skier-hughes
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you can't throw it away, it has to be properly disposed of. Our shearer has the fleeces as part payment for the job.
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Penners
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Presumably he owns an awful lot of sweaters.
I compromised by going for the insulation made out of recycled plastic bottles. This is fairly cheap (currently 1/2 price at B&Q), 'green', has a high R-value and very very easy to lay (I installed it in our old house single handed). It doesn't have any fibres to cause breathing problems and doesn't cause itching. On the other hand, it isn't breathable in the same way as Thermafleece, but we'll be leaving a gap around the edges so we're hoping this is okay.
worms
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Hatster said:
I heard the chap who invented this, and makes it under various trade names for the big multiples, on the radio a couple of weeks ago - he reckoned it should retail at around £7.50 a roll. Surprise, surprise! The retail shed half-price deal was £7.49! Even bigger surprise when I looked a the receipt when I got home and found that the till was ringing it up at £8.50! No problem getting the extra refunded on my next visit, but how many rolls did they sell at £1 a roll more than the advertised price?
Interestingly, the insulation season must now be past and the local shed no longer has anything in stock except a few remaining rolls of the Rockwool!
Well, this is turning into a bit of a saga. Yesterday the surveyor from the "approved company" under the local grant scheme we have in this area turned up. Before he looked at our loft space he went through his paperwork and ticked some boxes. Apparently we qualify for a full grant, meaning free loft insulation (because of having a child under 16, which is what the local authority use as their reason for topping up energy company grants). Before you get too excited, said surveyor then went upstairs to inspect the actual loft space. He took one look at our, admittedly somewhat sagging, lathe and plaster ceiling and declared there and then that under no circumstances would he or any employee of his company climb up there and fit loft insulation, on health & safety grounds. So, we're in the proverbial catch 22. We are entitled to free loft insulation, but the sole company approved by this particular grant scheme is refusing to fit it.
Needless to say, I've been on to the local authority straight away, who will be sending round their own surveyor to assess how "dangerous" our ceiling really is. Apparently there might be ways of still giving us a grant even if the "approved" company does not supply & instal (which is actually preferable, because then we might be able to get our hands on some thermafleece...). Anyway, doesn't that just nicely demonstrate the prejudice (and ignorance) some people have toward old buildings. Yes the ceiling sags; yes there's a bit of a crack running along in one place; yes, I would impose a weight restriction on who clambers around in our loft - but downright dangerous???
I tried to point out that lathe & plaster ceilings are a lot more forgiving than modern plasterboard, to which the surveyor bloke just said he'd surveyed 1000s of properties and only ever turned down 3, of which ours is one. Oh well, something to be proud of :twisted:
Needless to say, I've been on to the local authority straight away, who will be sending round their own surveyor to assess how "dangerous" our ceiling really is. Apparently there might be ways of still giving us a grant even if the "approved" company does not supply & instal (which is actually preferable, because then we might be able to get our hands on some thermafleece...). Anyway, doesn't that just nicely demonstrate the prejudice (and ignorance) some people have toward old buildings. Yes the ceiling sags; yes there's a bit of a crack running along in one place; yes, I would impose a weight restriction on who clambers around in our loft - but downright dangerous???
I tried to point out that lathe & plaster ceilings are a lot more forgiving than modern plasterboard, to which the surveyor bloke just said he'd surveyed 1000s of properties and only ever turned down 3, of which ours is one. Oh well, something to be proud of :twisted:
Penners
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Nemesis
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But the ceiling itself isn't holding the weight - it's the joists whch do that surely?
Nemesis
Correct - but the latest from the council's own surveyor who just called is that 4 of the joists are in fact no longer in contact with the wall, and therefore it is the laths (?proper spelling this time?) which are holding the joists up at that end of the ceiling. The 4 affected joists are actually being supported, sort of, by bits of wooden extensions nailed to them, and some planks strapped to the rafters, but I think the surveyor wanted to over-emphasise the 'danger' of the ceiling. The previous owner did mention something about bomb damage sustained during WWII and emergency repairs carried out then - perhaps this is it, since we could find no other evidence elsewhere in the building. The rest of the joists still seem to be fine. I personally would risk clambering - carefully - into the loft space while assiduously avoiding the affected joists. In my view some insulation on the rest of the loft is better than none at all, and until we decide what to do with the damaged ceiling in the long term it would be nice to have insulation above the other, intact, ceiling. It is particularly nippy down south here today.
Correct - but the latest from the council's own surveyor who just called is that 4 of the joists are in fact no longer in contact with the wall, and therefore it is the laths (?proper spelling this time?) which are holding the joists up at that end of the ceiling. The 4 affected joists are actually being supported, sort of, by bits of wooden extensions nailed to them, and some planks strapped to the rafters, but I think the surveyor wanted to over-emphasise the 'danger' of the ceiling. The previous owner did mention something about bomb damage sustained during WWII and emergency repairs carried out then - perhaps this is it, since we could find no other evidence elsewhere in the building. The rest of the joists still seem to be fine. I personally would risk clambering - carefully - into the loft space while assiduously avoiding the affected joists. In my view some insulation on the rest of the loft is better than none at all, and until we decide what to do with the damaged ceiling in the long term it would be nice to have insulation above the other, intact, ceiling. It is particularly nippy down south here today.
Penners
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irina said:
How close are the ends of the "floating" joists to the walls that should be supporting them? If they're within a centimetre or so, and the joists are basically in good condition otherwise, a simple solution might be to support them with joist hangers.
This just one type. You can also get them with cranked tops that "hook" over the top of the wall plate, or the wall itself. Different designs suit different circumstances.
Thanks for the info, but they're a good 10cm away from the wall, unfortunately. If we just leave well alone, even the council surveyor reckons the ceiling, joists and all will last another couple of decades. Problems start when extra weight (i.e. any person heavier than a child) is placed on top.
Which just goes to show, if there's one lesson I've learnt from "the project" that is this house, it's that generally problems only become such when you try to alter/repair/refurbish things. If just left sitting in peace, most things, apart from stuff involving water ingress, will just happily continue to hold themselves up. Everything else leads to cumulative problems and more work. Sometimes we do choose to go down that route, at other times we've gone for the "leave well alone" approach (like the cistern full of water under our newly-laid kitchen floor, it's still water-tight, no water is coming in any more via rainwater goods, and no water is being extracted any more via defunct handpump, so level staying constant, not doing any harm).
Which just goes to show, if there's one lesson I've learnt from "the project" that is this house, it's that generally problems only become such when you try to alter/repair/refurbish things. If just left sitting in peace, most things, apart from stuff involving water ingress, will just happily continue to hold themselves up. Everything else leads to cumulative problems and more work. Sometimes we do choose to go down that route, at other times we've gone for the "leave well alone" approach (like the cistern full of water under our newly-laid kitchen floor, it's still water-tight, no water is coming in any more via rainwater goods, and no water is being extracted any more via defunct handpump, so level staying constant, not doing any harm).