New to forum - 18th Century Farmhouse

[lukejbobins]

Morning all,

We’re new to this forum and found it through a few links on another site.

So, we’ve just bought a 4 bed 18th Century farmhouse which appears to have been two buildings in its original state as we have a staircase on both the front and back of the building.

The house sits in side on to the road in roughly 0.75 acres of land with 2 outbuildings connected to the house, a double garage and a huge greenhouse which has fallen into a state of disrepair.

The main building is 2 storey (GF, 1st Fl.) with all outbuildings are single storey. The building is solid wall construction made of brick and has a concrete render to the outside at varying heights around the ground floor (rear - 6ft, side - 3ft, front -3ft). A small toilet extension has been added to the ground floor in the 1960’s which hasn’t had a concrete render applied. The roofing had a few slipped tiles (slate on one side and pan tile on the other) and had the guttering on the outside has significant damage.

The internal of the building has 2 living rooms on the ground floor, a kitchen, a bathroom and a single toilet cubicle. The first floor of the building has 4 bedrooms (2 double and two singles). The house hasn’t had any decorating done since the 1960’s and is in need of a major update. Both of the rooms on the backside of the building where the gutter damage, slipped tiles and high external concrete render have damp in the walls.

The house was previously heated by a 2 log burning fires and an immersion heater for hot water.

The house fortunately for us isn’t listed although it is in a conservation area.

Hopefully that gives a good overview of the house layout and building fabric.

So far we’ve:
1) Made good existing roof
2) Replaced guttering around the main house
3) Removed concrete render to back of property.

Our hope is that preventing water ingress and removing the concrete will allow those rooms to breath again.

Our next steps are to appoint a builder and start moving forward with the project in the new year. Key things we need opinions on before we appoint the builders are:
1) Best internal insulation methods and things to avoid.
2) Heating methods with no gas. (UFH, Log burners, Oil boiler. . .) and things to avoid.
3) Anything key to look out for.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Pennyviz]

Welcome!

Hope you find this forum as useful as I have


Whereabouts in the country are you?

Penny

 

[Me!]

Welcome.
With solid walls there is not a lot you can do to insulate them without fairly major impact, so the first thing to focus on is the loft. Here I'm still a firm believer in mineral wool (rockwool, earthwool, fibreglass etc.) insulation for old houses as it adapts so perfectly to any wonky shapes, and despite being seen by some as being old-fashioned it actually a) works very well, b) is a lot more fireproof than many more modern types, c) is natural and fairly environmentally friendly, and d) is a lot less nasty to fit now than the old stuff was back in the 1970's era.
First fit one layer on the loft floor between the joists using insulation that is the same depth as the joist height. Then fit a second layer running at 90 degrees to the first and as thick as you can reasonably get in. My second layer is 6", but people use 8" or even more. Depending on your roof design, do not tuck the insulation right down into the corners at the eaves. It is normal to let air circulate into the loft space over the insulation to keep the roof structure dry. Also, keep electrical cable runs on top of the insulation and not below it to prevent them overheating.

There are several heating experts on this forum, but you will need to tell us your floor construction materials, and if you plan to replace any of them to know if UFH is a possibility. Also some photos of the house would be good so we can be aware of its style and character. Personally, I'm happy with the look of cast iron column radiators in a house that looks Georgian or Victorian, but I think they look out of place in older timber-frame cottages etc. where I'd rather just have modern pressed steel ones. But that's just my personal view and I know many disagree.

 

[TheSpid]

We had a man from Ty Mawr around this week looking at 'stuff'. He recommended Hemp plaster for the walls as it has insulating properties [this is straight onto stone] - two layers, rather than limes three, and quite a 'soft' looking finish. Still breathable etc. We are looking into it. It will still look cottagey and no thicker than lime plaster so no impact n room sizes.

We are also looking at limecrete and underfloor heating. At the moment we are oil fired [A rated Rayburn boiler] but one day may go to air source as well, or not - depends on all sort of factors. We have radiators at the moment a mixture of bog standard normal modern ones and modern pretend cast iron looking ones. I don't think old style radiators do look too out of place in an old cottage - but putting in UFH negates that issue anyway.

 

[Kearn]

I don't think old style radiators do look too out of place in an old cottage - but putting in UFH negates that issue anyway.

I'm sure others will give more experienced advice here, and there have certainly been some reasonably recent posts on the topic, but UFH is usually a great way to keep the chill off and warm your toes, but not to heat a volume of air and therefore a room. It is usually supplementary to rads, rather than a replacement...

 

[MikeG]

We had a man from Ty Mawr around this week looking at 'stuff'. He recommended Hemp plaster for the walls as it has insulating properties [this is straight onto stone] - two layers, rather than limes three, and quite a 'soft' looking finish. Still breathable etc. We are looking into it. It will still look cottagey and no thicker than lime plaster so no impact n room sizes.

