The house I'm moving into needs air vents adding under the conservatory to ventilated the suspended flooring in the ground floor. Can anyone give me an estimate of cost please? It'll obviously need the con floor lifting and replacing. Thanks!
Well when I needed to add some under floor ventilation here is cost me about £3 / air brick and probably 10 mins work each.
Why obviously? Normally air brick style vents are fitted from the outside.
Typically you would remove a brick, then mortar in a vent in its place.
Depending on the outside wall finish you may be able to take out a whole brick with a brick removing chisel, or if rendered etc, just chop in the perimeter with an angle grinder, and then use a chisel bit in a SDS to knock out the waste.
When we had extra air vents added to the house wall the polystyrene ball insulation poured out when the brick was removed! The OP's conservatory wall might have the same issue.
Assuming the wall is double thickness separated by a cavity, getting to the inner brick to remove it isn't quite so easy (especially if the cavity keeps filling up with polystyrene balls!). And no doubt Sod's Law will be operating, so a central heating or water pipe will be just behind that inner brick, preventing it from being pushed in.
It may also need some work where the conservatory meets the original house to make sure there is an air flow across the whole conservatory floor and still across the whole house floor.
The amount of work required may also depend on the height of the conservatory's damp proof course above ground level and that of the conservatory floor. A stepped air brick may be required.
Is it just need for ventilation to just prevent condensation or also for dispersal of ground gases (Radon)?
You can get longer sleeved bricks for such constructions.
(Although you will need to cut in without losing the lose fill!)
I assume that the house has a suspended floor and the conservatory doesn't? If so, it is going to be a big job. it is going to require cutting trenches through the conservatory floor, making openings through the house wall, cutting out the conservatory wall to fit high to low level air-vents and ducts running through the cavity, fitting ducts in the trenches and then making good. Basically the arrangement that I used, except that I did it while building the conservatory in the first place.
Fair point, I may have misread the OP, and assumed it was the conservatory floor itself that was suspended. But yup, solid floor conservatory floor abutted to the house's suspended floor, blocking off airflow to air bricks etc would be more of a PITA!
I don?t think you misread. I don?t think we were given enough info!
Tim
Well it was a HoH post, so chances are the OP will not be able to find it again and let us know :-)
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