A Game of Draughts

[Onoff]

Since VVP invaded we've had the oil central heating off and subsequently been freezing. Running a 2kW fan heater in the lounge, a convector in the study and got a couple of oil filled rads as and where needed.

Let's be honest we've all been spoilt for years with cheap energy but now it's really hit home how badly insulated my house is. 

The lounge is proper cold. Because of the house orientation it is often colder inside than out. Convinced I could feel a draught around the window I pulled the lounge sill off and there was a gale coming up the cavity (we've external brick vents). Then I stripped the trims off and the boards lining the reveal which were 5/8" chipboard.

 

Cavity is only 35mm if that.

 

 

 

Existing cavity closers consist of The Mercury from October 1998! 😂

 

 

Gaps, oh yeah!

 

 

So far I've wedged some cut down pipe insulation in the cavity and foam filled. Going to line with some 25mm Celotex then pb over.

 

 

 

Sticking plaster really as the inner brick/block skin is 1" batten, hardboard then woodchip paper. Draughts are still coming through where I'm pointing the pen at.

 

 

 

I'd take the window out and move it inboard but where window sills are concerned SWMBO likes it deep! 

 

Onward with this pointless journey!

[SimonD]

8 minutes ago, Onoff said:

Existing cavity closers consist of The Mercury from October 1998! 😂

 

The good old history of the building. I found a mixture of newspaper from 1927, the 1960s and the 1980s when pulling our place down. I wondered whether the builders had found the earlier stuff and thought that's how it's done and just copied it down the line.

[ProDave]

I might have said this before.  Knock down and rebuild (i'll get my coat)

[ProDave]

Seriously though, turning the oil heating off and using electric resistance heating WILL be more expensive.  Unless your oil tank is running on vapour and you are baulking at paying current prices to refill it?

 

I won't mention my low heating bills (oh I just did)

[joe90]

16 minutes ago, Onoff said:

Let's be honest we've all been spoilt for years with cheap energy but now it's really hit home

I agree.

 

4 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Knock down and rebuild

I also agree but not always possible within budget. Every little extra insulation/airtightness counts. The first inch of insulation does the most good then it’s diminishing returns so do what you can 👍

[SteamyTea]

I had the same problem with my front door.

Took me years to get around to sorting it properly. Now it is water and wind tight. Should have done it when I moved in.

Back door has a different problem, going to see what I can do with that later today.

[jayc89]

I feel your pain. Ours is a 1860s build (we think) and whilst it gets up to heat pretty quickly, it never feels as warm as the stat suggests and certainly feels colder depending on which way the wind's blowing so I'm currently going around our house plugging any holes as I find them. Eventually I'd like to be in a position to do a, home made, airtightness test, but right now it would be pointless as the place is leaking like a sieve! Over winter we were paying around £4.50 a day to heat the place!

 

Our windows are probably 50 years old at this point (and amazingly they're in better condition than our last house that was only 15 years old itself!) so once all the obvious gaps are plugged, replacing those is next on our list.

 

Good luck!

 

 

[ProDave]

In all seriousness, this is the problem facing a LOT of UK home owners, they can't afford to heat the house, they can't afford the often drastic renovations to properly insulate it and they can't afford to knock down and rebuild.

 

The only suggestion I can make is sell it NOW and buy something with a MUCH better EPC.  I am convinced that at some point houses with a poor EPC rating will be worth less than one with a good EPC to reflect the high cost of heating or high cost of works needed.  And I would not want to be the one owning a house with a poor EPC when that market shift happens.  I think they call this staying ahead of the game?

[SimonD]

8 minutes ago, ProDave said:

In all seriousness, this is the problem facing a LOT of UK home owners, they can't afford to heat the house, they can't afford the often drastic renovations to properly insulate it and they can't afford to knock down and rebuild.

 

The only suggestion I can make is sell it NOW and buy something with a MUCH better EPC.  I am convinced that at some point houses with a poor EPC rating will be worth less than one with a good EPC to reflect the high cost of heating or high cost of works needed.  And I would not want to be the one owning a house with a poor EPC when that market shift happens.  I think they call this staying ahead of the game?

 

Only yesterday was I reading an article in the Guardian about the cost of house renovation and extension and how you can maximise your return on investment. Sadly, there was absolutely no mention of energy performance but singled the biggest benefit being to do the bathrooms and kitchens. I wonder how long it's going to take for the priorities to change in light of this huge bump in prices? I have to say though, I abhor the focus on economic payback associated with energy performance upgrades when they actually add so much value to day to day comfort and pleasure which makes the house a much nicer place to live. I'd much prefer a basic plain kitchen and bathroom and a warm and cosy house.

 

When will the penny drop not just for the population but the government too, I wonder?

[Big Jimbo]

On Off. I think that what you are doing will make quite a difference to how you will feel. Defo worth the effort in my opinion.  So epc's have been around for a fair old time now. Have people taken any notice of them ? Having had to help my 3 daughters onto the property ladder, i think that younger people just want a place that they can call there own. I think that once people have owned a couple of houses, flats etc, and have been paying those bills for several years, they might be more inclined to think about the bills in the next property purchase.

[SteamyTea]

57 minutes ago, jayc89 said:

£4.50 a day to heat the place!

So less that 2 Costa Coffees then.

Energy is really still quite cheap.

A double quarter pounder costs £4.39 and only has 0.86 kWh in it.

[Big Jimbo]

2 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

So less that 2 Costa Coffees then.

Energy is really still quite cheap.

A double quarter pounder costs £4.39 and only has 0.86 kWh in it.