We are also looking at limecrete and underfloor heating. At the moment we are oil fired [A rated Rayburn boiler] but one day may go to air source as well, or not - depends on all sort of factors. We have radiators at the moment a mixture of bog standard normal modern ones and modern pretend cast iron looking ones. I don't think old style radiators do look too out of place in an old cottage - but putting in UFH negates that issue anyway.

Lots here.

An insulating plaster will have a tiny marginal effect on the surface temperature of the walls, and a negligible effect on the air temperature in the room. It is not a substitute for insulation. Look at how thick insulation has to be before it is effective. Can you imagine how little effect 3 or 4 mm of insulation would be? Add to that the inefficiency of insulating plaster compared with just insulation and you can see how poor the thermal performance of these products are.

I've dealt with the UFH in your other thread.

Air source heat pumps are no more than an electric air conditioning system. It's a wonderful bit of marketing to change the name and con everyone into thinking that this magically makes them "green". If you want to increase your carbon footprint and don't give a damn about the country's carbon emissions, then fine. Your ASHP will be burning mainly fossil fuel, as that is what the electrical generation mix in the UK is at present. They're a really terrible idea.

 

[MikeG]

I don't think old style radiators do look too out of place in an old cottage - but putting in UFH negates that issue anyway.

I'm sure others will give more experienced advice here, and there have certainly been some reasonably recent posts on the topic, but UFH is usually a great way to keep the chill off and warm your toes, but not to heat a volume of air and therefore a room. It is usually supplementary to rads, rather than a replacement...

Not so. They're a great way of space heating.

I've lived with nothing else for the last 30 years. There is a great deal of confusion in this subject, because there are two types of UFH. The electric mat which gets laid under tiles in bathroom floors is also called UFH (it should be under tile heating), and this product matches your description perfectly. Only in the smallest rooms will under tile electric heating be sufficient for space heating.

Wet systems, on the other hand, where hot water is pumped through pipes set into a floor screed, work beautifully for space heating, and don't need supplementary radiators. Indeed, that would cause almighty control problems (with hugely different response rates), and with one requiring luke warm water (UFH), and the radiator circuit working at 65 degrees plus.

 

[skier-hughes]

We have solar tubes for hot water during the summer, well mainly between May and September.
A log burner with back boiler in lounge
A LPG boiler and LPG tank
These are all connected to a 100-l buffer hot water tank with a 200l DHW tank inside.
We have new rads in all rooms controlled by a genuis hub system. I went for these over old style, as the house wouldn't have had either when it was built and the newer ones are more efficient and quicker working and now I hardly see them, apart from when a bum is plonked on one to warm up!!!

Works great, mainly, as we work from home the fire is burning and we heat the house from that. If we are out and want a bit of heat, or the house sitters are in when we are away, we set the lpg boiler to come on.

We have open fire in the bedroom and a log burner in my wife's office for supplementary heating, or instead of lighting the main fire.

I've had UFH heating in my parents new extension, works a treat, but it is extremely well insulated. I don't think it would work well in our 16th century house, far too many drafts etc.

Have you considered external wall insulation, a house up the road from us had it and it looks great now from outside, rendered in lime, whereas prior to that it was poor brickwork. This will also retain internal floor area.

 

[TheSpid]

We had a man from Ty Mawr around this week looking at 'stuff'. He recommended Hemp plaster for the walls as it has insulating properties [this is straight onto stone] - two layers, rather than limes three, and quite a 'soft' looking finish. Still breathable etc. We are looking into it. It will still look cottagey and no thicker than lime plaster so no impact n room sizes.

We are also looking at limecrete and underfloor heating. At the moment we are oil fired [A rated Rayburn boiler] but one day may go to air source as well, or not - depends on all sort of factors. We have radiators at the moment a mixture of bog standard normal modern ones and modern pretend cast iron looking ones. I don't think old style radiators do look too out of place in an old cottage - but putting in UFH negates that issue anyway.

Lots here.

An insulating plaster will have a tiny marginal effect on the surface temperature of the walls, and a negligible effect on the air temperature in the room. It is not a substitute for insulation. Look at how thick insulation has to be before it is effective. Can you imagine how little effect 3 or 4 mm of insulation would be? Add to that the inefficiency of insulating plaster compared with just insulation and you can see how poor the thermal performance of these products are.

I've dealt with the UFH in your other thread.

Air source heat pumps are no more than an electric air conditioning system. It's a wonderful bit of marketing to change the name and con everyone into thinking that this magically makes them "green". If you want to increase your carbon footprint and don't give a damn about the country's carbon emissions, then fine. Your ASHP will be burning mainly fossil fuel, as that is what the electrical generation mix in the UK is at present. They're a really terrible idea.

