Fire damage

[overlander matt]

I'm in the process of writing a heritage statement and in the course of investigating the house history I have discovered there was a significant fire in 1959 resulting in '75% of the roof was gone and an attic ceiling collapsed'.

I had noticed the main roof had been worked on - there were new rafters, black roof felt sarking, and slates but I had no idea why it was replaced. I am interested to know the extent of the damage to the house following the fire - if indeed 75% of the roof was gone then what would have been lost inside? I would have thought more than one attic ceiling would have collapsed (there are 4 rooms in the attic I should add!)...

I am in the process of requesting LBC to fit some insulation between the larger roof timbers of the attic. At present there is nothing and the house gets very cold in winter. I'm hoping that if I can show the ceilings are not original then I have a greater chance of gaining the consent. There are no obvious signs the fire started in a particular room but some roof timbers have been painted and a couple of ceilings have been boarded which make me suspicious. The ceilings were originally built using straw lathes and lime plaster.

Thanks for any ideas anyone has about fire damage.

Matt

------

13 March 1959 - Long Eaton Advertiser Page 6 (column 4, lower third)

Title of article: £800 damage to Georgian House

The article talks about a fire that broke out in the roof on the previous Thursday.

An appliance (firetruck??) was sent from Long Eaton, and two from the Derby Borough, but due to the house structure and "situation of the fire" it was a difficult fire to put out, and before it was extinguished, 75% of the roof was gone, and an attic ceiling collapsed.

The firemen used two hose-reel, and two "fog" jets.

-----

 

[Flyfisher]

I can't really offer much regarding the fire damage but your roof sounds very similar to ours in the sense of having attic rooms with straw 'laths' + lime mortar/plaster as a ceiling just below the tiles. In our case, the roof was in very poor condition due to most of the battens being in very poor condition, leading to many slipped pantiles that had not been repaired for years, which had let the rain and weather degrade the lime and straw, etc etc. The only saving grace was that the pantiles were so 'gappy' that the wind whistled through the attic rooms so lack of ventilation wasn't an issue! There were also other problems such as lack of lead flashings and the injudicious use of cement mortar and squirty foam as'tactical' interventions rather than any proper attempt at fixing the root of the problems.

Given the rooms in the attic, we were also keen to improve the insulation while repairing the roof and in conjunction with our CO it was decided to create a 'warm roof' structure rather than interfere with the roof elements by adding insulation between the beams, which would obscure much of the original roof structure. In short, after stripping the roof and making the necessary repairs to the roof structure, it was then covered with plywood (which greatly added to the stability of the roof), then multifoil insulation, then a breathable membrane before replacing the pantiles. Multifoil insulation has had mixed reviews over the years in terms of its actual vs purported thermal performance, though this was of lesser concern to us than its ability to add insulation with a minimum thickness because we were not aiming for any specific thermal performance target but we were aiming to limit the 'rise' of the roof for aesthetic reasons. In this respect the alterations were entirely successful and the attic rooms are now perfectly habitable, though I suppose any improvement on being able to see daylight through the roof is an improvement!

Obviously I don't know the details of your house or roof condition, and these things are all very individual, but I've mentioned the above to show there are alternative way to insulate a roof. In our case, the roof had to be stripped anyway for repairs and to add a proper membrane, so the incremental cost of the ply cladding and external insulation was worthwhile. I appreciate this might not always be the case, expecially if the roof is otherwise sound. Anyway, just a thought.

 

[overlander matt]

Thanks again Flyfisher for your helpful advice. I seem to be bombarding the forum with all manner of questions that crop up as I discover more about the house. It's interesting to know of the warm roof option but I don't think we will be removing the roof tiles just yet given the otherwise sound state of the roof. Whether we can insulate between the timbers is another matter and given the significant size of the timbers I hope it will be considered.

Regarding the fire, although we have yet to make small holes in the plaster to investigate the materials used, it does look as if some of the straw laths are quite new which may suggest this method was still used in the late 1950s. I suspect more will be revealed about the fire as we work on these rooms.

 

[Abi Cott]

The CO advice from one area to another does seem to vary wildly, but in my area I wouldn't consider insulation to be an issue unless I was destroying something to put it in.

I'd even happily remove chipboard, add insulation and replace similar chipboard and consider it repair and maintenance. If I needed to remove lath that might give me a pause, but I'd apply for consent based on removing damaged lath, adding insulation with significant longevity and repairing with lath and lime

 

[overlander matt]

Following on from the earlier post, I am very happy to hear the CO has approved the use of insulation in the attic rooms. I just need to find the right product...