Monday 31 December 2007

Intro

I have a classic 2 bedroom victorian terraced house - sold brick walls, suspended wooden floor, currently uninsulated bar loft insulation. I want to use this blog to discuss & document upgrading this house - otherwise fine - for more efficient fuel use in heating. It'll be a long term project - I'm working on a boat too - so updates may be few & far between. I may also update by modifying existing posts; we'll see.

Pictures & weblinks for suggested methods to follow.

General

The house is built in 1882 of London brick; bar modifications to the single storey rear extension, the room layout is original; two rooms downstairs, two up, connected by a separate hall/stairs/landing area. The main body of the house has wooden suspended floors, and approx 8" of loft insulation above the upstairs ceilings.

The rear extension consists of kitchen, bathroom and passageway to the back door, with a solid concrete floor, sloping roof above (no insulation as far as I know, but there's no access to the space above the ceiling anyway).

All windows are replacement double glazing with some original window framing.

Walls are mainly orginal plaster, painted (no lining paper).

Underfloor insulation

Iremoved the carpets sanded the floorboards in the ground floor; this looks great, but of course is very drafty. In winter I tend to put down rugs in the front room, in fact with any spare hardboard I can find underneath, to minimise drafts.

What I'd like to do is install a layer of insulation between the floor joists in each room (and hallway, suspeended either by netting or possibly a sheet of material underneath the joists. It may be also worth adding a layer/sheet of material between the joists and relaid floorboards as an extra draft barrier.

This work may also require additional ventilation for the underfloor area, and also needs to allow for existing electrical, gas and water services.

I also want to consider the options & viability of including underfloor heating at the same time.

Wall insulation

The external walls, front and back, are of two thicknesses of solid brick, with no cavity or insulation of any kind. These walls feel cold to the touch in the winter, and must be responsible for a lot of heat loss.

The intention is to add several inches of insulation on each external wall, with plasterboard as a new top surface. I need to resrach thicknesses & materials, and also the ventilation requirements between the wall & the insulation; do I need an air gap?

In most cases this will require moving of radiators, although I intend to look into the possibility of incorporating underfloor heating when insulating the floor.

I'm hoping to be able to remount existing victorian window woodwork to line up with the new walls, although I'll have to experiment with the first one - pictures to follow.

The half landing will be a problem; although a large expanse of internal wall, the loss of several inches from the turn of the stairs could be quiet restricting. This may lead to a compromised insulation thickness, although keeping the hallway & landing at a cooler temperature will minimise losses.

I also want to lookinto how much the house heating dries out the bricks in bad weather; could wall insulation lead to a long term detoriation in the external walls themselves, if they don't have winter warmth?