bayard1music

Hello Prodave again, My only fear now in just adding insulation is the earlier comment from Redbeard stating that we should operate with building regs since 2010. Should we choose to sell the house subsequently might we be penalised by a prospective buyer say ? Sorry so many questions but thought this would be straightforward at a level. In addition not sure why there's discussion on the joists? Are there concerns based on adding weight to the roof structure . Or is this comment purely with attempting to meet building reg standards. Thanks agian.

Thanks Redbeard for your comments. My belief is that we have 100mm space to fill but as you say we need to leave some space (say 50mm) means we can only put 50mm behind the existing plasterboard line . I know we've only a 100mm or so distance between the floorboads and the ceiling below. Guess confirming we haven't got the requisite strong joists. As you suggest the room is part of the house I'm not sure how we might convince any local regs people that we only need another 50mm of insulation as a total of 100mm PIR won't comply. More will impact on the height space available , and tend to defeat the reasoning for keeping this as an office. I fear this is project is starting to loose all traction as there are too many conflicts / issues. All solvable no doubt with large amounts of cash that we may not have. Perhaps we're simply better off double glazing (prioritising on the poor windows) and just living with the weak roof insulation? At least the windows are notionally simple and don't interfere with other aspects such as building regs. Thanks again for all the comments.

Hello ProDave, Happy to share the key points. Broadly : Insulate the walls, insulate roof, replace all of our single glazed windows with double glazing , replace our existing double glazed units, insulate between floors. install a heat pump and uprate rads to accommodate. Probably £150K of work their estimate. But matches a colleagues expenditure. I fear you might be right re the flooring . We're not builders and the floor itself has only recently come to our understanding. In truth the house was bought knowing the room wasn't fully compliant but we didn't fully appreciate what that might mean in detailed tersm. I thank you for your comment and advice about not going for massive expenditure , it would need a complete rebuild then including the floor to be effective. Have you any recommendations as to the most suitable material to use to fix on top of our existing structure ? (I'm 66 now and not a builder , so not sure I'd say this a diy for me but thanks for the tip.)

Hello I'm a newbie here and in need of some pragmatic advice please. We've a Victorian detached house solid walls and double pitch roof in Kingston, Surrey. An energy analysis tells us that after the walls our roof is losing the most energy. We've a 2nd floor room conversion 'room in roof' which we use as an office . It's very hot in summer and cold in winter. Entered by full staircase but without 2m head clearnance. Ther's no insulation in the roof between the slate tiles/mebrane and plasterboard. We'd like to make it more comfortable and lose less energy. We've a finite budget to improve our overall efficiency of the house (lets say £25-30K) . The energy analysis says we need to spend £150K to go from F rated (current) to A. Our thoughts include insulating between the roof, replacing some strategic single glazed windows, adding lined curtains and putting a decent PV array on our roof with battery. Option 1 - Provisional quotes to remove the existing plasterboard, fill the rafter gaps with PIR/Wood Fibre and then line with 50mm insulation are coming in at £15K to £25K (includes rad moving and electrics). This would include 50mm insulation between the rafters and say 50mm on top to cover the rafters. Total insulation 100mm say. We've also requested that we cover the 3 gable walls. Advantages of this approach, gives us 100mm of insulation overall, Disadvantages, potentially blows our complete budget with existing quotes. There's 100+ square meters of plasterboard to carefully remove and rafter gaps to fill. (this alone doesn't get us a fully compliant room as don't have 2m height on stair access). Below an alternative scheme to hopefully reduce costs and still save energy but the question is how much of an improvement might this make versus Option 1 above. Option 2 - cover the existing plaster board with say 60-75mm of wood fibre/PIR , and plaster over. (We'd still go with 100mm for the gable ends ) Screw/fix on top of the existing lining. (Nothing to clear or dispose of less mess.) The expectation is this would be much cheaper to carry out and leave monies say to do the PV and Curtains. My questions are simply (a) Is this approach a waste of time with no rafter insulation (b) will it provide useful energy reduction in view of the compromised approach ? Any thoughts comment please to help steer us forward. Thanks in advance.