If we went for air source it would be in conjunction with solar and wind turbines etc. BUT . . . We might not go for it at all. Hence depends on 'factors' and that will be all dependant on 'green' factors.

Thanks on the hemp plaster l had wondered.

 

[MikeG]

.......If we went for air source it would be in conjunction with solar and wind turbines etc. BUT . . . We might not go for it at all. Hence depends on 'factors' and that will be all dependant on 'green' factors.......

Solar is useless in conjunction with any heating system, because of course the sun is at its weakest when the demand for heating is at its highest. Wind is also useless, unless you have a battery store, because the wind doesn't conveniently blow at the times you need heating.

 

[Flyfisher]

I don't think old style radiators do look too out of place in an old cottage - but putting in UFH negates that issue anyway.

I'm sure others will give more experienced advice here, and there have certainly been some reasonably recent posts on the topic, but UFH is usually a great way to keep the chill off and warm your toes, but not to heat a volume of air and therefore a room. It is usually supplementary to rads, rather than a replacement...

Not so. They're a great way of space heating.

I've lived with nothing else for the last 30 years. There is a great deal of confusion in this subject, because there are two types of UFH. The electric mat which gets laid under tiles in bathroom floors is also called UFH (it should be under tile heating), and this product matches your description perfectly. Only in the smallest rooms will under tile electric heating be sufficient for space heating.

Wet systems, on the other hand, where hot water is pumped through pipes set into a floor screed, work beautifully for space heating, and don't need supplementary radiators. Indeed, that would cause almighty control problems (with hugely different response rates), and with one requiring luke warm water (UFH), and the radiator circuit working at 65 degrees plus.

Agreed, and although I can only claim five years experience of a wet UFH system I'm very happy with it. I think, perhaps, the idea about UFH not being as good as conventional rads is that UFH floors are cooler than conventional rads. Well yes, that's true but it's also irrelevant. Convention rads HAVE to run hot because they have a relatively small surface area whereas a heated floor (itself acting as a radiator of course) has a much larger area, thus a large 'warm' radiator can heat a room just as well as a smaller, hotter radiator - all other things being equal. In fact, a larger radiating surface is arguably better because it will generally result in less of a temperature gradient within the room. An extreme example would be to imagine the floor, walls and ceiling all being heated, in which case they could run very effectively at a temperature barely above the required room temperature.

As for mixing UFH and conventional rads, I agree with MikeG that it could cause complications within the same room although we have a sort of mixed system in that our large kitchen floor has UFH and the adjacent sitting room, which is largely open to the kitchen, has a conventional radiator (because it has a suspended wood floor not suitable for UFH). Depending on the weather, we find that enough of the kitchen UFH heat 'spills' into the sitting room, but when it is very cold we switch on the conventional rad as well. In practice, we don't seem to have any control problems with this arrangement. Indeed, it's really not much different than balancing the wood stove in the sitting room with the conventional rad and/or the 'spillage' from the kitchen UFH.

 

[Flyfisher]

.......If we went for air source it would be in conjunction with solar and wind turbines etc. BUT . . . We might not go for it at all. Hence depends on 'factors' and that will be all dependant on 'green' factors.......

Solar is useless in conjunction with any heating system, because of course the sun is at its weakest when the demand for heating is at its highest. Wind is also useless, unless you have a battery store, because the wind doesn't conveniently blow at the times you need heating.

Depends on one's perspective, I think. From a 'green' or self-sufficiency perspective it is quite correct but from a purely economic perspective it might be possible to run an energy surplus during the warmer summer months, converting this surplus into hard cash via exporting tariffs and then using that saved cash to pay for the additional ebergy demand in the winter months and thereby lowering one's energy costs over the entire year. Of course, this approach currently relies on having a 'grid' system supported by fossil/nuclear during the winter months, so hardly a 'green' or sustainable system but it can make economic sense on a 'per home' basis. Indeed, isn't that the precise justification for Feed-In Tariffs in the first place (that and encouraging the uptake of PV and similar technologies)?

 

[Pennyviz]

Is 075 acres big enough for geo therm heating? - as far as I can make it that is the only viable heating system, although payback is long term.

 

[Flyfisher]

Is 075 acres big enough for geo therm heating? - as far as I can make it that is the only viable heating system, although payback is long term.

Do you mean ground source heating or 'true' geothermal heating?

For a ground source heat pump the space required will depend on the system capacity (obviously!) but when I was looking into this option a rough idea was that twice as much area of ground was required to heat a given area of floor. That's for a horizontal system of course with pipes laid between 4-6ft underground, so a lot of digging and disruption though less if there was tractor access and it could be laid with a 'mole' attachment. GSHPs can also be built around a borehole, so much less ground area required but I didn't really look into this seriously because the drilling costs would be very high compared to my initial DIY pipe-laying idea. I was thinking about all this about 10 years ago so technologies and costs may well have improved but at the time although the systems were around 300% efficient, electricity was around 3x the price of mains gas (per kWh) so it seemed to make no sense as we could have gas installed for a few £100s compared with £10k+ for a GSHP that would have similar running costs.

