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Housing - Renovation: What should I do next - chalet bungalow green wasteland

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  1.  
    • CommentAuthorImmac
    • CommentTimeOct 1st 2008
     
    I live in a Heinz 57 house. It was originally a one-bed bungalow and various owners have bodged it into a 4-bed chalet with dormers.

    I'm a green nut - I mean, mad enough not to drive and to turn the gas condenser boiler off when not needed. I also don't fly. However, the house is a bit less green! In fact, it's a disaster on that score. The walls are nearly all solid and uninsulated. The floors are mostly concrete and dead cold. We have upvc 25mm double glazing at the rear of the house but the front is timber d/g with only a small gap, maybe 8mm or so.

    There is limited insulation in the little extension loft, and only a puny amount between the sloping ceilings and roof in the upstairs.

    The house is detatched with a tiny gap on one side between us and the noisy neighbours - maybe about 10in, causing a very cold wall on one side and barely room to externally insulate.

    The upstairs rooms are small with low sloping ceilings and it may be impractical to add a couple of inches to these ceilings in insulation. We've tried a couple of insulation offers from our power suppliers - who more or less told us to forget it. So I want to green my house. With DIY if necessary, but paid-for if needs be. But what can I do that will have the most effect? Other than knock the dump down and build again (can't afford it) what can I do? Just to make the matter more pressing, my wife is disabled (hence the bungalow) and really feels the cold...

    All comments gratefully accepted...!
    Thanks for reading
    Immac
  2.  
    1. Could you do floating floor - lose say 50mm total off door heights, and still get decent access? Stairs will take some thinking.

    2. Roof off and insulate over rafters? Radical but....

    3. ??Ext ins on 3 walls and internal ins on the one with only the 10 inch gap?

    I accept you want to 'green' the house, but you may have to end up using a lot of nasty petrochemical nsulation.

    Good luck. Refurb can be fun, especially when you get the detailing right (I haven't always) and the bills plummet!
  3.  
    these guides on insulation from EST are good, perhaps they may give you some ideas
    http://www.est.org.uk/download.cfm?p=1&pid=248
    http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/uploads/documents/housingbuildings/CE83%20-%20Energy%20efficiency%20refurbishment%20of%20existing%20housing.pdf

    search this site for info on scaled ceiling or skielings and insulation
    First thing to do is draught proof your home, windows/doors/behind skirting/loft hatch/letter box/all hole for services/pipes
    then try and improve your insulation
    put what ever you can get in your loft 300mm+ mineral wool/ecowool/warmcell etc.
    you could insulate the sloped ceilings buy removing the plaster/board (PB.) and fitting kingspan/celotex PUR/phenlonic board insulation between the rafters
    leave a 50mm air gap above the insulation, ie. 100mm rafter =50mm insulation/50mm air gap/felt/roof finish
    you could then reline with lamenated plasterboard/PUR board , say 25mm pur/12.5mm PB this would mean you only lose 1" of space and
    have level of insulation slightly better than very approx. 150mm mineral wool . the more space you're willing to lose the better you insulation levels
    Alternatively you could strip the roof and work from above and build right up to a high level of insulation (expense)
    internal walls could similarly be lined with PUR/PB board if external is out of the question
    Floor , theres some under tile boards used to insulate for electric UFH, you could look into these , dont know how good they are?
    also reflexive carpet underlay may help
    Secondary glaze your windows ? or up graded to something better

    hope there some ideas here
    cheers Jim
    • CommentAuthortony
    • CommentTimeOct 1st 2008
     
    Try a search on this forum and this thread,

    http://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=955

    1) is draft seal 2) insulate watch out for out door air trying to blow around above your ceilings and under the upstairs floor.
    • CommentAuthorImmac
    • CommentTimeOct 2nd 2008
     
    Thanks to everyone for the comments so far. You've got me thinking.
    Nick, Your point about the petrochemicals is a good one that I will have to try to consider. maybe the Green Building Store might have something. I might find it difficult creatign a floating floor for the reasons I put in my first point to Jim, below.
    Jim, your suggestion of using relexive carpet underlay had made me think. We don't use our central heating that much, because of a flueless gas fire in the living room. But when we do, the pipes for it run under the concrete floor. If I used reflexive underlay, I fear I might lose the little benefit of heat from the (covered in some kinda protective tape) pipes rising up through the concrete. Could I use the underlay and still retain that benefit, or cut the underlay way for the areas (actually about 5in wide, I reckon) where the pipes make the concrete warm? What does anyone think?
    I was very interested in your idea that I could lose just an inch of space by replacing the plaster boards on the ceiling. That could work.
    Tony, where would the air blowing around above the ceilings and below the upstairs floor be coming from? Do you mean entering from the overhang of the roof?
    Thanks again everyone. Really impressed.
    Sincerely
    Ian (Immac)
    • CommentAuthortony
    • CommentTimeOct 2nd 2008
     
    The roof is not an airtight thing, wind will blow in through every nook and cranny. Through the gaps between everything and even through some things. Once inside the roof there is unlikely to be anything to stop it blowing under your floor ( this even happens in most houses! ) as it does so it removes heat and takes it outside.:cry:
    • CommentAuthorImmac
    • CommentTimeOct 2nd 2008
     
    Thanks Tony. pardon my dumbness, but what do I do about that?
    :confused:
    • CommentAuthorskywalker
    • CommentTimeOct 2nd 2008
     
    Nick/James are on the money

    Unless you take your roof off you will need to go down the PUR foam route for your skeilings (as per James's suggestion). We have talked on this many times search as Tony suggests. I will try to get some pic's posted in some sort of sensible order when I get time.

