newhome Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 I managed to buy a new house where the cavity wall insulation was missing in the entire road (or entire estate for all I know) so we all know that commercial building standards are shocking. It was ‘missed’ according to the developer when we complained. Missed in the whole street? Really? At least when we build our own homes we know what faults we have warts and all (or should do). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterW Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 8 minutes ago, newhome said: I read it the same as @Onoff as @nod used the word temporary above but maybe that’s only those who are trying to cheat the system (well more than the others)? Well if it’s temporary then it’s wrong ... and if they need socket covers to try and get below the maximum then that is just scary ..!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
newhome Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 2 minutes ago, PeterW said: Well if it’s temporary then it’s wrong ... and if they need socket covers to try and get below the maximum then that is just scary ..!! It’s also scandalous that the supposedly independent person doing the test wouldn’t notice clearly bodged or temporary arrangements designed to get the house to pass. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterW Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 4 minutes ago, newhome said: I managed to buy a new house where the cavity wall insulation was missing in the entire road (or entire estate for all I know) so we all know that commercial building standards are shocking. I I had one with no soakaways ..! 18” of pipe straight into the founds and nothing at the end of it... £6,000 later, the NHBC coughed up which included a new drive as that’s the only place it could go... I’ve been impressed with how blown bead seems to have filled all cavities properly and also stopped any ability for draughts through that route where rigid or batts could do if not fitted properly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Triassic Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 I as on a site recently, 12 “eco houses”, one stood out from the rest, every joint in the timber frame was sealed and the inside had a vapour membrane and was taped etc. The rest weren’t up to the same standard, I asked why. Apparently the first one I’d seen was the “test”house, hence all the attention to detail. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
newhome Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 3 minutes ago, PeterW said: I had one with no soakaways ..! 18” of pipe straight into the founds and nothing at the end of it... £6,000 later, the NHBC coughed up which included a new drive as that’s the only place it could go... I’ve been impressed with how blown bead seems to have filled all cavities properly and also stopped any ability for draughts through that route where rigid or batts could do if not fitted properly. I’m glad to hear that someone got some joy from the NHBC as they weren’t interested in any issues in the houses on the development I lived on. There were so many issues there was a residents’ association set up just for that purpose. Some houses were far worse than mine. The side of our house and half the patio used to flood when it rained heavily. We ended up paying to have a soakaway put in to address the issue as neither the developer nor NHBC were interested. We had blown bead retrofitted when the solid insulation was found to be missing. However well it worked it was way better than having no insulation! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Onoff Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 38 minutes ago, PeterW said: Well if it’s temporary then it’s wrong ... and if they need socket covers to try and get below the maximum then that is just scary ..!! You've hit the nail there on what I was getting at. Madness that the overseeing tester/body allows these temporary measures. An absolute mockery of the system and what it is supposed to achieve. I think it was @PeterStarck's tester remarked it was the lowest they had ever seen? Proving it's all about the attention to detail leading up to the test which I would say only a self builder is interested in achieving properly. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 Certainly our senior BCO emailed me as soon as they'd received the hard copy of the air test certificate telling me that it was the lowest he'd ever seen, It's a bit sad, really, as it suggests they are used to seeing results that only just scrape through the building regs limit. That in itself suggests that there's a lot of fiddling going on, as I'd expect a few houses to be a lot lower than the building regs limit if the test result distributions is normal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Declan52 Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 If you bought one of these houses which wasn't actually tested and after burning through way more gas,oil etc than you should be and you got an air testing company in to do there bit and your test score was way higher than what was on your SAP would you have any come back?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 9 minutes ago, Declan52 said: If you bought one of these houses which wasn't actually tested and after burning through way more gas,oil etc than you should be and you got an air testing company in to do there bit and your test score was way higher than what was on your SAP would you have any come back?? I doubt it. My guess is that they could claim that the air test is like an MOT and only valid on the day it was done. Proving that nothing had been done after the air test to cause the house to be leaky wouldn't be easy, I think, as all the airtightness stuff is hidden from view. I think that the fact that it's relatively hard to prove that a house doesn't comply with Part L1A is what all these rogues rely on. Even all the newly built houses that I went around and did thermal surveys on, just to prove that they had large areas of missing insulation and poor thermal detailing around doors and windows, have had no remedial work done yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nod Posted June 23, 2018 Author Share Posted June 23, 2018 4 hours ago, ProDave said: The point is, if you build a house properly, you are not relying on the sockets to make a seal. You have an air tight layer around the inside of the house, then a service void inside that sealed envelope before plasterboard etc. It would make no difference if my sockets were removed. I work in plenty of old houses where when you remove a socket, a howling cold gale comes out, it is truly shocking that the wall structure is open to the roof or the floor to let cold air into the building fabric. I can’t imagine than any of the mass produced houses have an airtight envelop It wouldn’t matter to the tester if the builder covered all the sockets with duck tape As you say it’s very easy to get to a good standard of air tightness But why do builders need to bother The standard is so low How many people are interested in air tightness score when purchasing a house If you did ask you would likely be given next door but ones score mans that score will be unrealistic minus all the temporary foam Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Onoff Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 40 minutes ago, nod said: As you say it’s very easy to get to a good standard of air tightness The self builder doing their "forever" house sees the longer term, bigger picture and CARES about why they're doing it. It might be easy to apply airtight tape but it's expensive and time consuming to pay attention to detail. Savings to be made there for the mass builder! Even if they do use tape the person applying it is more likely to be in a rush to get home than thinking he'll be living there and paying the bills. I bet we never see an out for profit, mass builder coming in here because he's short of 500mm of tape! