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Help with kitchen renovation/ 1st house.


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2 minutes ago, zoothorn said:

 

 

Hang on what do you mean copper pipe not contact alu of the C'tex??

 

The Celotex is covered both sides with aluminium foil. You don't want that touching bare copper due to potential electrolytic reaction, dissimilar metals and all that!

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6 minutes ago, Onoff said:

If you were being really OCD you'd aluminium foil tape over the infilled bits! Of course then you need to make sure the copper pipe doesn't contact the aluminium foil of the pir! :)

 

To lose that timber support under the waste you could get a pipe clip?

 

BTW, does it feel "warmer" in there?

 

Actually the pipe does slip round a wee bit on itself at the joint, enough for some wiggle room.

 

Tbh no it doesn't feel warmer, I may feel something after C'tex ing this 2nd wall, but, with one window fogged/ shot/ to replace, the very adjacent tiny Utility room area & adjacent v.small bathroom both ice-cold, a back door very close.. & the main thing: the floor just hopless re. insulation- I wasn't banking on there being much difference if any even after all this work. That's just my hunch & I'd LOVE to be proved wrong.

 

One may ask the relevant Q 'well why go to all this work??'.. to which the answer would be that I just had to see/ try it, in case it did make even a modicum of difference, or it'd have nagged at me for evermore (if nothing else) if I had left as it was. Time will tell, but I'm not optomistic tbh.

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4 minutes ago, Onoff said:

 

The Celotex is covered both sides with aluminium foil. You don't want that touching bare copper due to potential electrolytic reaction, dissimilar metals and all that!

 

 

Crikey.. too late now. It'll have to be as is onoff.. Ive spent 3 days on battening & C'texing just this wall. And Ive still 1/2 a day to do the sill even yet.

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11 minutes ago, Onoff said:

 

The Celotex is covered both sides with aluminium foil. You don't want that touching bare copper due to potential electrolytic reaction, dissimilar metals and all that!

 

You can ignore that ... you need an electrolyte too (ie moisture) and the aluminium is so thin anyway it would disappear long before the copper even got any thinner ...

 

As you were - proper tidy job that !!

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1 minute ago, PeterW said:

 

You can ignore that ... you need an electrolyte too (ie moisture) and the aluminium is so thin anyway it would disappear long before the copper even got any thinner ...

 

As you were - proper tidy job that !!

 

Would mouse pi$$ work as an electrolyte?

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Right this is best I can do/ stripped off the alu adjacent to pipes.. the reaside- will have to be as is/ alu on, alot of its now foamed in place. I think less likely the backside alu will be an issue/ farther away a tad. And any more on this tricky area & honestly, I'll start to lose my mind!

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12 minutes ago, Onoff said:

 

Would mouse pi$$ work as an electrolyte?

 

No mouses allowed in now. Only whippet pi$$ a likelihood now, or mine.

 

Actually one BIG irony now, is that I (for some resaon I cant quite understand at all) can now distinctly smell dead mice behind & in the wall cavities just done! not a psycho-symptomatic thing or wa'evaaa cos I is been clearin dat oomschka up innit, no, definitely that horrible sweet dead-mouse smell. Strong too. mmm..

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Onoff, going back to the sill I'm having to wing (no ISO pB left for it).. think I could level off, mortar as before then stick some C'tex on with soudal, pB onto C'tex with soudal too, pin front as before with screws-? It would add some extra height tho.

 

Or just soudal-stick PB to the mortar as a compromise? I'm having trouble with actually thinking actually how to do the foam layer-by-layer you see, & cut flat.. the idea is clear in principle tho.

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41 minutes ago, zoothorn said:

dead mice behind & in the wall cavities just done! not a psycho-symptomatic thing or wa'evaaa cos I is been clearin dat oomschka up innit, no, definitely that horrible sweet dead-mouse smell. Strong too. mmm..

 

Are they in the loft? Worth putting some traps up there in case with their favourite hole no more they shimmy up the cavity and exit roof bound. 

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Those drugs doing funny things again?

 

WTF rip off reams of foil when no need, I meant just where it was touching etc. Too late now.

 

The dead mouse smell will indeed be dead mouse. Either you've trapped them in there and they had another exit route within the room or now that you've sealed stuff up there's less air flow to clear such smells. Probably a combo of both. Bet you're wishing you'd sealed up all those "2mm gaps" you left! :)

 

You don't need mortar on top of the foam. Just level it off as best as you can i.e. cut the gun foam to about 25mm thick and stick the pb down to it with the low exp. foam. Just thin lines of it, not effing great mountains of the stuff Screw the pb to the batten at the front, 

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Too late Im not fkn gluing all the foil back on!?

