Lots of photos of our insulation retrofit project

[dan_aka_jack]

This is a slightly shameless plug but I thought it might be of interest

I've just written a long blog entry describing my attempt to insulate our end-of-terrace living room to better spec for 2010 building regs:

http://peckhampower.org/blog/insulating-our-victorian-living-room

Warts and all.  Plus some 1-wire geekery.

[desperate]

Wow Jack

Ive skimmed through it, thats some refurb you've done there, nice one, dontcha just luv old bodged Victorian houses.


Desperate

PS  wanna job?

[KLD]

Is that what estate agents call a "deceptively spacious" livingroom? I mean, when you need a bicycle to get to the front window bay? 
What a job! Well done alone for keeping the motivation up !

Klaus

[SteveH]

 Impressive.... Had an almost similar (Not as professional) attempt with 2 Welsh "Long Houses"...

 Good fortune....

[Stuart]

old wonky damp victorian terrace, haha i feel your pain have an applaud 

[JohnS]

Well done. 

I am doing the same and agree that it is terribly time consuming and slow progress. 

I look forward to seeing you at or near the top of the Navitron carbon club next winter.  I might be doing well now having installed solar PV but winter will be another story.

John

[wookey]

Brilliant jack. Absolutely full marks for doing a job properly. I am humbled by your commitment. I've undertaken similar things (although our house wasn't as knackered as yours!) and know exactly how long it takes.

One word of advice, probably bit late, but we've found over the years that when on a DIY death-march its a really good idea to set a rule that one weekend in 4 you will leave the house and do something else, preferably all weekend. It's hard to get over the 'but I could finish faster if I stick at it' feeling, but eventually it can get overwhelming. We can do 3 on 1 off for years...(apparently).

I'm really interested in how the bodge-tastic monitoring works out long-term.

[dan_aka_jack]

Thanks so much for all the kind words!  It really put a smile on my face.  Doing these projects can be quite a solitary task so it's really lovely to be able to share it via t'interweb!

Thanks again,
Jack

[Mudman]

That's amazing, well done, i add my admiration to other posters.
How long do you think you'll stay in the house by the way? its a huge amount of work to do on a property if you will move in a few years, although will obviously help the next owners.
when you did the first half of the wall, did you space the wood to be the width of the celotex or did you cut the celotex to fit the gaps between the wood? or is that what you discovered you should have done when you say at the end to keep things simple?

please post again in January with the effect.

ps ever think you should have dug down more and built a basement or huge rainwater tank? (joking)

have an aplaud

[dan_aka_jack]

How long do you think you'll stay in the house by the way? its a huge amount of work to do on a property if you will move in a few years, although will obviously help the next owners.

Sure.  We'll probably stay in this house for at least another 5 years, maybe much longer.  It depends where work / life take us

I have asked about whether or not our refurbished living room would show up on an Energy Performance Certificate when we come to sell the house.  Some people say it will show up.  Other say the SAP software isn't sophisticated enough to be able to enter different thermal performance info for each room.  Part of my enthusiasm for getting Building Control involved was to maximise the chances that our work would show up on our EPC.

when you did the first half of the wall, did you space the wood to be the width of the celotex or did you cut the celotex to fit the gaps between the wood? or is that what you discovered you should have done when you say at the end to keep things simple?

On both sides of the room the studs are at 600mm centres.  The big difference was that on the first side of the room I used 50x50mm studs with 50mm Celotex between the studs and 30mm over the studs so yes, I had to cut the 50mm Celotex into 550mm strips to fit between the studs (it's supplied as 2400x1200mm sheets).  I found it surprisingly difficult to get a perfect fit (my cutting wasn't perfectly straight along the entire 2.4m length of the Celotex plus the studs are a little bendy) so I had to liberally apply expandable foam to keep fill the gaps between the studs and the Celotex (gaps would have allowed cold air to pass from the ventilated cavity between the two layers of Celotex).

On the 2nd side of the room, I just threw the Celotex over the studs, no cutting required (expect at the edges of the wall, of course).

please post again in January with the effect.

Sure, will do.

ps ever think you should have dug down more and built a basement or huge rainwater tank? (joking)

I did think about putting a tank down there, yes!  But I quickly went off that idea for a bunch of reasons!

[JohnS]

Did you ever consider going for a solid floor?  Concrete and then insulation with perhaps UFH on top?

If you considered it, what were the main reasons for dismissing it?

John

[dan_aka_jack]

Did you ever consider going for a solid floor?  Concrete and then insulation with perhaps UFH on top?

If you considered it, what were the main reasons for dismissing it?

* the walls suffer from damp.  Several people told me that installing a solid floor reduces the rate at which moisture evaporates from the soil and hence increases the rate at which moisture travels into the walls
* the suspended timber floor in the hall way is already poorly ventilated.  Installing a solid floor in the living room would basically completely cut off any ventilation to the hall way's floor
* ALL our mains services (water, power, gas, sewage) travel under the living room floor and I'm reluctant to bury those services under concrete
* We'd use multiple tonnes of concrete (which isn't great for our CO2 footprint)

[Quakered]

I am in awe of what you have done while holding down a day job.

Congratulations!

Patrick

[noelsquibb]

Ultimate can of worms eh ?

Ive seen houses get into that state and end up being sold to the local builder.

Karmic uplift for sticking at it and seeing the job through.



I need to learn a bit more about the one wire sensors -

Why do they have 2 wires ?
Where do you get the sensors from ?
What do you use to read display the temperatures ?


noel

[dan_aka_jack]

I am in awe of what you have done while holding down a day job.

Congratulations!

Patrick

Very kind of you to say so but I'm not sure I can take credit for "holding down a day job".  I wouldn't have been able to do this project if I was doing a 9-5 job.  I've only been able to do it because I'm a freelancer and so I can, if I really need to, turn down paid work to get on with the house building.  Plus I'm in the very lucky position of my wife earning enough to mean that we wont starve if I reduce the amount of money I pull in.