General renovation issues

[Geoff994]

Good evening

This is my first post on the forum, so please accept my apologies if these issues have been covered previously.

We have recently purchased a victorian property in Runcorn, that dates from 1870 (ish). It is a lovely symetrical looking property with many of the original features.

Prior to purchase we had a full structural survey and additional professionals look at the structure for damp, the roof, basement, electrics and gas heating system. There are a number of jobs that require attention but nothing that is pressing.

We would like to enahance the properties thermal efficiency, whilst retaining both the internal features and not altering the external aspect. We have had a number of conflicting views on how to achieve this. The suggestions ranges from tanking the rooms, applying a lime render (internalally), fixing a dot n dab wall, a retro fit stud wall, fit new sash double glazed windows, the list goes on.

I'm sure many of you have been faced with the same conflicting views/advice when renovating your properties, we would be very interested to hear what action you took to make your property as thermally efficient as possible and what actions you took to reduce damp whilst permitting the property to breath.

Regards and thanks in advance

 

[TheForge]

Just bumping this back up in case it gets lost down the page.

I'm sure there will be lots more advice coming but generally the basic principals of using traditional, breathable materials (lime etc), minimal intervention and avoiding trapping moisture in the building structure, or creating condensation, will be worth following.

Depending on the construction it's usually possible to improve the thermal efficiency of most older houses to a degree but care needs to be taken not to change the dynamics and equillibrium of a building. Attempting to restrict drafts and heat loss can have the unintentional effect of reducing ventilation and encouraging condensation, in turn causing more problems and actually often making walls lose heat quicker.

Often a certain level of compromise between ventilation and insulation is needed.

 

[plasticpigeon]

This is such a big topic, and it really depends on what your bias is, i.e. what is most important, thermal efficiency or maintaining a traditional looking property. My bias is firmly towards the latter.

I'm of the opinion that almost all damp problems are due to a problem with maintenance and not construction, so culprits could be leaking gutters, roofs, drains, ground levels too high, inappropriate cement render, blocked air bricks to name but a few. I believe tanking, cement rendering and chemical injection are fraudulent and unnecessarily damaging. The only place that may be a bit damp by design is a cellar, and I have no experience of these, but I get the impression that to make a cellar warm and dry (cold and dry could be achieved by ventilation) then tanking may be necessary. I have experience of putting weatherstripped parting and stop beads in my sash windows, which stops some drafts but it is hard to seal the meeting rail and top rail. however I am of the opinion that replacement double glazed sashes are so expensive that I would never recoup the cost in reduced heating bills. New ones never look so nice either as the glazing bars are always too thick so I keep the old ones. Little sponge sausages can be bought to plug up gaps between floor boards, caps can be put on chimneys to reduce the draughts etc etc. I think a lot can be done without destroying any original fabric. I've been experimenting with a lime perlite mix for plaster that may be more insulating than lime/sand, but the thickness of plaster if original architraves and skirtings are to be kept is not really great enough to have much effect.It has also been my experience that there is a shortage of good tradespeople around, and for any insulating modifications to be effective, they must be done well, which is much easier said than done if you are relying on contractors!

 

[MatthewC]

I'm of the opinion that almost all damp problems are due to a problem with maintenance and not construction, so culprits could be leaking gutters, roofs, drains, ground levels too high, inappropriate cement render, blocked air bricks to name but a few.

Absolutely. Sort these problems and wait to see what happens - don't be tempted to do in a hurry drastic things, especially anything such as PP says:

I believe tanking, cement rendering and chemical injection are fraudulent and unnecessarily damaging.

Many contractors just do not understand/believe/care about older properties and will recommend al sorts of modern things. Remember that old properties and modern techniques only rarely work well together.

For thermal efficiency (and breathability) I used sheepswool insulation in the loft, lime plaster throughout, and I replaced a tiled floor with a limecrete floor and limestone flags (unsealed!). I have also fitted secondary glazing on my sash windows. See my blog (blue spot on right) for more details of these.

Photos please!

