MikeGrahamT21

Mines 5 years this year and had a couple of mould blobs on the fan blades of the extract, but overall it looks the same as it did when i installed it. I clean the dust from the blades once a year and blast it out with a high powered fan.

EPS will have the same results as PIR if poorly installed. You could also consider blown bead once its built too.

Give us some extra detail on the roof, what kind of felt/membrane do you have? Are there any counter battens in play on the tile side?

I think I’ve seen an old clip of if not the same project, another one which had the same idea, could you imagine that these days? Just wouldn’t happen, everyone would be blaming others for this and that. Most of my bungalow has been covered with varying extensions I’ve put on over the years and the small amount of visible brickwork wasn’t in very good condition, chipped bricks, cracked bricks (old soft London bricks) and it was due a repoint, so I thought I’d fix it all and give it a huge upgrade in insulation levels, did all the work myself over years and it’s turned out really well. just got the top part of the gable end to clad at some point, tho this will be framed, rockwool and cladding board, need some scaffolding for that one though!

I've learned from jobs over the years to always keep a very close eye on builders, i still think Unilin's (xtratherm) CT/PIR was a very easy to use product:

That is a spectactularly bad job on the builders part, that corner is a proper shocker, basically zilch insulation!

Yeah that’s doable, as long as you maintain a 25mm air gap up to the breather membrane your good

yeah that’s how it should be above the openings. The dpm is to catch any potential future leaks and channel them to the outside. it’s possible you have a cavity tray all way round, depending on ground conditions, but it’s not necessarily in all situations

Black above the openings under the insulation will be DPM, its your cavity tray

I think back in the day they probably used a mixture of building sand and grit sand, but for pointing you really want building sand as the grit would likely get in the way. You can get yellow or red sand, dependant on colour you want, the above looks like yellow. I have a 60's bungalow, ideal homes build, they were quite well known for pushing the boundaries of building tech, bringing in some real weird and wonderful build styles, which they tested on live properties, all still standing. I had a builder once who worked on them when they first built these, and he said they had a huge machine mixing the mortar, but its was primarily sand and lime, with very little cement in the mix. Its stood up well, but it wearing out now, not a problem for me, as i've covered it all up with EWI.

If its 60s build it'll be stronger than 6:1:1, try 5:1:1, without doubt there will be lime in there like you say. It may just be trial and error trying a few different mixes and see what dries the best, assuming you are wanting it to match?

As good as you’ll get. I’ve seen it used on a pure white panel and it’s visible, but a coloured panel will be as good as can be, almost invisible. Not sure how good the pattern matching is from one sheet to the next so you’d have to ask manufacturer about that

Use the hydro lock panels if you need extra width

Do the hot water taps do the same thing? Any pressure drop on cold taps?

https://www.buildingmaterials.co.uk/info-hub/insulation/can-cavity-wall-insulation-be-removed Looks like polyurethane can be removed, according to that anyway, may be worth speaking to the experts, call a removal company and see what they say?

Firstly the easy bit, the Kingspan to wall plate junction, yes this can be foamed and obviously ensure the gap above remains clear. and here in lays the problem why PIR cavity insulation gets such a bad rap!! Poor installation. You are correct that will be doing very little work currently, in practice when it was installed and built up, plastic retaining rings should have been installed to keep it held tight against inner leaf. Clearly doing this now would be a major major job. what size cavity is it and what thickness were the boards? How clear is the cavity on the outer leaf side? I’m thinking your probably going to need some sort of wedge, but it’ll be difficult for it to not just dig into the PIR

That’s interesting as I’ve also been getting over voltage errors on my solis ac coupled inverter for the last 6months or so, have checked at the time of the alert and the voltage is just fine, even the Solis says it’s normal range. id advise to raise a support ticket with them, they’re really good with this type stuff

I don’t see how digging out like you have would cause leaks in your concrete floor? If anything any water would come out and pool in the bottom of the trench. I did the same dig out when installing external wall insulation and didn’t have any issues. what makes you think this has caused it?

If your going to that extent with vertical cut outs too, you may as well just take it all off and wet plaster the whole wall, plus that way you’ll get guaranteed results

it’s a good plan if you don’t mind the mess and the replastering works. I wouldn’t bother with foam for this method though, how about buying a bag of plasterboard adhesive and take the section out, apply adhesive and stick some new board in, ready to be skimmed? Another option is bonding coat plaster and then skim on the small section I wouldn’t get too excited about a fix even by doing this, you will likely improve it but it won’t be perfect and will still leak air. I’ve done loads of work on my only room like this and still keep finding air coming through, but it is better than it was

I too got the thermal camera out on my verticals and could clearly see the diverter. In my case it was half and half, diverter was clearly visible in the centre of the bottom horizontal

Yeah it’s something which would need to be done before boarding out, and if your going to the effort of taking the boards off, for me I’d just wet plaster, but I would imagine it’s just not financially viable. I too have one room with dot and dab from when I didn’t know any different, I’ve tried my best to improve it but it’s still far from airtight, again not much I can do now without a lot of time and effort

Just tiles, looking at the overhang of roof you may need 3 rows off to see the internal junction but it will give a good opportunity to see everything and fix what you find. Quite likely, you can have really snug fitting PIR and you’ll still get air leakage through it. with the tiles off you may be able to improve the issues. The problem with dot and dab even when installed as per manufacturer guidelines with continuous bead of adhesive, it only takes a bit of block shrinkage to create a new path for air leakage, lots of people use a parge coat on the blocks to get around this but for me wet plastering is the easiest way of achieving airtightness which you can clearly see long term is staying that way.

It’s surprising just how little of a gap you need for a huge amount of airflow to come from behind plasterboard. definitely investigate everything you can, that should be fairly easy to access without having to damage anything

Chances are you’ve got a plasterboard tent then especially with how much air flow you are getting through your sockets. it’s very hard to resolve this once it’s been fitted, you can try injecting flexible foam behind all around the perimeter at 100mm intervals, but it’s not easy to get a perfect seal. either wet plastering the walls or having a properly airtight service void is the only true way of resolving this, but it would mean removing all of the wall boards and starting again.