Why insulate

[richi]

20 hours ago, Onoff said:

Whoever invents small scale point of use hydrogen generation or similar from good old H2O is on borrowed time

 

 

h2energyrenaissance.com... wait, is that a black helicopter?

[Onoff]

Sitting here in the lounge with my feet off the floor and tucked up under me on the sofa just feeling the draughts swirling around. 

 

When I look at the outside of the house; air bricks into the void under the suspended timber floor, chipboard flooring and a bit of thin underlay carpet it really reinforces there are better insulated SHEDS! 

 

And don't start me on the dormer!  4" stud walls with hit and miss fluffy insulation - 100mm max in floors and ceiling. The wifes going to soon start wearing her fake fur onesie to bed! 

 

Furries?

Edited December 9, 2017 by Onoff

[Gone West]

8 hours ago, Onoff said:

 

When I look at the outside of the house; air bricks into the void under the suspended timber floor, chipboard flooring and a bit of thin underlay carpet it really reinforces there are better insulated SHEDS! 

 

I blocked up the air bricks under my bungalow 10 years ago when I moved in. I knew it was going to be demolished so I wasn't worried and thought it would be interesting to see the effect on the timbers. The main part of the bungalow is built of 4"x2" with a suspended timber floor. I should find out next year how the structure has been affected.

[Ferdinand]

9 hours ago, Onoff said:

Furries?

 

You mean these for your feet?

 

[ProDave]

I went around in the static 'van in the last few days taping up the ridiculous sized vents in the loo and shower room. I would rather open the window a crack after a shower to let the steam out than have an arctic gale all the time. Ditto the loo window if you have made a smell.

 

We have @Onoff problem, just can't get the 'van warm at floor level.

[Onoff]

Alas, the self depreciation is still there, sitting here in my lounge, Thinsulate hat on, thermostat on 30 and still not that warm. Wife is drying washing on the rads in the dining room doesn't help, putting the RH through the roof. Had a tentative conversation with her earlier about MVHR and how the people with 3G windows on here are saying they can stand next to them and not really feel a cold spot! It's sort of getting through. She has of late admitted she doesn't like the layout of the house as a whole.

 

Thinking that with EWI I might have to bring the eaves out all round but then the roof needs doing anyway!

[Russell griffiths]

1 hour ago, Onoff said:

Alas, the self depreciation is still there, sitting here in my lounge, Thinsulate hat on, thermostat on 30 and still not that warm. Wife is drying washing on the rads in the dining room doesn't help, putting the RH through the roof. Had a tentative conversation with her earlier about MVHR and how the people with 3G windows on here are saying they can stand next to them and not really feel a cold spot! It's sort of getting through. She has of late admitted she doesn't like the layout of the house as a whole.

 

Thinking that with EWI I might have to bring the eaves out all round but then the roof needs doing anyway!

What you need is what we have done to our crappy house. 

Im a little bit frightened to say it. 

 

 

 

 

 

you need a wood burner, we have one in the boot room and keep it going 90% of the time from November onwards, the wife can dry a machine load of washing in under a couple of hours it super heats that end of the house which in turn helps the rest, we have solid concrete floors straight on the dirt with chipboard on battens on top, solid 9” block walls with pebbledash and chipboard on battens on the walls. 

Unless we have been away for a few days it is toasty, it may not be what you want long term, but it was the best £1000 I’ve spent on the place total transformation. 

[Onoff]

1 minute ago, Russell griffiths said:

What you need is what we have done to our crappy house. 

Im a little bit frightened to say it. 

 

 

 

 

 

you need a wood burner, we have one in the boot room and keep it going 90% of the time from November onwards, the wife can dry a machine load of washing in under a couple of hours it super heats that end of the house which in turn helps the rest, we have solid concrete floors straight on the dirt with chipboard on battens on top, solid 9” block walls with pebbledash and chipboard on battens on the walls. 

Unless we have been away for a few days it is toasty, it may not be what you want long term, but it was the best £1000 I’ve spent on the place total transformation. 

 

The house USED to have one. 

[Russell griffiths]

Where did it go?

