Hello everyone, this is my first time posting on the forum, a very inexperienced newbie who thought he knew a lot about DIY until he found this site!!
I’m in the process of selling our large 1994 detached 4 bedroom home. We installed new double glazing and had cavity wall insulation but the house always felt cold and needed the heating on frequently – which I hated, but my wife insisted on.
We are in the process of selling (fingers crossed) and looking to buy a 1915 large 7 bedroom detached house, which is made of stone with a render which starts from about 2 ft from the ground. There is a veranda that runs around 3 sides of the house. It has solid floors, and gas central heating installed at sometime? It has also had the loft converted which houses 3 of the 7 bedrooms. The house appears to have original wooden sash windows, the house is not listed or in a conservation area. The house is liveable but does need a complete refurb, kitchen, bathrooms, decorating etc.
We had an offer accepted and things are progressing and I am now rethinking my budget requirements after finding this wonderful site! I’ve spent several hours already ploughing through multiple threads, but time isn’t on my side so I am after some general guidance, and any help would be very much appreciated, so a few questions. Assuming that the move goes ahead we would be looking to make this our home for at least 15 years to allow my two young children to go through school.
1.) Should I run a mile??
2.) What should be my order of priority when considering making my house more energy efficient? My thoughts are, windows, doors, loft, walls, boiler, floor??
3.) What would (very rough) ball park figures be for doing each of the above?
4.) Would the veranda complicate/cause any issues if we had EWI fitted?
5.) Should I consider having the plasterboard taken down in the loft conversion and look at having it re-insulated?
6.) Would floor insulation be worth the outlay? I have already run the idea of excavating the existing floor out and judging by the look my wife gave me, this may not be an option. The ceilings aren’t ridiculously high, but I’m assuming that it would involve all the feature skirting boards being removed if insulation was added on top of the existing floor?
I will of course continue ploughing through the many threads on many of the topics listed above!

Many thanks in advance
Alex

Thanks Daryl, fully noted, thank you...

New windows and doors last unless the DG units have blown. Airtightness first but with a solid walled rendered house that isn't so hard. But that loft conversion worries me both from an airtightness POV and from an insulation POV - needs careful thought - incl consideration of ERI (OK I made the term up!) external roof insulation - you shouldn't have a concern about raising the roof so it is not as obvious a stupid idea as it sounds. Also I wouldn't prioritise the floor - put your money into an external tea cosy if feasible - giving a continuous airtight layer and unbridged (apart from doors and windows) insulation layer. But the dosh vs 15 years...... Otherwise it's IWI with all the inherent condensation risks to the fabric of your house (ie the wood bits).

Not an expert in this - no doubt someone will be along with a more experienced perspective but solid walled house are very different to the rest of the UK housing stock in the way they should be approached.

Don't run a mile if it is structurally OK - I prefer solid walls to cavity. What sort of stone walls? 2 faces with rubble infill or solid built?

As said above - draught-proofing first, windows and doors last unless they are a total disaster. The more you insulate and draught-proof the less benefit you will get from a new boiler (a more efficient boiler won't save much if you aren't using much in the first place).

See to what standard the loft conversion is built - What insulation is there in place? almost certainly not enough and probable not as air tight as the solid walled rooms. The options would be to insulate from the outside or the inside or have (additional) insulation blown in on the sloping part of the ceiling and add insulation to the flat loft area. It rather depends what you have. If the roof is in good nick and has good tiles, good roofing felt and timbers then an internal solution might be better. If you have enough space up there then you can remove the plasterboard on the sloping part of the ceiling, and depending upon the thickness of your timbers and the type of roofing felt, add battens to increase the thickness (e.g.4x2s to give an extra 100mm insulation), new vcl then new plasterboard. But this aproach will cost room space. Blown in insulation is the least disruptive but if this is possible will depend upon the type of roofing felt and vcl existing and will be limited to the thickness of the timbers.

EWI should be a consideration (or even a must). It has better results on a solid wall than on a cavity wall. - yes the veranda will get in the way but assuming the veranda uses the house for support then you are stuck with it. (or a horrible expense!) Take the EWI down to ground level or below if possible to mitigate the solid floor coldness. The veranda will (probably) cause a cold bridge but I suspect you will be stuck with that - and its not a good enough excuse not to do EWI. If the render is not falling off there is no point in removing it to EWI.

50mm insulation with board overlay can make a big difference to solid floors if you can manage the doors and skirtings.

Also, sorry Peter forgot your first question. I think from inspection the walls are a reddish stone, so my assumption perhaps is two stone walls with a rubble centre? I am going to measure the thickness when I visit next.

