Thermaskirt - Anyone have any expereince with it?

[clivejo]

I have a problem with damp in one of my rooms.  Along the back wall, which has no windows, it is very prone to damp in winter months and if any furniture is pushed against it will start to mould.  The heating in the room is provided by a single radiator at the front, which really doesn't help matters as the heat from it never gets circulated to the back wall properly.  I have been considering installing another radiator along the back wall, but getting pipes to it is going to be difficult.  

I came across this Thermaskirt product (http://www.thermaskirt.com/) and in my head it might be the solution to my problem.  If I install this around the room there would be a more even distribution of heat and as hot air rises, should create an air flow up my wall and stop it getting damp, well that's the theory!!

I have been reading reviews about the product and there are a few people with issues, mainly the following :

1) Noise as it heats up
2) Leaks at the joints
3) Wont leave a nice finish where it meets the wall if there is any bumps or humps in your plaster (This could be an issue with me!)
4) Lack of DIY customer support from the company

Basically, I'm looking for anyone who has this system installed to offer me a bit of advice.

[Baz]

Have you considered a dehumidifier? The fan in it would also distributre the heat from your exsisting radiator.

[clivejo]

Yes, but the room needs an extra heat source, I was going to install a dual panel, dual convector radiator.  I think its more to do with stall air not moving is causing the problem, I guess I could install a fan but I dont like the idea of that!

I would have thought a de-humidifier would be quite hard on the old electy juice?

[brackwell]

You really need to tackle the root cause just increasing the temp does not make a blind bit of difference if the source of the damp is infinite.  The dehumidifier draws about 300W but the energy is not lost and you have the fan.

Ken

[cj]

I am not sure whether warm damp air and furniture is a great deal better than cold and damp.

Is it ground level room, north side? Damp proof course type? Soil level on outside compared to dpc?  Can it be lowered? Gutters is good condition and clear? Room ventilation?

Photo? Old building? Stone? Lime mortar?

If wet, there is a reason.

[skyewright]

The dehumidifier draws about 300W but the energy is not lost and you have the fan.

Ours (a Mitsubishi MJ-E16VX-E1) averages less than that. Even a "laundry" cycle plus "drying inside" (i.e. 12 hours of continuous dehumidifying, then a final hour of it making sure that it is itself dry [to help prevent build up of mold in the dehumidifier]) averages under 200W. "normal" dehumidifying duty should use less again unless the area is so damp that it runs continuously.

And as pointed out by others the energy is that is used ends up a heat, so you get the benefit of it from that angle too.

[EccentricAnomaly]

And as pointed out by others the energy is that is used ends up a heat, so you get the benefit of it from that angle too.

And the latent heat which was in the water vapour will help, resulting in a COP in excess of 1 so better than an electric radiator (so long as you dump the water before it evaporates again).

[biff]

hi clivejo,
         ken and cj have got the right idea, you really need to cure the damp problem before you do anything else. quite often it a simple case of someone leveling out the street outside and bringing the street level up above the inside floor level,in such case it will be necessary to dig down and creat a channel 9" wide which drops down below the inside floor level by 6",you can chuck a 4"yellow land drain pipe in the channel and fill it up with pea gravel,making sure the water can escape unhindered, then remove the plaster inside up to a distance of 1mtr and tank the wall with a good mix of 3 to 1 with added waterproofer,,if the inside walls happen to be brick,the porous type,then all the better,you can drill it and inject the sovern dpc chemical and then render it.
       adding heat to a damp room is extremely unhealthy,best open the windows wide and let as much air circulate as possible. very often the answer is something simple,like a cracked downpipe outside or a joint pushed out by the frost. the water can run down the wall but it also finds it way into the inside also.
                             good luck,, biff

[dhaslam]

Can you leave the room door open?     Also is it possible to  put a window in the room?   Even without the damp problem a room with no windows isn't much use except for storage. 

[clivejo]

It is an old farm house so stone and some type of lime mortar mix, about 3 ft thick.  There is drainage at the back, and its clear, so I dont think its damp actually in the wall. Its fine until the room air becomes hotter than the wall which causes a fine condensation to start to happen, but only in the areas that dont have air flow i.e. behind a cabinet.  Opening the window doesn't seem to help any, I need to get airflow along the back.  It does really need another heat source somewhere along the wall.  Its great when the weather is warm as its the coolest room in the summer, but I'm getting fed up wiping the walls and repainted so often!  I have tried barrier sealing paint, but as I say I dont think its the damp coming through the wall, more the cold wall interfacing with the warmer air inside causing condensation on the surface.

