Victorian Enerphitish Renovation

[offthepiste]

Hi,

I have been lurking on this site for tooooo long. And wish to thank the very large impressive list of posters who have helped me in my research.

 

I am still in the foothills of knowledge and am continually struck about how little I understand and how complicated things are.

 

Our project, yet to start but in serious engagement stage, is a large terraced Victorian house that is in need of serious care & attention and upgrade for eneregy efficiency as well as comfort and joy!

 

I say Enerphitish as I am not sure how far to push the envelope (pun intended) giving costs and return.

 

I know we will not recoup all our project costs if we were to sell, so am writing off a large chuck as sunk costs, but it is our forever house and we want to enjoy it to the max.

 

Size is about 300m2 and my guess is that we (2 adults (we gave up trying to down size)) currently consume about 110 kWh/m2 based on sketchy gas & electric fuel bills.

 

So plan is to insulate & make airtightish, and include ASHP along with Solar PV (as much as I can). So one of the early hills will be addressing the debate about how to tackle DWH.

 

I am a contrarian by birth so do not trust anything the "governement" say ... so anticipate fuel inflation ........ new iceage... plague of locusts, etc. And really want to reduce our consumption of carbon as I believe in the reality of global warming ... now being played out  in real time.

 

So apologies in advance for many daft questions to come ... but will have attempted to have scoured your posts before putting character to screen.

 

[SteamyTea]

Welcome.

Sounds interesting what you are trying to achieve.

Rather than look to 'the government ' for answers, try a physics book. Houses are very basic in reality, but they are messily constructed and are not designed to be modified after construction.

 

[joe90]

10 minutes ago, offthepiste said:

So apologies in advance for many daft questions to come

No such thing as a daft question, being daft is not asking!

 

10 minutes ago, offthepiste said:

I am a contrarian by birth so do not trust anything the "governement" say ... so anticipate fuel inflation ........ new iceage... plague of locusts, etc. And really want to reduce our consumption of carbon as I believe in the reality of global warming ... now being played out  in real time.

So you are a realist!.

 

we are a nosy bunch but very interested so bring it on.

Edited August 9, 2021 by joe90

[Ferdinand]

Welcome.

 

There may be something useful here:

 

I'm inclined to coin the term "Enerphetish",

[offthepiste]

13 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Welcome.

Sounds interesting what you are trying to achieve.

Rather than look to 'the government ' for answers, try a physics book. Houses are very basic in reality, but they are messily constructed and are not designed to be modified after construction.

 

Hi SteamyTea.... have read many of your posts ... yes, as a very rusty theoretical physicist, I agree .. have forgotten lots of thermodynamics and electromagnetism ... but will revist that balck hole... cheers

[offthepiste]

13 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

Welcome.

 

There may be something useful here:

 

I'm inclined to coin the term "Enerphetish",

Brilliant

[SteamyTea]

9 minutes ago, offthepiste said:

as a very rusty theoretical physicist, I agree .. have forgotten lots of thermodynamics and electromagnetism

Thank you.

Thermodynamic is the pinnacle of it all. Just reading a book about quantum physics, it all goes back to thermodynamics, the Copenhagen interpretation has a lot to answer for.

[offthepiste]

1 minute ago, SteamyTea said:

Thank you.

Thermodynamic is the pinnacle of it all. Just reading a book about quantum physics, it all goes back to thermodynamics, the Copenhagen interpretation has a lot to answer for.

... warning ... about to brag .... it was Werner Heisenberg who suggested I read theoretical physics (rather than philosophy & science) ... when I was (obviously) quite young and he was very old...

[SteamyTea]

4 minutes ago, offthepiste said:

Werner Heisenberg

Where, and are you certain.

 

[offthepiste]

2 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

Where, and are you certain.

 

mmm these days I am never sure ... world is upside down ... I think I am more of a determinist these days ... but then again probably not .... perhaps I will have to "string" this out....

[RK6]

Welcome! Sounds like an interesting and challenging project. 

[Gus Potter]

Hello offthepiste.

 

That's a good size of a house!

 

If you are inclined to take everthing with a pinch of salt then here is some fun stuff you can check out when taking on a renovation of a victorian house.

 

Imagine you are a prosperous Victorian (or small developer).. you commision a house. The Contractor would often turn up with a pattern book with different designs; room sizes, roof shapes, ceiling heights, cornices etc. You would pick what you liked. The builder would then look up a book that told him that if he made the walls X inches thick, used floor joists Y inches thick and foundations Z inches wide it would all be ok... if the ground was suitable. The builder would then give you a cost for this.

 

Now for the founds. These were hand dug down a bit until the soil looked about right. Then often a labourer would go round with a tamper and whack down the soft spots. But they drank a lot in those days and worked six days so if your founds were done on a Saturday or a Monday then maybe like a British Leyland car.. they used to say..avoid a Friday and Monday built car. The mason would then come along, slap down some mortar and often build a stepped foundation. The rest of the house would go on top.

 

Remember though that the Victorains built some substancial structures and had some pretty nifty mathematical methods of structural analysis available to then .. it's just that from time to time the house building market lagged behind as it still does in some respects, particularly when considering the quality of workmanship.

 

One key is to understand fully how the house is built and what materials have been used in it's construction. Also, what it rests on on ground wise, the slope of the ground round about how the drains work and other environmental factors such as big trees and if you neighbours have done something that may "upset" your house. Get to the bottom of this and you can you can move forward in an informed way.

 

You know that as soon as you start introducing insulation into this old house you'll change the "moisture" regime.. and that has to be managed / designed to achieve the outcome you wish.

 

From a SE point of view the Victorian builders used rules of thumb. One for example is take the span of a floor joist in feet. Say 14 feet. Divide 14 by 2 gives 7. Add 2 inches = 9 inches.

Thus as a rough guide for a 14 foot span you'll need a 9 x 2 in joist at 18 in centres. At that joist spacing you can also add a bit of extra dead load. You can stretch them to 2 ft centres. For a rafter it's the same but you only add one inch to the depth rather than two.

 

We still use many of the old rules of thumb when doing preliminary fag packet sizing. Now we use metric units in the UK so the preliminary sizing formula look a bit odd.

 

If you can get a handle on how the house stays up then that will help you. Hopefully the above will give you an insight. This will then give you a feel for where you can add load, say heavy water tanks, where you maybe want to review and spend money to the best effect. There is also what we call building stability.. what stops the house from moving sideways but I'll leave that for now. Hopefully the above will give you an insight.

 

Once you nut out the basics.. ground, super structure, insulation and moisture control you can then start to develop how you are going to mitigate the energy usage / "carbon foot print".

 

Lastly, if you have been lurking on BH for "tooooo long" you'll know that it's time to step up to the plate and post some photos!

 

All the best though.. sounds like a great adventure.