Matthew

 

[Geoff994]

Thanks for your advice and your experience. As suggested it is always going to be a case of striking the right balance between making the property thermally efficient as possible whilst not ruining a lovely traditional victorian property.

We are conscious of researching all aspects of the build before committing to any purchase in order to retain the properties features and enhance the overall building. We were at the Homebuilding and Renovation show at the NEC last weekend, this was worth the visit as we had a good chat to Mike Wye and associates (http://www.mikewye.co.uk), they were really useful and had a great deal of good advice for undertaking a period restoration/renovation.

I have looked at the existing external mortar and note when property has been re-pointed a few years back with a sand and cement mix. This is certainly proving to be a barrier to the walls being permitted to breath. I suspect we will rake this out and re-point with a lime mortar in the future.

Does anyone have any suggestions for making the internal walls more thermally efficient whilst permitting them to breath?

 

[88v8]

Welcome.

A word to the wise... keep your eye on the big picture. Did you buy the house because of its period character? Or is it just a box that you want to live in as cheaply as possible....

Others will have more ideas than I about insulation. Apart from loft lagging, it's not a route I want to go down in my house, nor in the previous house where we lived for 30 years. I would never destroy any original features in the interests of saving a bit of heat.
It's too easy to get obsessed with insulation and end up destroying the house you bought.

Ivor

 

[Geoff994]

Hello Ivor

The property is definitely a purchase for the beauty of the property and the ground it sits within. We are not obsessed with making it über thermally efficient, though we are in it for the long term, so any long term heating savings we can make during the renovation will be explored.

 

[ladytmwright]

Hello Geoff

I too am (relatively) new to the forum and I have just read your post with interest. Your new home sounds really lovely and I was particularly interested in your mention of the basement(s). When we moved into our fairly large victorian terrace, we were enthused at the fact that we had the option of transforming our cellars as they were in pretty good condition to begin with. We initially had a quote from a tanking co for around £17,000 to do two cellar rooms! We thought that to be an awful lot of money so we started to research other ways which would be sympathetic to the building, aesthetically pleasing, whilst allowing the walls to breath. Basically, we had new windows installed (one being fire escape), had the ceilings plasterboarded and installed recessed spotlights, central heating installed, but probably most importantly, we cleaned up and scrubbed the walls with a bleach solution to get rid of any damp/moss etc, placed a dehumidifier down there and then PAINTED the walls with a good quality breathable masonary paint! We even carpeted down there! Ten years on and it still looks fab, and a fraction of the cost of tanking! However, we do now and again get little crustations attached to the walls around a foot from ground level. These, we believe, could be the salt being drawn out from the bricks, so we do not use the dehumidifier as often as we did. I suppose it's a case of balance really and it's important to have good ventilation and open windows as often as possible. Also, don't have objects or furniture too close to the walls as things need to be allowed to breath. Hope this has given you a bit of encouragement, at least for your basement, and I would be interested to hear if anybody else has done a similar thing? Also, I am of the opinion that if you live in a period house it should never feel 'stuffy' or too warm, just comfortable! And not so you can go around wearing T-shirts in the winter! I go in some houses and you can almost hear them groaning, coughing and spluttering under the strain! Let us know how you go on and would be good to hear your experiences.

Kind regards

 

[middi]

Some good points have been raised by other posters. It appears to me that whilst you would love to live in a " beautiful" Victorian house, you are not so keen to live with the original Inbuilt warts of it's thermal inefficiency. You are absolutely right to be concerned, an " original" Victorian building would be an extremely thermally inefficient building. Heat loss, on any building, will occur through 5 principal area's.
1) Trough ground floor
2) " " external walls
3) " " roof area
4) " " windows
5) " " doors
The ground floor ( if of the suspended floorboard type) can only be insulated correctly by careful removal of floorboards and insulating between joists with modern insulation sheets and sealed. This must have adequate free air circulation below f/joists area and extra air bricks or inlets may need to be provided. A compromise would be a heavy duty underlay and carpet.