[Cpd]

7 minutes ago, Russell griffiths said:

you need a wood burner, we have one in the boot room and keep it going 90% of the time from November onwards, the wife can dry a machine load of washing in under a couple of hours it super heats that end of the house which in turn helps the rest, we have solid concrete floors straight on the dirt with chipboard on battens on top, solid 9” block walls with pebbledash and chipboard on battens on the walls. 

Unless we have been away for a few days it is toasty, it may not be what you want long term, but it was the best £1000 I’ve spent on the place total transformation. 

Yes well i am fortunate to live where burning wood bothers nobody as there are no neighbours  within a mile, also living in a house with virtually no insulation. But the kitchen is always to hot when the wood burner is on and thats every day from november  and we have to open the door to the hall to let out the heat otherwise its just to much. The rising heat through the floorboards heats the bedroom above so all in all its liveable. Yes its as basic and barbaric as they come but at the moment thats the life we lead. The clearview pioneer  400 was the best £1000 i could have spent on a stove and i am still after many years delighted with it. I have recommended it to various people and they are also incredibly happy with it. I could not even consider what my electric bill would be without it. There i said it.......  

[Onoff]

16 minutes ago, Russell griffiths said:

Where did it go?

 

Gone when I bought the place. But there was an area of sooty concrete / quarry tiles in the kitchen and an 8" badly filled hole in the wall for the flue. 

[Onoff]

Just as a little test in the lounge...

 

Got some little digital thermometers from eBay. 21.7degC at the top of the Christmas tree. Put it on the floor at the base of the tree and it dropped like a trance choon! 14.9 at the mo!

 

 

Edited December 9, 2017 by Onoff

[ProDave]

The stove is doing a good job of keeping the static caravan warm in this cold spell. Another 6" of snow last night and well below 0 all day. At least the wind has dropped.

 

Still have @Onoff problem that the floor is cold, in spite of me adding extra insulation under it.

 

We burn wood in the day, then bank it up overnight with coal then shut it right down. It stays in overnight giving out a gentle heat. In the morning put some logs on and open it up and it's going in no time.

[Jeremy Harris]

It's worse with suspended floors, for sure, especially in really cold weather, just because the air under the floor will be close to the outside air temperature.  At least with a solid floor the lowest temperature under the floor is unlikely to drop below about 6 deg C, and will most probably be around  7 or 8 deg C.  That makes a substantial difference to the heat loss rate, no matter what level of floor insulation you have, just because the temperature differential is so much greater for a suspended floor.

 

Although our old house has uninsulated solid floors, at least they don't get any colder in cold weather, they are always just slightly chilly.  We had an outside air temperature of around -3 deg C the night before last, and had we had a suspended floor that would have been around the temperature underneath it, rather than the 8 deg C it normally is.  An extra 11 deg of temperature differential will give a pretty substantial increase in heat loss. 

 

If you had a floor with a U value of, say, 0.5 W/m.K,  then a solid floor would lose around 6.5 W/m², whilst a suspended floor with air at -3 deg C flowing under it, would lose around 12 W/m², a substantial difference.

Edited December 10, 2017 by JSHarris

[TerryE]

14 hours ago, Onoff said:

Wife is drying washing on the rads in the dining room doesn't help

 

Get yourself a small dehumidifier and a cheap timer switch.

[TerryE]

10 hours ago, ProDave said:

Still have @Onoff problem that the floor is cold, in spite of me adding extra insulation under it.

 

Dave, is there no way that you could convert this to dead space, e.g. shuttering around the skirt of the caravan and maybe banking soil up to floor level or whatever.  Can you get some old fashioned bales? You could create a skirt from them.

[Onoff]

20 minutes ago, TerryE said:

 

Get yourself a small dehumidifier and a cheap timer switch.

 

You know I have one in the garage, came with the house. Never ever thought to use it in the house. 

[TerryE]

Clive, you daft bugger.  We use one in our house every night 1-7am, but we are on E7.

 

Mind you, the washing machine is now in the new house and we (or to be honest Jan, so far) just hang our clothes on a multiline indoor dryer which is in the service room in the warm loft and the MVHR extract takes care of the moisture. But my daughter just uses a couple of airing racks either side of a dehumidifier and she gets her clothes dried fast with no humidity problems.

[ProDave]

1 hour ago, TerryE said:

 

Dave, is there no way that you could convert this to dead space, e.g. shuttering around the skirt of the caravan and maybe banking soil up to floor level or whatever.  Can you get some old fashioned bales? You could create a skirt from them.

