Feltwell
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- Messages
- 6,378
- Location
- Shropshire, England
Here at Feltwell Towers, I've got a stupidly small & narrow family bathroom plus a seperate en-suite bathroom to one of the bedrooms. Both were in desperate need of refitting, both had been well & truly bodged. Happily, it was possible to take some room off the en-suite - but still leave enough space for a useable shower room - and give it to the family bathroom, to make an L shaped room. Typically, the wall in between them was a structural one but I did that work some time ago, took the wall out, built a new stud wall 18" / 450mm further over and then refitted the en-suite. This is all done and looks great.
The en-suite sits over the stairs, so rather than all masonry walls one side of the room was lath & plaster. This was well & truly knackered, a mix of soggy plasterboard and broken l&p, so it all came off and the resulting naked stud wall, plus the new stud wall I'd put in, were finished with the Elements board system prior to tiling.
I'm really impressed with this stuff - very light, rigid, easy to cut, totally impervious to water. Have a look at this video from about 7 minutes onwards for the Elements board, though the whole thing is worth watching.
At some point I'll put a post up detailing the renovation I did.
Anyhow - I now move onto the family bathroom. This is on an outside corner of the house. The other side of my new stud wall will naturally get the elements board, but I've to decide what to do with the rest of the room. It was tiled and plastered - but even though the grout and sealant all looked good, the plaster behind was definitely a bit damp & soft in the shower area, it's pulled lumps off with the tiles, there is where the old wall was plus all the old soil pipe exits to make good, and it was all gypsum skimmed - so it's all come off, back to bare brick, it wasn't worth trying to salvage anything.
I think a bathroom is the one place where breathability matters less than keeping the water & airborne moisture from the bath & shower out of the walls. It's solid brick walls, they are all lime pointed outside and show no damp - in fact they were badly cement pointed until a couple of years ago and still showed no damp - even though the inside was gypsum skimmed & tiled.
So I'm thinking, rather than plastering, to "dry line" the walls with the elements board - dot & dab onto the brick - with a little ventilation able to get behind, via the bottom of the skirting and the top venting above the (new) false ceiling. The elements board is totally impervious to water, including it's joints - and with having a foam core it does insulate, so will keep the 2 outside walls a little warmer and reduce condensation.
The wall behind will breathe externally via the lime pointing, and internally into the small void behind the board.
Can anyone spot any glaring errors in my plan? The other option is to not vent the tiny cavity behind the board, in an effort to keep airborne humidity from the room out, and just rely on the cavity being able to breathe via the 9" solid brick lime pointed wall.
Like the en-suite, the room will have a decent in-line extractor fan that will be "family proofed" (you can't have a bath or shower without it coming on and over-running at the end!). This will suck in via an inlet in the ceiling right above the middle of the bath, which is also where the shower is, so hopefully gets most steam before it has any chance to settle & condense.
The en-suite sits over the stairs, so rather than all masonry walls one side of the room was lath & plaster. This was well & truly knackered, a mix of soggy plasterboard and broken l&p, so it all came off and the resulting naked stud wall, plus the new stud wall I'd put in, were finished with the Elements board system prior to tiling.
I'm really impressed with this stuff - very light, rigid, easy to cut, totally impervious to water. Have a look at this video from about 7 minutes onwards for the Elements board, though the whole thing is worth watching.
At some point I'll put a post up detailing the renovation I did.
Anyhow - I now move onto the family bathroom. This is on an outside corner of the house. The other side of my new stud wall will naturally get the elements board, but I've to decide what to do with the rest of the room. It was tiled and plastered - but even though the grout and sealant all looked good, the plaster behind was definitely a bit damp & soft in the shower area, it's pulled lumps off with the tiles, there is where the old wall was plus all the old soil pipe exits to make good, and it was all gypsum skimmed - so it's all come off, back to bare brick, it wasn't worth trying to salvage anything.
I think a bathroom is the one place where breathability matters less than keeping the water & airborne moisture from the bath & shower out of the walls. It's solid brick walls, they are all lime pointed outside and show no damp - in fact they were badly cement pointed until a couple of years ago and still showed no damp - even though the inside was gypsum skimmed & tiled.
So I'm thinking, rather than plastering, to "dry line" the walls with the elements board - dot & dab onto the brick - with a little ventilation able to get behind, via the bottom of the skirting and the top venting above the (new) false ceiling. The elements board is totally impervious to water, including it's joints - and with having a foam core it does insulate, so will keep the 2 outside walls a little warmer and reduce condensation.
The wall behind will breathe externally via the lime pointing, and internally into the small void behind the board.
Can anyone spot any glaring errors in my plan? The other option is to not vent the tiny cavity behind the board, in an effort to keep airborne humidity from the room out, and just rely on the cavity being able to breathe via the 9" solid brick lime pointed wall.
Like the en-suite, the room will have a decent in-line extractor fan that will be "family proofed" (you can't have a bath or shower without it coming on and over-running at the end!). This will suck in via an inlet in the ceiling right above the middle of the bath, which is also where the shower is, so hopefully gets most steam before it has any chance to settle & condense.