There is little scope to insulate the external walls externally, this would destroy the character of the building and/or the building lines and obviously not desired. If the external walls are insulated internally ( false stud walls etc) this would not only diminish the rooms dimensions but would cause the " Victorian" internal details of the rooms to be compromised and would need to be replicated. If the typically constructed Victorian solid walls of either brick or stone with internal lime plaster are in good condition I would not interfere with them. Also, removing cement pointing from external bricks repointing has to be evaluated against damage that may occur during removal of this repointing. Depending on grading of external masonary, sometimes no ill effect is incurred if the cement based pointing is left well alone and an eagle eye kept on it's performance.

Roof area is a must to be insulated, and as much as one can get in there. As to how it is done and what materials are best for the particular application will depend on any fitted ( or not ) membranes below the tiles and of what types, ie-- bretheable or not.

Heat loss from windows, and doors, can only be improved by good seals and heavy curtains if originality is important.
An important point is the expense one is prepaired to go to to improve such a building. The owners requirements and the budget available will ultimately decide to what extend the building will be made thermally efficient whilst maintaining it's aesthetic look.

Middi

 

[mattice]

Geoff,

I guess I like my gadgets and statistics. We moved to our 50:50 (solid brick old : cavity insulated extension) house from a super insulated new build and immediately realised that oil consumption was going to limit wine consumption. I installed a flow meter on the oil tank, a few internal and external temp sensors, using the external one to crudely correct against the weather. Each month I've made an improvement to insulation/heating and compared my corrected oil consumption.

Average oil consumption 30 day rolling, corrected for external temp.
Month 0 - 14 litres per day
Month 1 - zoned central heating using wireless tpv's - 12 litres per day
Month 2 - draft excluders on windows an doors - 10.5 litres per day
Month 3 - loft insulation from zero to 300mm - 7 litres per day
Month 4 - I'm pretty happy!

Interestingly, I've just pulled off my temp graphs for rooms with solid walls and those with cavity insulated and you could equate the additional loss in solid walls to 1 litre of oil per day.

Perhaps I should apologise for my simple experiments, but I guess every house is different and it's £'s that count. I was staggered by the improvement with loft insulation, no more seeing breath in bed at night I couldn't sacrifice the space and character of the house for a litre of oil per day.

Disclaimer - early experimental results - more analysis to follow ;-)

 

[plasticpigeon]

Mattice

That is fantastic info, even if only a crude guide. Thanks for sharing.

 

[88v8]

I guess I like my gadgets and statistics. ... Interestingly, I've just pulled off my temp graphs for rooms with solid walls and those with cavity insulated and you could equate the additional loss in solid walls to 1 litre of oil per day.

Excellent. Thankyou.
I must say that wall insulation is the aspect I find most problematic when people get the insulation obsession, considering the cost, disruption, loss of space, and worst of all, the destruction of internal features. If that small difference is typical, it's a job creation scheme for cowboys, it seems.

Ivor

 

[steveb]

For the proper period look you need to look at tweed, jumpers, old bed-pans and only heating one room of the house.

A big consideration is how warm you want the house to be - the warmer you want the house the annual cost goes skywards very quickly, then it's a toss up between cost (use this as a proxy for energy efficiency or greenness if you so desire), comfort, and changing the fabric so that your house looks less like the one you fell in love with. As with most of these things, you can only pick 2...

I would do two things, unless there are obvious jobs that need attending to

1) nothing apart from insulate the loft and block draughts
2) try and tolerate the place cold or by heating just one room and get used to using a bed-pan (hot water bottle, not urinal...)

Then see what you learn..

 

[Keith Bowman]

For the proper period look you need to look at tweed, jumpers, old bed-pans and only heating one room of the house.

get used to using a bed-pan (hot water bottle, not urinal...)

Then see what you learn..