The skirt is already panned in with wood, with a couple of doors to give access to a dry storage area underneath (mainly to store my scaffold planks dry)

 

The floor structure is 3 by 2 timbers set in between the steel chassis legs, and chipboard floor. When we got it i spent a lot of time insulating withing the floor framework with a load of offcuts of PIR insulation I got for free from somene on freecycle.  Not perfect but better than nothing.

 

Last night was -11 here.  Ice on the inside of the windows in the 'van

[Onoff]

Woke up to our first (settled) snow this morning! It's a balmy 11.6 at the foot of the tree and the oil boiler's working overtime! 

 

This whole lounge floor is higher than the adjoining dining room, we have a slope at the threshold; dining to the left, lounge to the right. I hasten to add this isn't my handiwork!

 

 

I've yet to get to the bottom of the construction other than the dining room is a suspended timber floor over dirt. The lounge is later; a concrete base laid with a dwarf brick wall supporting timber joists and non flooring chipboard. I and the legs of the sofa have literally gone thru it a few times. So it is actually too high for a start. No option when it happens than to gut both rooms as in ceilings down, floors dug down walls back to bare! Build back up with UFH, £££!

 

Where the sofa went through in the lounge:

 

 

My Tom Hanks moment:

 

 

A quick repair with the multitool:

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 10, 2017 by Onoff

[ProDave]

Have we mentioned knock down and rebuild might be a better plan?

[Oz07]

2 hours ago, JSHarris said:

It's worse with suspended floors, for sure, especially in really cold weather, just because the air under the floor will be close to the outside air temperature.  At least with a solid floor the lowest temperature under the floor is unlikely to drop below about 6 deg C, and will most probably be around  7 or 8 deg C.  That makes a substantial difference to the heat loss rate, no matter what level of floor insulation you have, just because the temperature differential is so much greater for a suspended floor.

 

Although our old house has uninsulated solid floors, at least they don't get any colder in cold weather, they are always just slightly chilly.  We had an outside air temperature of around -3 deg C the night before last, and had we had a suspended floor that would have been around the temperature underneath it, rather than the 8 deg C it normally is.  An extra 11 deg of temperature differential will give a pretty substantial increase in heat loss. 

 

If you had a floor with a U value of, say, 0.5 W/m.K,  then a solid floor would lose around 6.5 W/m², whilst a suspended floor with air at -3 deg C flowing under it, would lose around 12 W/m², a substantial difference.

Do epcs allow for this? I'm guessing not? Seems a good reason to choose between. However on trad strip founds if you go 1.5m deep then you have to suspend floors

[Jeremy Harris]

2 minutes ago, Oz07 said:

Do epcs allow for this? I'm guessing not? Seems a good reason to choose between. However on trad strip founds if you go 1.5m deep then you have to suspend floors

 

No, they don't, AFAIK.  The assumption seems to be that the floor losses will even out between cold and cool weather in the heating season, which is probably fair enough, as we don't often get prolonged really cold weather.  It doesn't account for the large variations, though, so in practice any suspended floor with a ventilated space underneath is always going to suffer from an increased heat loss rate in very cold weather, perhaps high enough to effect comfort levels if the floor doesn't have UFH, and enough to significantly increase heat losses if the floor does have UFH.

 

It's hard to see a good argument for having a suspended ground floor, in performance terms.  The only argument to support having one is really cost, if the site isn't level and it's cheaper to just build up the walls that support the floor to make up for the ground level variation.

 

I looked at a suspended floor for our site, because of the slope that was left after the retaining wall went in, but concluded that the small additional cost of digging down to level the site was worth it to have the better performance of a passive slab sat on the ground.

[Onoff]

16 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Have we mentioned knock down and rebuild might be a better plan?

 

Many times! I wouldn't know where to start with the finance etc. I've already got 3 mortgages!

[Onoff]

Here's another reason to insulate. For me outside "work" at home stops when the weather is like this. If I had a decent, insulated workshop and garage I could get in with other stuff, mad little projects etc.

 

Btw, anyone want plans for a snowmobile? A vintage design with ply body but easily brought up to date with a GRP shell.  (Quite serious). Things like that I could be doing in a WARM workshop!