 

cheers newhome, alot of hard work that was: pB gonna be trickiest bit, but I'm going form L to middle, & from R to middle.. leaving a small middle bit to do, to coincide with most of the pipework faff area. I'll just have to wing much of this 3ft sq section.. or I will go proper loopy nuts.

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26 minutes ago, newhome said:

 

Are they in the loft? Worth putting some traps up there in case with their favourite hole no more they shimmy up the cavity and exit roof bound. 

 

Yes got in loft above as, just as I see in every loft tbh. I'll cross that bridge later, good idea traps.

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14 minutes ago, zoothorn said:

alot of hard work that was: pB gonna be trickiest bit,

 

Deep breath when you get to that bit. Don't do as before and go psycho with the first bit and have it turn into a crumbling mass of dead PB. If something starts to go even slightly wrong, stop and rethink it, take a picture and post here. Get those batteries charged!! 

 

 

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Bet you're looking forward to the plague of FLIES!

 

A similar smell is only just dissipating here. 

 

Whilst writing this I've just had to swat one of the bastards that landed on my leg. I twatted it with the nearest thing to hand and then had to get up and Dettox my leg and the magazine. 

 

When I looked it was the Passive House magazine...if ever there was a sign... :)

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Really terrible dead mouse smell over half the kitchen, & working on 2nd sill today (prepped for the pB) I defo can say its the sills.. which makes perfect sense being they're the only section Ive removed/ replaced.. all the other wall faces etc I've only added to (& the mickey hole is improved).

 

I can only conclude that the foam is -not- an air tight seal: I don't think anyone actually said it was, I just assumed it would do/ its primary job. I don't suppose there's anything I can do to rectify this now. If it continues its not conjusive to live with like it is, in a kitchen. major issue-?

 

 

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Once the space is sealed and they die in there unfortunately I doubt there is much you can do about it other than wait for the smell to go which it will in time. Better putting up with that for a bit than having mice running riot all round the kitchen. 

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Prefer flies to mice. I hate that mouse smell: in a small house & kitchen its almost unbearable at the mo. It can't be due to my blocking mickey hole.. they can't all suddenly die & rot in 2 days flat since I did it. The walls have only been drilled into > v. tightly fitting screws.. so not likely that as a cause, unless I missed plying each with grip glue/ don't think that was on the agenda, & the C'tex is just applied pressed between battens onto the wall face.. it can't be that (even with the odd gaps between them I missed on wall 1).

 

It must be the sills I removed, &/ or the only other thing.. the frame, ie the firm strips I removed from around it.

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I'd prefer the smell of mouse, to a glade freshener though.

 

No that's a decent idea, appreciated Declan! I doubt I'ver sealed the cavity now tho, as the top of the 2 block courses is built as a hollow (isn't it-?) by defualt, well by default  I mean of course according to bad builders, in a rush, in 1981 that is.. ie as this extension was built.

 

The purlins/ rafters just sit ontop the blocks iirc, no effort's usually made to seal the cavity gap @ this top roof-meet s-block place.. is it?

 

IE mice can get into cavity via this point in day, & jolly well climb back up to do their mousey things of an evening, 'upstairs'..

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46 minutes ago, zoothorn said:

IE mice can get into cavity via this point in day, & jolly well climb back up to do their mousey things of an evening, 'upstairs'..

 

I would be sprinkling poison in every available crack that you find in the cavity. Bloody things need to go PDQ! I realise that in older houses it's sometimes a losing battle but hopefully there will be a way of getting the problem under control. They even sell an odour killer so it's a pretty common issue - dead Mickey disguiser 

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I was doing well with live traps my last house. I like the idea of flinging them over onto my n'bors patch waay over the brook. damn cats will be the benefactors tho. I dont like traps = dead mice all over again, & same with poison.

 

Anyway mice a minor issue. Tmrw reveal will be done, then onto the 1st, trickiest pB PM.. I need to get in & trace that 'C' outline to cut out.. I'm going to use a long thing to get in there once pB wedged in.. could be another catastrophe.

 

Can't wait for new sink jesus.. washing up in the bath at the mo, mind you kills 2 birds..

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Thanks for link newhome- i'll bear it in mind, poss quite strong tho itself. Upstairs.. bjeesus, if you thought building work bad downstairs, it ain't nothing on upstairs. Its a mouse heaven, but, not the numbers I'd worried there'd be so far thankfully.

 

For eg adjacent to the loft above the kitchen (pic here), is small bed2. There's a single bit of ply, in a square, tagged on where an old window was ~1830. This is all the 'wall' there is between bed2, & the kitchen loft here! (& as pressing a job this is, its still far down the list 'to do')..

 

 

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What sort of insulation do you have in the loft above the kitchen? No wonder it's cold if you have hardly any insulation on 3 walls, the roof and the floor! At least 1 and a half walls will be insulated when you get this done. 

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