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 The daft thing is that our, essentially airtight, frame was erected in 4 1/2 days. The door and windows were fitted in one day, then the frame team came back for another three days to fit all the internal vapour control boarding and service void battens,put in all the insulation, fit airtightness tape to all junctions and around all doors and windows and get the company in to do the air test. From a concrete foundation slab to a house with an air test result that was better than the PassivHaus standard took a total of 8 1/2 days. Add in four days the week before to lay the passive slab foundation and the total from bare ground to airtight and weathertight house with all doors and windows fitted was 12 1/2 days. That's for a 130m² detached 1 1/2 storey house. It's pretty clear that there is no need to spend days on getting a house airtight and well insulated if it's designed to be so from the outset. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
newhome Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 So if the test house on a development fails the airtight test (do they ever fail?) is there any oversight to ensure that any corrective action is undertaken on all of the houses of that style or is it simply back for a retest on that one house, tick box, job done? I get the impression I already know the answer to this however! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 2 minutes ago, newhome said: So if the test house on a development fails the airtight test (do they ever fail?) is there any oversight to ensure that any corrective action is undertaken on all of the houses of that style or is it simply back for a retest on that one house, tick box, job done? I get the impression I already know the answer to this however! On the small development of five houses that we went to see, there was evidence that they do fail. The chap who was adding more airtightness tape whilst we were there told me that the house had failed twice, and he was adding more tape in the hope that it would pass on the third test. The remaining four houses were not going to be air tested, according to him, so one can only guess what they were like. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
newhome Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 1 minute ago, JSHarris said: On the small development of five houses that we went to see, there was evidence that they do fail. The chap who was adding more airtightness tape whilst we were there told me that the house had failed twice, and he was adding more tape in the hope that it would pass on the third test. The remaining four houses were not going to be air tested, according to him, so one can only guess what they were like. And that on an allegedly 'Eco' development. That makes it worse IMO as Eco implies that you are getting the very best in areas such as airtightness. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 2 minutes ago, newhome said: And that on an allegedly 'Eco' development. That makes it worse IMO as Eco implies that you are getting the very best in areas such as airtightness. I couldn't agree more. The builder concerned is one of the better known timber frame companies that advertise at the Swindon centre and promote themselves as being "eco house" builders. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 If you see the term 'eco', it is probably not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nod Posted June 23, 2018 Author Share Posted June 23, 2018 I think I’ve stated before The absolute best attention to detail Air tightness included are the housing association properties They normally have an in house Clark of works or quality control manager as they are now called Who has no other remit than to make sure standards are high and no interest in cost or timescale The sad thing is that these are ideally rented to people who don’t give a dam about air tightness As long as the rent is paid by US Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProDave Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 When people mention "ECO" I always think of the house at the top of our road. When last sold it was advertised as an "ECO" house. As far as I can tell the only "ECO" thing about it is it had (not especially good) tripple glazed windows. It has an EPC rating of D, is the first house in the street that the snow melts off the roof, and the present owners complain how high the heating bill is. Are estate agents not supposed to ensure the claims they make are accurate? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 5 minutes ago, ProDave said: Are estate agents not supposed to ensure the claims they make are accurate? No, there's no comeback if they get the RdSAP wildly in error. I produced a full SAP for our old house, and gave it and the worksheet to the agent, together with a CAD drawings of the room layouts (which I'd done ages ago when I installed a new kitchen and bathroom). Both the SAP and the CAD drawing were ignored, and the RdSAP they've produced is massively in error, as is the room layout drawing. I've printed off the correct room layout drawing and the correct SAP so that I can hand them to anyone that's interested. FWIW, no proper U value calcs are done for the RdSAP as far as I can see. The check list is generic "is there loft insulation? yes/no", "is there cavity wall insulation? yes/no" etc, with nothing about the type or thickness. We have 300mm of rockwool in the loft, in three 100mm overlapping layers, but we might as well just have 100mm as far as the assessment was concerned. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gone West Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 6 hours ago, Onoff said: I think it was @PeterStarck's tester remarked it was the lowest they had ever seen? That's right, and the BCO said the same. Ours was 0.47m3/(h.m2)@50Pa and the BCO said he usually sees around 4 to 5m3/(h.m2). We're amateurs and didn't use any air tightness membranes or tapes so it should be possible for the professionals with a bit of care. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Onoff Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 11 minutes ago, PeterStarck said: That's right, and the BCO said the same. Ours was 0.47m3/(h.m2)@50Pa and the BCO said he usually sees around 4 to 5m3/(h.m2). We're amateurs and didn't use any air tightness membranes or tapes so it should be possible for the professionals with a bit of care. The icynene method surely had a big bearing in your case? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gone West Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 Just now, Onoff said: The icynene method surely had a big bearing in your case? True, along with 15mm OSB3 racking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Onoff Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 6 minutes ago, PeterStarck said: True, along with 15mm OSB3 racking. Where the OSB boards abutted one another did that interface get any sealant etc? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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