Boiler probs

Certainly people will expect to buy a fixer-upper at a lower price, but the renovation budget is going to go on structural issues, wiring, a heating system if there wasn't one, new windows if the old ones are beyond economic repair (not for insulation reasons), the bathroom, the kitchen and decorating, and then maybe the garden.

Loft insulation may be done since it's easy and cheap, although not the major loss of heat. Cavity insulation? probably not, yet that's likely to be the largest heat loss.

I don't see lower energy costs as a major motivator at this point.

.andy

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I said that I sold a property easily vs. one with DG etc. that was not in as good a position and did not have as nice a kitchen. I said nothing about buying.

My comment was as anecdotal as yours.

.andy

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This is not a do upper.

All the structure is fine. No dry rot, woindow fit amnd are wet painted. It has running hot water, just put coal on the fire and you have hot water. It has a sound strucuture and woodwork, doors, etc, bathroom kitchen with a sink and built-in cupboards.

You said it! A house like that is not up people's expectations of comfort and running costs.

You what???? Do your calcs in a house with 300mm of loft insulation and with none whatsoever. Then there is the intangible comfort conditions. Well insulated house have less cold stops and are much more comfortable to live in, in winter and summer.

It is a major factor.

No one buys a house because it has 300mm of cellulous insulation in the loft. The running costs are the point though. Show them the difference in bills and that it was due to insulation (not some miser keeping the heating off) and they will take notice. No one wants to pay an extra £500 a year at current rates, which could be even larger in the not too distant future.

She probably wrote that, at the wrong time of the month, or she just is thick.

More like facilities and appearance.

I was comparing the heat loss through walls with the loss through the roof in a typical house.

For a cavity wall with air gap only, the U value is in the 1.5 W/m^2.K area.

A pitched roof with no insulation has a U value in the 1.5 to 1.8 area.

Since the wall area is much larger than the roof area, the heat loss through the walls are also similarly greater.

It's interesting to add 100-200mm of insulation to the roof because the U value can be reduced to 0.35 to 0.15.

It is more interesting to insulate the walls.

It might be for you and maybe for me and one or two others but not a large seller of houses......

.andy

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I would view that very suspiciously because it makes little improvement over 200mm in the total context of the house energy requirement. More to the point, somebody that does that to a house that wasn't designed for it has probably blocked off all the ventilation as well and created the conditions for timber decay.

It would ring the same alarm bells for me that spray on rafter insulation would.

.andy

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No. the e.g. I gave was a 1930s spec', maybe with a recent rewire with white sockets. Everything totally liveable and in excellent decorative order with well cared for gardens. So the appearance would be excellent all around inside and out with excellent kerb appeal.

Lay in bed on a freezing night with no insulation in the loft. It gets cold super quickly, hence why they had hot water bottles. And most people know that.

Nonsense. Cellulous insulation make the bedroom to loft air tight. Cellulous insulation also is the equivalent of mineral wool that is 25% thicker.

More nonsense. A cold roof has eves ventilation. There should be no air transfer from bedrooms to loft. None at all.

Totally different products. Cellulous insulation is heavily used in eco houses.

You didn;t say that at the outset and are just changing the rules as you go along. This makes the discussion rather pointless.

It doesn't alter the fact that most of the heatloss is demonstrably through the walls.

.andy

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That was not my point. It was of situations that I have seen where people have crammed the roof space with insulation and effectively stopped the air flow from the eaves.

It's the same mentality that seals the rest of the house hermetically and then wonders why they are getting condensation.

I wasn't referring to the product but the mentality of its use

.andy

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In message , IMM writes

Unfortunately, the chances are that buyers wouldn't believe it, and would perceive the value that you do.

How much is £500 per year worth anyway?

In message , IMM writes

But adding just insulation, condensing boiler, double glazing, would not have the same impact as adding ordinary C/H, new bathroom, new kitchen, nice decorating and saving the original style windows.

House for house, the condensing boiler, insulation and windows would probably not even recover their cost.

Round these parts there are many flats in low rise blocks, these have management service charges which can run at anything up to 2000 year or be as low as a few hundred. [1]

So it's necessary to make some adjustment to the purchase price on account of the _mandatory_ running costs. I use 15:1. So I would reckon on £500 a year being worth 7.5k on/off the price.

In message , Ed Sirett writes

I'm not convinced that this is achievable for offering merely the chance of a £500 per year saving, (in fact, I am certain that it is not achievable, in general).

I do this for a living and, in fact, I can just see the buyers laughing at me, when I tell them that the reason that one of 2 apparently identical houses is £7,500 more than the other, is because they can save £500 per year on bills.

I'm not changing the rules at all. I clearly said an excellent house, but in 1930s spec 100%. That does not mean ramshackle, as you thought.

It doesn't alter the fact that comfort conditions the bedroom rise dramatically when you make the ceilings air tight and heavily insulate the loft. So much so that in most houses with double glazed low "e" glass or triple glazing no heating is required on the upper floors.

There is more surface area of walls in "most" house. In bungalows their is more ceiling area in most, so putting in 300mm of cellulous insulation is well worth it, making it air tight and dramatically reducing hear loss.

That is not the point at all. It was: one house with poor comfort conditions and one with none at all.

You are looking at a cowboy job as regarding this as the norm.

You have the mentality that all insulation fitters are cowboys.

With bills to prove it and a surveyors report that indicates high insulation levels that confirm that, they will have super low bills, people will believe it. Luckily eco houses tend to look differently than the standard developer house. Just the individual looks alone attract buyers. The tag "eco" also attracts buyers too. It is not the 1970s any more. Buyers in general are a lot more discerning as many of the property TV shows indicate.

er..err...£500?