Useful video for Scottish trad houses

[sb1202]

Apologies if this is teach granny stuff but I thought this was worth sharing for anyone renovating/working on a trad Scottish house (like mine).

Historic Scotland have been running a number of trials in trad buildings with insulation upgrades and there's some really good info I've found on their website and videos.  The video below is about a trial done in Holyrood house and the interesting part is about the insulation trial in the roof. This was WF insulation installed with the standard 50mm gap vs butted hard against the sarking. The trial lasted 2 years and conclusion is at the end. Essentially, there was no difference in humidity levels in both methods where WF insulation was concerned.
 

 

[SteamyTea]

Is there subtitles?

[saveasteading]

3 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

Is there subtitles?

As well as being rather  too fast, I think this is a Greek???? accent plus Scottish touches.

[Galileo]

I must have seen that video before, it jumped straight in at the end and I to deal with the jump scare of Roger Bisby telling me I got me politics all wrong and not to install an ASHP.

[JohnMo]

4 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

Is there subtitles

Yes on YouTube.

 

4 hours ago, sb1202 said:

This was WF insulation installed with the standard 50mm gap vs butted hard against the sarking. The trial lasted 2 years and conclusion is at the end. Essentially, there was no difference in humidity levels in both methods where WF insulation was concerned.

But everything was done with vapour permeable materials - so assume that includes the membrane and not a traditional vapour closed membrane, as normally installed.

[SteamyTea]

58 minutes ago, saveasteading said:

Greek

A bubble as they say in the east end.

[sb1202]

1 hour ago, JohnMo said:

But everything was done with vapour permeable materials - so assume that includes the membrane and not a traditional vapour closed membrane, as normally installed.

They didn't install any membranes. If you look at the roof, its a traditional Scottish slate/felt/sarking roof which is the same as mine. No roof vents required because the sarking gaps ventilate the roof. 

 

This is part of a country wide experiment trialing different methods of insulating trad buildings. In this experiment, they used WF between the rafters. Half the rafters had a 50mm gap, the other half had no gap. The objective was to test for a difference in humidity levels between both methods. At 8m40s she explains this. Over a 2 year period, they recorded no difference in humidity between the 2 methods which suggests* that WFI on its own is good enough without the need for installing a membrane. 

*if there were a recorded difference in humidity, this might require the need for a membrane - that's how I understand the experiment.

Edited January 8 by sb1202

[ProDave]

Interesting video.  But lets be honest all they have done is turn a hopelessly poor old building up to the EPC standard of the pretty ordinary 40 year old house.

 

No particular attempt to improve air tightness, and no testing of that.

 

I would like to see something like this taken to the next level.  Install MVHR.  Lets find out once and for all does MVHR improve the energy efficiency of a not particularly air tight house or not?

[sb1202]

3 hours ago, ProDave said:

No particular attempt to improve air tightness, and no testing of that.

This is the crown's lodge at Holyrood Palace which is a listed building. They can't just drill holes, instal stuff and test everything at once. This is just one of hundreds of trials that are going on across Scotland and they need different data from different tests in buildings - that all gets pieced together and analysed. Historic Scotland are sharing their results which they should be applauded for because it helps lots of people looking to do renovations on old properties. There's work being done in other buildings on air tightness, ventilation paths and that will be shared too. Rennie McIntosh's Glasgow house for example is undergoing massive humidity testing so that's one to watch out for.