Looking at the photo (nice place BTW) the skirt of red (sand?)stone I would suspect is just that a nice decorative skirt, dressed stone is expensive and I would be surprised if the stone continued up under the render, I would expect to find brick under the render. I have never seen a stone-rubble-stone wall less than 50cm thick and made of undressed (as found) stone. Of course that's just my experience, I could be wrong.

lifting the roof to insulate externally looks to be an expensive option, cheaper to insulate internally by full fill or battening out and new plasterboard unfortunately battening out reduces usable room size.

Putting EWI around the veranda will depend on its construction. you might be able to mitigate the cold bridge by removing the top row of tiles to allow the EWI to wrap around the fixings then put flashing up to join between the EWI and the tiles, it all depends upon the construction.

Secondary glazing can be a good option to sash windows, which can be a b...er tomake air tight

FT, Peter, Gotanewlife, many thanks for your comments once again, they have been most helpful.

You have given me the confidence not to run a mile, so I'll be proceeding with the purchase (assuming the survey doesn't throw anything back too scary).

I will definitely go for the EWI and get quotes on doing the ERI. If the latter comes back too expensive, I may have to insulate internally for the loft rooms.

My only other concern is still the veranda. I have been reading another thread about attaching 'things' to EWI and wood came up as a big no, no. I'm assuming the structure of the veranda will be wood. I understand that the EWI would go around it and not necessarily attach to it but I was considering a complete removal of the veranda and then a reassembly?? I'm not sure if you can tell from the picture, but the current supports for the veranda are small tree trunks literally in their natural state, and have been painted. I'm not entirely sure how much life they have left in them, so if these need to be replaced then a removal and then rebuild of the veranda could be a good idea?

I will indeed keep you all posted, as I progress but thank you once again for putting my mind at rest.

Alex

:)

Posted By: alexw1.) Should I run a mile??

Probably - see below - just to play devil's advocate

2.) What should be my order of priority when considering making my house more energy efficient?

The starting point for energy efficiency is efficient use of space. A seven-bedroom house seems very large for four people, unless there's some other requirement. So buy a smaller house is first priority.

Having said that, I imagine that if you're prepared to put enough money into it, you can turn it into a very nice house.

We did something very similar and bought our 6 bed stone detached house 3 years ago, love having an old property but there are challenges. Agree with much of above, definitely insulate and air tightness should be priority. We did as follows although as I will mention would change this if we did it again.

Draught proofed wooden floors, doors, windows, (insulated all floors while up).
Fixed any damp or potential damp issues by replacing gypsum with lime hemp and lime as we did each room.
New radiators, or at least install TRVs in each room.
Replaced windows, (wish I had restored and upgraded the originals instead but that's hindsight!)
Replaced oil boiler with biomass, this was driven by RHI, wouldn't do it now.
Re did the poor loft conversion, ripped out and 150mm PIR. If I was reroofing I would have left as is and gone over the top to create warm roof. Removing lath and plaster should be last resort!

In summary, we should have put more emphasis on insulation. While EWI was out due to the stone finish, I was put off IWI by the condensation risk and disruption. Looking back IWI would have been a far better use of our biomass money and much more future proof. We still have a similar heat demand even after our improvements and while it is 'greener' and on paper less c02 it still costs a fortune to run! Pretty much equal to the old oil boiler that we ripped out.

Time wise we have done nearly all ourselves and in 3 years are around 80% there internally with focus on the outdoor space at the moment. Roof, external pointing, outbuildings and boundaries still as we found them but all need attention. We are a young family of four and still have filled every room, but that just seems to be in our nature!

It looks like a lovely place from the picture and may well suit itself to gradual improvements rather than the beast we took on. As it is rendered I imagine it would lend itself to EWI very well and would be certainly worth it and if you can do the warm roof at the same time, your disruption to improvement ratio would be amazing!

Ah no - I wouldn't claim

Posted By: Gotanewlife'tea cosy'

either for insulation or airtightness - don't know where I stole that from!

Is ERI feasible with such a complex roof? What thickness of EWI would people be considering?

Hi everyone, just to give you an update.

Unfortunately, after all your helpful comments we have decided to pull out of the purchase. Mainly, because the surveyor under valued the property by some £30k, and in addition the ceiling price he advised on in the area meant that we would far exceed that from the work we were intending to do on the property. That then doesn't include several roof issues that were identified, and the several comments above highlighting that the complexity of the roof means that it will be an expensive job to re-roof.

I am very grateful for all your comments.