These days, electricity seems to be nearer to 4x the cost of mains gas but I don't know if GSHP technology has improved to the 400% efficiency just to keep pace. Of course, who knows what will happen to relative fuel prices over the next 10 years? Except that they'll ALL become more expensive. Looking (guessing!) further ahead, I reckon electricity will be the only source of energy for homes. In the wake of the Paris Agreement on climate change a couple of years ago there have already been calls for gas boilers to be phased out fairly soon and I've read that new builds may not be allowed to connect to the gas grid sometime in the 2020s (https://www.propertyindustryeye.com/huge-change-facing-property-world-as-gas-looks-set-to-be-phased-out/) and the recent 'Boiler Plus' legislation already demands new efficiency standards (https://www.boilerguide.co.uk/boiler-plus-legislation-2018) - so by the time we need to replace our gas boiler the only viable option might be an electric system of one sort or another. Times are certainly changing!

As for 'true' geothermal heating, as far as I'm aware this requires drilling to depths measured in kilometers and is therefore economically impractical for domestic heating, except as part of large scale 'community' heating schemes.

 

[Cubist]

Is 075 acres big enough for geo therm heating? - as far as I can make it that is the only viable heating system, although payback is long term.

I believe so, some systems only need around 400sq metres. check out the link below for more info

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiJzoC54obfAhVTVhUIHX_2ClYQFjAAegQICxAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Finfo.cat.org.uk%2Fquestions%2Fheatpumps%2Fdo-i-need-lot-land-space-ground-source-heat-pump-gshp%2F&usg=AOvVaw0xGe8bZ281z6ZyyZHMV_ch

Also, if your water is supplied from a borehole these too can sometimes be used (if deep enough).

 

[worms]

Have you considered external wall insulation, a house up the road from us had it and it looks great now from outside, rendered in lime, whereas prior to that it was poor brickwork. This will also retain internal floor area.

More importantly, it means that you make use of the building’s thermal mass on the inside of your insulated envelope rather than shutting it out!

 

[MikeG]

Have you considered external wall insulation, a house up the road from us had it and it looks great now from outside, rendered in lime, whereas prior to that it was poor brickwork. This will also retain internal floor area.

More importantly, it means that you make use of the building’s thermal mass on the inside of your insulated envelope rather than shutting it out!

At the cost of replacing a 300 year old exterior with a modern one, altering the relationship between major building elements (walls, rooves, windows and doors) irrevocably, and hiding the building's history. Other than that, it's a great idea.

 

[skier-hughes]

At the cost of replacing a 300 year old exterior with a modern one, or interior.... our exterior has already been bricked up, whereas our interior is all wood frame. altering the relationship between major building elements (walls, rooves, windows and doors) mostly the same if doing inside irrevocably, not really and hiding the building's history same if you do inside. Other than that, it's a great idea.

 

[MikeG]

I don't think it is a surprising thing to find people on a site dedicated to period properties who think that drastically altering the interior or the exterior of a period property isn't appropriate. There are some properties that just don't lend themselves to being well insulated.

 

[Flyfisher]

This an interesting, perhaps contentious, area of discussion.

‘Not lending themselves’ to being well insulated must surely be a wholly subjective opinion and subject to the prevailing fashions and dogma of our time? But as we all know times change.

By today’s standards our C16 timber frame house would not ‘lend itself’ to being drastically altered along Georgian lines, i.e. sawing through many of the close-studded oak timbers to insert large sash windows, installing an Adam-style marble fireplace, inserting dormer windows in the roof (more cutting away of the timber frame) and rendering over all the original old features. Yet it was being done all over the country (well, East Anglia at least) and today we treasure the results to the extent of listing them.

What’s so special about current times that we should now restrict further alterations, especially alterations to insulate these highly thermally inefficient properties at a time where our fuel consumption is threatening the entire planet! Fuel prices will inevitably continue to rise and there my well come a time when old, inefficient properties simple become too expensive for living. There may even be legal restrictions being imposed upon such properties in the future to limit their fuel consumption, indeed such things are already happening. When such things happen, such properties will remain unoccupied and will then begin their inevitable decay into oblivion.

Period property owners are being squeezed by an establishment that deems them historically valuable yet declines to give owners any significant financial assistance to maintain them properly while at the same time penalising the high energy consumption that makes them habitable yet actively disallows many energy saving measures. I find it hard to believe that this is a sustainable state of affairs, but I guess any changes will inevitably be slow . . . so we plod along as best we can.

Unless period properties remain attractive propositions for daily living then they will lost forever. Use them or lose them.