BarumMike

The photo shows our front steps which are probably Victorian. The risers of the bottom three steps but not the top one have blown outwards cracking and loosening the tiles. A number of questions. Am I right in assuming this is due to water penetration causing expansion of the substrate below each step? How far back should I go excavating below each step before rebuilding the riser and laying the replacement tiles? I will probably leave the top step/riser undisturbed and just replace the two broken long yellow tiles. Should I assume I will not be able to recover any tiles intact from the bottom three risers when ordering replacements? Any further tips?

The problem - sorry if long winded! Ours is a listed old house with two original rooms in the attic space (ground, first and attic floors) each with a single dormer window. The widows are conventional outward opening wooden casements with one opening light and one fixed. One is probably victorian and the other modern. The rooms are large so the dormer windows provide borderline daytime illumination which I don't want to compromise. Because of the difficulties in accessing the outside face of the windows and dormer they are in poor decorative order. I hope to replace them with double glazed wood windows to remain in keeping with the house. Any ideas for design to make access for decoration safe and not requiring scaffolding? I am not keen on a modern wood window with complex hinges and locking mechanisms in the style of uPVC windows. They are recognisable from a distance to be anachronistic and they substantially reduce the area of glazing. The simplest solution is inward opening conventional casements but this would make it difficult to have the window ajar in the summer with the blind pulled down. Is there a clever solution that anyone has devised?

I take the point that I can't say with authority until a formal test has been done. All apart from the Aga are against inside walls in old fireplaces. Hence my assumption that increased air supply would require holes in walls. Only one is in a room with a ground level suspended floor which could be vented. Apart from the size and leakiness of the house, the other reason for my assumption that we are not nearly at risk of insufficient air supply is that all three fires were installed by a meticulous gas engineer who did not raise the question of additional venting and have been regularly serviced by gas engineers. The messages I take away are:- 1. As we continue on the journey of dealing with draughts etc, I need to pause when significant change has been made and recheck the adequacy of air supply to the appliances. 2. That journey strengthens the case for CO alarms. 3. That having an open flue appliance working in a room may (should?) contribute to increasing air leaks elsewhere in the house and make those areas cooler. 4. And so a longer term aim might be to find alternative ways of achieving individual room heating - ?smart TRVs, electric heaters, directing insulation efforts to rooms where the ambition is to remove a gas appliance. Does that sound about right? And are others further down this journey in an old large and expensive to heat house and have solutions/experience to share?

PS If that sounds unappreciative it wasn't meant to be. I am very impressed how much time people give to this forum. Its just that I know our place is a long way on the safe side of the CO risk spectrum.

There is no way I am putting an air brick in the wall of each room with a gas appliance! Apart from the fact that the house is plenty leaky enough already, the wall is at least 24 inches of stone. When a plumber put in a toilet in a new bathroom, he wrecked two diamond core drills before getting in a specialist contractor.. I am not worried that the appliances are not getting enough oxygen. I am worried that I and the missus are getting too much fresh oxygen on cold breezy days! But a CO detector is a good idea.

We have an Aga and three gas appliances. They draw air from the room unlike the gas boiler which has an external air vent. On a windy yesterday, thinking about what air leaks I could seal up I listened to the wind whistling in the unlit gas fire in my room. So my question:- In a house with internal gas appliances which cannot be directly connected to the outside where do I draw the line in chasing air tightness when I need air leaks to avoid carbon monoxide poisoning? I appreciate there is no simple answer to this question. Are there any clever solutions to this issue? Is this such a big issue that the objective is to remove all such appliances? The house is large, old, leaky and listed so that getting near a Passivhaus standard so that the whole house is warm is a forlorn hope. Having regional heating sources has helped us survive the winters!

What a fantastic response to a Newbie self introduction. Thanks everyone. Picking up the theme of AIM (Airtightness, Iinsulation and Mtechnical ventilation) mentioned in the thread from December that Sparrowhawk pointed to, I have posted a question about gas appliances and airtightness on the heat insulation section of the insulation and ventilation forum.

All of our internal walls are lath and plaster with the usual cavity behind. I had naïvely thought that this would contribute to keeping the heat in. However having been up in the loft spaces I realise that the cavity behind the lath and plaster opens into these very cold voids. I suppose there are streams of cold air from the roof voids circulating down into the lath and plaster cavities while air warmed by conduction across the lath and plaster escapes upwards into the roof voids. So my practical question is, should I completely or partially close off the openings into the lath and plaster cavities in the roof spaces? Assuming there is no obvious reason to worry about internal damp. Does anyone have a view or know of research on this issue?

Hi, just joined. We are struggling to get the energy bills down without spending a fortune to save a fortune! Hoping to find some answers here. Ours is a 200 year old listed end of terrace house in N Devon, with many large sash windows and lots of other ways to leak heat. But we like it.