewhat thicker glass); interpolating allows us to confirm that the claimed dB value is plausible (or at least consistent with the table), and also let us interpret it. Looking at the table, one can see that 45(-1;-5) must mean Rw = 45dB, RA = 44dB, RAtr = 40dB (RA = R + CA, RAtr = R + Ctr, so CA = -1, Ctr = -5 These are three different weighted averages of R as a function of frequency. RAtr is meant to correspond to road noise, with its lower frequencies. https://www.toutsurlisolation.com/lexique/r https://build.com.au/what-do-rw-ctr-and-nrc-mean

Oh, thanks! I already wrote to them in chatGPT-aided Polish (I know just about Polish to make sure that chatGPT was not selling my soul, say). They haven't replied yet. Good news, though: the contractor just sent me the sheet with information! I'd rather it state things like thickness - it just gives a sound rating, which seems a bit optimistic: "Isolation au bruit aérien direct (dB) 3 45(-1;-5)" See attached. Hopefully there's enough data on this sheet that we can figure out everything? DoP_d2601503_20221016.pdf

Right (and thanks). The problem right now is that people at the factory all answer the phone in Polish, and say they don't speak any of the languages I do speak. I'll have to ask a distant relation...

Right.

Oh, a *coating*. Yes, I think "Climaplus" implies that.

A costing? What do you mean? Right, that's how I located the city in Poland. Well, I have eight panes, four ending in 24 and four ending in 25. 3626391 could be an order number, or it could be a descriptor. In other Saint Gobain glass, the code can be looked up online: https://www.saint-gobain-glass.fr/fr/services/naviglass-la-carte-didentite-de-votre-vitrage However, my codes aren't even in the right format (they should be 12 digits long). You'd expect that I should at least be able to look up my windows' code in https://glassolutions.pl/pl/ , but no - or at least I haven't found anything there myself (even with the help of automatic translation).

Supposedly, https://www.saint-gobain-glass.fr/fr/services/naviglass-la-carte-didentite-de-votre-vitrage gives you the right information, but the code 3626391/24 isn't even in the right format.