    It is one hell of a job though, worse in an occupied house, I know I'm nearing the end (teaching my son 'don't jump off of the roof dad' is keeping me sane at the moment) of the roof saga here. BUT so much warmer & comfortable now it has been topped off well worth the dust, disruption & occasional despair/ bouts of madness.

    You will find, as I did today, that when you seal up all the obvious drafts an amazing amount of infiltration ( the fancy term for drafts & unwanted/controlled ventilation) comes from unexpected sources. I have to confess a certain amount of past skepticism about air passing through brickwork and in round joists but in the wind in the last few days I have felt the air coming through brick work as I have been plastering (inside a void Tony - you would be proud of me) and round joist ends (where I was a-lookin' for them with me new foam gun ha ha ha !!) - and breathe ...........

    S.
    • CommentAuthortony
    • CommentTimeOct 2nd 2008
     
    Sell it and move!! I an sure we have been through it on here basically you must stop all outside air (wind and drafts) from being able to get inside your thermal envelope ant this includes under the first floor. It is not easy but is necessary.
    • CommentAuthorBowman
    • CommentTimeOct 3rd 2008
     
    Tony, sell it and move? That has to be the dumbest comment ever, I'd assume it was in jest?

    Immac, go and get a copy of the Green Building Bible volume 1. Then insulate as much as you can. Then stop drafts. Then have look solar hot water. Consider your water consumption and your lighting, and you'll will have made a huge contribution.
    • CommentAuthorludite
    • CommentTimeOct 3rd 2008
     
    Consider outside too. Make sure you haven't concreted your front garden. Are you growing your own food? do you have space for extra recycling bins/sorting? Do you compost?
    • CommentAuthorImmac
    • CommentTimeOct 4th 2008
     
    Thank you all again. Some great points raised here and certainly food for thought. I have learned so much - thermal bridging was a totally new one on me - that it's opened up a whole new world (of horrors!?) in my tiny mind. Some more specific comments:
    Skywalker, may your yard never have a Luke-shaped dent in it. It would be intrigued to see those pics as and when you could upload them. Having had years of building and fuss going on here already owing to rotten floors and, gulp, subsidence (which did enable us to get some insulation done in the process on the back of the house, albeit, I now discover, not that adequately), I am not sure we could cope with any more. However, by any means necessary, as someone once said. I have become the king of the mastic gun in the six years we have been here, so I am going to go round and shoot down those draughts.
    Tony and Bowman... believe you me, this house has been considered for sale many times. Only this morning Mrs Immac suggested knocking it down and building something that is more to our environmental taste. But the area mostly suits us, I have no definite income as such so another mortgage (if there are any) is out. But more to the point, if we sell it, some other fool is going to buy it, and that way the job will never get done with x amount of CO2 and heat escaping into the atmosphere. So it's better that we stay because we have the will to see it through and every other resident round here thinks green is the colour of envy and nothing else.
    Ludite, (may I call you Ned?) appreciate your coment too. We actually knocked down a rotten extension at the back so we could get more garden, and this winter, to the horror of our neighbours, we intend digging up half the entirely blockworked front garden, replacing parking for three cars to just one. Somebody's got to do it. Let it be us. We do compost and recycle like mental, although the only food that we grew that didn't end up feeding the slugs was apples, a few beetroot and come chard. I'll get the Green Building Bible, today if I can.
    The question remains, why did we buy a place like this?? Ignorance, I think...
    Thanks again, people.
    :bigsmile:
    • CommentAuthorludite
    • CommentTimeOct 4th 2008
     
    Call me whatever you like:smile: some people used to call me 'stan' - from the life of Brian even though I really am a girl.

    Amazing, digging UP block paving, no wonder your neighbours think you are bonkers - It's never been done before!!!

    So you have plenty of slugs, looks like you'll have to go the whole way and get some chickens!! I bet if you get x battery chickens - which will arrive bald, shocked and with big sore looking red bums, the neighbours will forgive you when they start growing feathers.

    I get all my eggs from a mate now. He got a box full of battery chickens. It makes me feel good that the birds I see now are happily pottering around - and the eggs are fantastic.
    • CommentAuthorImmac
    • CommentTimeOct 4th 2008
     
    Ned/Stan
    Chickens eat young plants, or at least dig them up. Our garden is small and suburban, don't think it's practical, and next door's cat is a killer. Glad your friend's battery hens have been recharged though.
    :confused:
    • CommentAuthorImmac
    • CommentTimeOct 5th 2008
     
    I am now getting interested in attempting to insulate the tiny gap between my house and the neighbour's. Anyone know of a waterproof insulated board that would just stick to the wall to slid up the gap and press to the wall that would be effective? Would also push some kind of fibre up into the eaves of the house while I was about it. I can just about slip through the cap sideways, to give you an idea of what I am dealing with...
    :confused:
    Thanks yet again everyone...

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