[cj]

When you said the wall was thick, I immediately thought of stone, lime mortar etc.  A 3:1 cement mix in these cases will cause further problems.  My Son had this problem with a house he has just rented, green fungus over a cupboard wall, and the holes where the plaster had fallen off were up to 2" deep, covered in polystyrene tiles that were hanging off.

There was evidence of least least two previous times when the plaster had been replaced. Any sort of cement based product on top of lime mortar will be a problem, it is about 200 times stronger and does not flex. It will peel off.

http://www.lime.org.uk/products/mortars-and-plasters/ Has a lot of useful info, and run courses on use of it, as do a number of others places.  They can probably give you advice over the phone or by email.

[Quakered]

Our house has solid walls and think they were all built in the days when a house had only to protect you from the weather but not keep you warm! We had the wet walls and black mould in a number of rooms. This includes one son’s bedroom and inside cupboards and behind furniture.

The answer was (I suspected) to raise the temperature of the offending walls above the dew point or to stop the kids breathing out all that damp air. I suspected this would take a lot of energy so applied insulated plaster board to most of the offending walls (kid’s bedroom, inside cupboards and concrete bay window. This vastly reduced the problem. It was also reasonably cheap and easy to do and has caused no problems over 20+ years. I am not sure if this is practical on your walls with their lime render.
 
The thing the finally fixed the problem for us was installing external insulation but again not sure if this would be possible on your build.

[Martin Wadsworth]

Hello Clivejo,
This is Martin, from DiscreteHeat, manufacturers of the ThermaSkirt system.
I have noted your question and concerns and the replies of several knowledgable parties. If the problem is rising damp, then you will need to seek the source, which may, as some have commented, be as simple as checking outside that the ground levels have been raised, or debris or landscaping is breaching the damp proof course.
If it is penetrative damp, then it may be a breach in the cavity, or a blocked gutter or drain that is diverting water into the property rather than out.
It may also be condensate damp, which is caused by poor thermal insulation, and poor breathability of the materials. This is generally a problem of houses in the 50's~70's when concrete construction became more popular, but much had been forgotton from previous generations about letting a building breathe (air-tight causes its own problems). This type of damp is often in the corners and at low level.
ThermaSkirt is undergoing trial installations in several local authority housing developments that suffer from this type of damp. Results so far are good. We have lots of installation in (of all places) former East Germany, where a lot of 60's concrete constructed dwellings suffer from this. One earlier solution was to run exposed coppers pipes around the room at skirting level to provide a direct effect to the damp. ThermaSkirt is a modern version of this idea, and so is working well where it has been installed.

As has been discussed it is better to determine what type and the source of the damp, but our product can help in certain circumstances

To deal with your other concerns: Noise - not when fitted correctly as we use non metallic parts for covers and corners to eliminate expansion noise. Leaks - Only if the insatller is careless, as we use Vition O rings, the type found in petrol pumps and turbo charger so we offer a 10 year warranty on the seals. Bad walls - we have over 8,00 installations, 90% of which are retro fits, so we deal with bumpy walls all the time. The product has been continously developed and we have even done listed buildings. DIY Support - not on my watch. We do training days on site, and have videos and support materials, and a 24/7 email helpline aswell as trained office staff Mon - Fri 8am -5pm. That said, we also have 35 registered installers who can ride to the rescue if you get stuck. Bear in mind that being above ground, unlike underfloor heating, what ever mistakes you might make , its all fixable.

Hope that anwsers your concerns.
Regards

Martin Wadsworth
DiscreteHeat.Co.Uk

s

[clivejo]

Hi Martin, thanks for your reply!! I didn't expect the manager of a company to be so involved!

I must say in my head, this is the best solution, killing two birds with the one stone (both heating and providing an airflow)  I think Ill have a mull over the suggestions here before I make a decision. 

By the way, I'm curious how you get large sections of Thermaskirt (up to 6m) shipped out without damage?  I'm based in Northern Ireland and I got a quote from your website, but there was no indication of packaging and delivery, in my experience when a company does this its going to be expensive    Is there any way you could give me an ball park figure as this would affect my decision too.

Many thanks,
Clive

[solar_cambridge]

To keep things commercially balanced, I've fitted climaboard which is slightly different to the thermaskirt.  To cut out the marketing fluff, climaboard is essentially standard 15mm copper tube which has finned aluminium pressed onto it. This increases output considerably - compare flat radiators to radiators with fins on!  You clip a front face onto it for cosmetic purposes but essentially its a finned radiator at ground level.

When I did a few jobs with it I soldered elbows directly onto the pipe as I'm not a believer in pushfit on heating systems regardless of promises from manufacturers.

Wasn't thermaskirt on Dragons Den a couple of years ago?