My daughter used to go into waitrose every morning on the way to the tube. Buy a coffee, and get a free banana.  I have never understood why people would do such a thing. What a waste of money. She is defo going to struggle badly with the new costs of energy. I must find out if she still does it.... I will as super dad, try and help her out, but she is going to have to cut some things out.

[Onoff]

SWMBO just said "Can't we pay someone to do EWI?"

 

Wouldn't that bring its own set of issues doing it as the house is? It could only go up to the eaves (bungalow).

 

The paths, ground need lowering all round as in removing. The patio doors need replacing as does the front door. Then there's the mixed floors details, the noggin-less ceiling joists, the cracks. It just goes on and on. 

 

SWMBO wouldn't go for the knock down / re-bulid I know. 

 

Best I can aim for is the room at a time approach I've taken with two rooms so far. The study that was the old boot room is the warmest room in the house. That was just the single skin boot room I re-lined. It warms up and stays warm. Even there there's room for improvement. 

 

I'm hopeful once there's some heat in the bathroom my attention to air tightness and insulation efforts pay off. The temperature is a constant all year round in there at the mo even at the height of Summer...bloody freezing!

 

 

 

 

[SteamyTea]

43 minutes ago, Big Jimbo said:

I have never understood why people would do such a thing

I go for a daily coffee for human interaction. Living alone is great, but going days without interactions can be quite dangerous health-wise.

A Macdonald's Single Cheeseburger is only £1/kWh. I stop for two on the way back from my mother's on the weekends.

Small treats are quite important in life, the cheaper they are, the better IMO.

[Onoff]

The lounge diner knock through is on the cards. Got a few mates who've said they'll come down for a weekend and gut both for beer and a barbecue. That would be:

 

Lounge:

-Ceiling plasterboard down.

-Hardboard and batten wall linings off

 -5/8" chipboard flooring up

-4*2 timber sub floor up

-Concrete base up

 

Dining Room:

- Wallpaper off

-Floorboards up

-Floor joists up

-Dwarf walls removed

 

All debris can go straight out the patio doors which need replacing anyway.

 

Then assess what I've got to work from.

 

Reinstating would be on the lines of putting a steel in and opening up the two rooms into one. I reckon I could hide that to end up with a new, flush ceiling. There would be lots of battening and packing to get the ceiling level between the two rooms. The floor would be dug down and built back up with insulation and UFH.

 

This could be the new Bathroom thread! First though I need a temporary lounge! 😂

 

[TonyT]

I’ve been insulating a dormer window.

joiner opened up the inside cheeks  to let me have access to trusses etc.

got 1 full sheet cut up and fitted and foamed in yesterday. Not finished yet but laser thermometer showed 3 degree difference on the internal wall that was insulted and the next section that hasn’t been done yet.

[Onoff]

This strong sunlight coming through the patio doors is lovely and warm. As soon as the Sun goes in its back to bloody freezing!

 

 

 

[TerryE]

2 hours ago, Onoff said:

Existing cavity closers consist of The Mercury from October 1998! 😂

When Jan and I redid the fire surround in our first house I found some newspaper packing around it, dated Sept 1916 and it included part of a column listing war dead probably from the Battle of the Somme.

[SteamyTea]

7 minutes ago, Onoff said:

As soon as the Sun goes in its back to bloody freezing

That is because it is working like an IR heater.  It is not heating the air, just the object it hits that have a better absorption characteristics

It is why it does not feel terribly hot when you are standing out, in full sun a few degrees either side of the equator, the rays are hitting your head, which only has a small surface area.  7 AM in a UK summer can feel very warm as the rays are hitting all your body, face included.

[ToughButterCup]

37 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

...

Small treats are quite important in life, the cheaper they are, the better IMO.

 

If only more people realised that. I think its especially true for high  stress stuff like self-building.

Sometimes, when you can only see as far as your next treat, it hits you how important a small treat is. How I wish some food advertisers hadn't  noticed. 

 

Which is where cheapness comes in. If the treat can be free, so much the better.

 

[SteamyTea]

1 minute ago, ToughButterCup said:

I think its especially true for high  stress stuff like self-building

And ideal (expletive deleted) like me.

When I have driven less than a mile from work, I have forgotten all about it.

 

[Simplysimon]

3 hours ago, SimonD said:

I abhor the focus on economic payback associated with energy performance upgrades when they actually add so much value to day to day comfort and pleasure which makes the house a much nicer place to live. I'd much prefer a basic plain kitchen and bathroom and a warm and cosy house.

 

When will the penny drop not just for the population but the government too, I wonder?

people want a WOW factor in their house, it's imperative to impress relatives/guests/friends you know. increasing the thermal values of a property isn't seen so doesn't impress. priorities all wrong, it's the throwaway culture unfortunately it includes energy to allow the purchase of materialistic 'stuff'

[Nickfromwales]

2 hours ago, Onoff said:

Best I can aim for is the room at a time approach I've taken with two rooms so far. The study that was the old boot room is the warmest room in the house. That was just the single skin boot room I re-lined. It warms up and stays warm. Even there there's room for improvement. 

Can't you start with blown-in bonded beads in all of the cavities? They won't fall out around reveals / openings / heads etc during downstream works, and will be an effective start of your draught-proofing and insulation adventures.

[Nickfromwales]

7 minutes ago, Simplysimon said:

people want a WOW factor in their house, it's imperative to impress relatives/guests/friends

Exactly the kind of people who I do not invite into my home.

[Conor]

8 minutes ago, Nickfromwales said:

Exactly the kind of people who I do not invite into my home.

 

We're the same. Our whole ethos was "how do we build a house that's big enough but without looking like showy tw*ts?

 

Think we did ok.