Interior Paint and insulation

[xanthe]

A couple of questions...

a) the attic room of the house we are buying has no insulation on the gable wall - it is just the inside of the brick infill. The bricks are the originals from when the infill was first done (originally wattle & daub). They have been painted with lovely thick coats of modern paint . Is there a way of removing the paint without damaging the brickwork?

b) insulation - the whole of the front and one side elevation of the house are single skin brick infill. As you can see in the pics, there's no space inside the timbers to fit insulation. While I'm not a fan of leaving every little twig exposed just to show a house has beams, it seems a shame to cover over the nice queen post truss here and the big timbers in the lower floors. The gable wall is also north facing which isn't going to help with warmth!

Is there a way of adding insulation without having the beams covered - or looking ridiculously set back.

We're thinking of using internal sliding wooden shutters to help with heat loss from the windows, and the frames for those will give a bit of build-out to enclose insulation. Ideally we'd like to use something like sheep's wool or hemp with lime plaster over the top, but I was wondering if there is anything equally effective but very slim-line!

I imagine plenty of other people must have had similar issues.

 

[xanthe]

Wall

 

[Penners]

xanthe - I understand that the most effective insulation materials are modern, closed-cell foam insulation batts, such as Celotex. So you'll get the best heat-retention performance for your chosen thickness of insulation from this type of material.

The idea of breathable insulation has always seemed a bit of a puzzle to me. After all, to be effective, insulation must trap pockets of still air (or other gas) within itself. So it seems to me that any material which is air-permeable must be compromised as an insulator, to a greater or lesser degree.

I hasten to add that I'm not an expert.

 

[88v8]

Our house is coursed rubble with a half-timbered extension which is single skin, either wattle or brick infill.
On one wall of the rubble we added two coats of lime plaster, the first coat with hemp, which may add a tittle of insulation.

In the half timber portion, the glory is the timber and I would not dream of covering any of it.
I am sure it leaks heat like a sieve, but if one is worried about that then one should have bought a modern house. I imagine however that if one were to add a coat of lime plaster + hemp on top of the brickwork, feathering it in at the edges so that albeit the surface may stand proud it does not look excessively naff, that would slightly reduce the heat loss. Another assist would be tapestry hangings.

Overall however I feel that an old house is what it is and one either goes with it or not. I do despair when I see period features being covered up in the name of insulation. We spent more than two years looking for a house that had not been internally ruined, and this I am sure was one of the contributing factors that led to so many promising houses being turned into bland white spaces.
Insulate the loft, draw the curtains of an evening, wear a wooly. Sorry not what you want to hear.....

Paint... ditto in our house. Stripper, I suppose. I guess anything that will work on wood will work on brick. I would then repaint with chalk paint or perhaps limewash, but if one wants clean brick that might be tough to achieve. Stripping paint off wattle is another matter altogether as the daub or lime plaster is so inherently fragile. It is one of the jobs I am studiously ignoring fttb.

Of more current concern to me is the condensation on the single glazing, which I find really annoying especially at this time of year when the house is damp, but that is a topic I think we have collectively beaten to death.

Ivor