One of the lessons to learn is that the name you want is warming pan

 

[MatthewC]

Average oil consumption 30 day rolling, corrected for external temp.
Month 0 - 14 litres per day
Month 1 - zoned central heating using wireless tpv's - 12 litres per day
Month 2 - draft excluders on windows an doors - 10.5 litres per day
Month 3 - loft insulation from zero to 300mm - 7 litres per day

That sounds a pretty good improvement. With oil at just over 60p/litre, that's about £4.30 per day.

For a comparison, I've just calculated that my gas boiler (water and heating) has used 17.5kWh since 23/9/12, which works out at £738 for 188 days, which is £3.92/day. Since I installed secondary glazing in November, I expect that the current rate may be better than that. So I'm pretty happy as well!

 

[Svenedin]

There was an interesting feature article in "Which" magazine some time ago concerning insulating older properties. They looked at various methods and the effect on heat loss as well as the pay-back time in terms of the reduction in heating bills versus the capital outlay. As I recall, the single biggest reduction in heat loss was achieved by insulating the loft and this was also the cheapest and easiest. It is also completely reversible. My mother had her loft insulation upgraded for free as she is over 70 and the house is much warmer as a result.

As to replacement double-glazed sash windows, I would agree that these don't look right and they are also very expensive. I found another article that looked at heat loss from various designs of window. The conclusion was that most people, when faced with old single pane sash windows for the first time, tend to assume that they must replace them with double glazed units in order to reduce heating bills and stop drafts. Most of the heat loss through a poorly maintained sash window is not through the glass but from draughts. The article I looked at suggested that heat loss could be the equivalent of having a missing pane of glass (in a 6 over one sash)!

I had some very draughty sash windows and took the following steps which have made an enormous difference to both heat loss and noise: 1) checked and replaced the cracked trowel mastic (the original flexible frame sealant on the outside) 2) Sealed the gap between the window frame and the wall inside 3) replaced damaged glazing putty 4) Had a specialist sash window firm take the windows out to fit draft proofing strip.

If properly maintained sash windows are a joy. Most people don't even know how to open them properly (they are supposed to be opened at the top and bottom to provide ventilation in the summer, hot air out the top, cooler air in the bottom).

Stephen

 

[JoceAndChris]

There is one decorative way to insulate the walls that doesn't compromise mouldings, that the French use. Next time you're on holiday in France go into a chateau or nice hotel and have a look at the fabric covered walls. They're created by covering plywood sheets with bump (interlining) and thick fabric and screwing them up to completely line the walls. It's a very beautiful and decorative way to deal with crumbling plaster, exposed wiring, and cold walls all at once. Because it's slim you won't have a problem with skirtings or cornice. We're trying it in our very chilly North-east facing guest room, I'll let you know how it goes!

I think draught proofing the windows and winter secondary glazing (with plastic sheets that can be taken down) must be the next steps to try to reduce the 3k per year oil/electricity bill here.

It's all a very delicate balance to try to warm the place up and keep it looking nice, unfortunately things like double glazing and modern floors with UFH spoil period properties in my opinion.

 

[Feltwell]

Firstly, congratulations to Geoff for not only having a fine name but also knowing how to spell it properly - not like these confused chaps called Jeff :wink:

You can upgrade the thermal efficiency of a Victorian house fairly easily to a point, after which you stand the risk of losing exactly the character that no doubt attracted you to the house in the first place.

Loft insulation is the most obvious and cheapest first step. My house has attic rooms which made this process much more difficult - we insulated as best we could whilst replacing the roof, now I'm part way through undercladding the sloping attic ceilings with insulated plasterboard. If you've a "normal" loft then it's a relatively quick & easy job.

Next on the list I would say is draughtproofing doors & windows. Insulating under ground floor suspended wooden floors is a job which is supposed to make quite a difference, but it varies greatly in difficulty depending on the access you've got into that void. I've done mine and I have to say it's not made a noticeable difference to the warmth of the rooms, what it's done to the heating bill I'm not sure.

If you've got the original sash windows then you can replace the parting & staff beads for ones with brush strips built in, which not only cuts the draughts but also makes the windows much smoother & easier to open and close. Secondary glazing can be done fairly sensitively - lots of old posts on here about that, mine has made a very noticeable difference. Heavy inter-lined curtains make a difference as well, or shutters if you've got those. If you've the original windows then I really wouldn't go for double glazing - it never looks quite the same - secondary glazing is much cheaper as well.

Chimney balloons in disused fireplaces - or, a bin bag part-full of bubble wrap as I've been known to do - will reduce draughts up old flues. Important not to seal them completely though.

Beyond that, you're then into measures that risk spoiling what you bought the house for. I presume it's got solid 9" brick walls? You can clad externally which will completely alter the look of the house, or dry line with insulated plasterboard internally which means problems with any original skirting, architrave, cornice, picture rails, depth of door frames, window reveals....... Personally, unless the interior is trashed to the point where none of the original features survive and it needs completely replastering anyway, I would put up with the heat loss through the walls. Breathability is another factor of course.

Easiest step of all - a decent warm jumper and time. You get used to living in a cooler house very quickly, and electric mattress covers are great for a toasty warm bed to get into.

 

[Geoff994]

Hi All

Many thanks for your replies, it's very interesting to hear your responses.

We will probably leave the basement/celler for sometime as it does not let in any water though the external facing walls feel cold. I suspect we will retain the boiler down there as well as the electric board and use the space for domestics. Maybe in time we will change its use.

The external walls were re-pointed sometime ago with a sand-cement mix so their breath ability is limited. We would like to reinstate a lime mortar to permit the walls to breath I am now seeking quotes for this work.

As for the internal walls I suspect we will bite the bullet and apply a insulated stud wall with an air gap to allow the walls to breath. This I am told by a number of conservation professionals will provide both good insulation and not harm the building, though we will loose up to 100mm of room space on the external facing walls. The existing victorian features will be reinstated on the 'new' walls so none of the properties character is lost. We have suspended wooden floors, which have a 3 foot void underneath, so I aim to place 100mm Kingspan inder the floor joists to add to the thermal efficiency. This I am told will allow air to pass between the joists whilst maintaining a thermal layer under the floor.

The property is being extended to the rear so we will end up with a mix of old and new build, which will see us have to add to the existing roof. This will allow us the opportunity to renew old slate where required as well as fitting new insulation in the roof void.

All exciting stuff and a real opportunity to breath new life in to a wonderful property, whilst maintaining its victorian charm

 

[Cocoa]

There is one decorative way to insulate the walls that doesn't compromise mouldings, that the French use. Next time you're on holiday in France go into a chateau or nice hotel and have a look at the fabric covered walls. They're created by covering plywood sheets with bump (interlining) and thick fabric and screwing them up to completely line the walls. It's a very beautiful and decorative way to deal with crumbling plaster, exposed wiring, and cold walls all at once. Because it's slim you won't have a problem with skirtings or cornice. We're trying it in our very chilly North-east facing guest room, I'll let you know how it goes!

Fascinating thread, and very topical! I moved into my non-centrally heated stone cottage in late February, fresh out of a toasty-warm modern house, into the coldest March for however many years - I am not sure I am fully acclimatized yet! As time goes by, I am pushing the boundaries on just how many jumpers and socks it is possible to wear at any one time. It's not all bad though - as it's too cold to lounge around, it's been a good incentive to warm of up an evening with a spot of DIY!

I am currently debating whether or not to install any central heating. Given that the house had been empty for a while, it's not as cold as it could have been. I hope to get the windows replaced with secondary glazed ones over the summer (a necessary evil, despite the strong advice against wanton replacement in this thread!) The loft insulation hasn't quite got down yet, as that would entail covering over some spectacularly dodgy electrics, so that will have to wait for a full re-wire. The plan has been to get the re-wiring and re-plumbing done at the same time as installing central heating to avoid too much disruption to my lovely flooring, but at the same time it would to implement the suggestions here (loft insulation / double glazing / heavier curtains & draught excluders) and road test the place without central heating for another winter.... I am not sure I feel quite brave enough to spend a January in this place just yet though! :?