conflicting advice re. insulating solid walls

[Roger]

The message from "Mike" contains these words:

I had a google but couldn't find any reference to its use as wall insulation. One of my round tuits near the top of the pile is to dig up and re lay my solid ground floor but I think I will avoid the expanded clay route as I would probably have to dig out to below my shallow foundations. I can't afford to raise the floor level at all as headroom is aleady minimal.

I note you have gone the batten out route but I have small rooms and particularly in the kitchen, smallest bedroom and bathroom no space for more than the thinest of insulation. One of my earlier jobs (still not plastered out because of the insulation dilemma) was to increase the size of the bedroom at the expense of the bathroom so space is really tight in there now.

[Mike]

a good ideal if it is possible. Would help vent the roof better as well as the area behind the insulation.

Remember cold is bad but damp is always far far worse, hot or cold !!

[Mike]

You have to do it yourself if you're going that route. No plasterer is going to touch it with a bargepole as unfortunately it can go wrong and require redoing. Not often but enough to be a PITA !

[Mike]

Kingspan/Celotex or

appear to have cleared their back files but google has some cached. Start with

work from there. But you will have to search the google cache, not the web site itself.

Same here. Remember there is still a lot of sand and lime in the mix so use very little clay in the mix near the wall (or none even - just leave it as is) but a lot in the centre of the room. A couple of feet of this stuff is definitely noticeable.

Fully understand. Ours is a very long 16'8" wide farmhouse internally with

2' walls each side so we decided to sacrifice the 8" for insulation, 4" on each side - 35mm typical ventilated space, 50mm insulation and 12mm plasterboard+skim. The alternative was heating bills of over £5k per annum so it wasn't too hard to sacrifice the space. In your case I would superinsulate the loft and the floor, plus work on draughts and suchlike. Are you allowed to double glaze ? (but not with PVC please :-)

[Roger]

The message from "Mike" contains these words:

{ Apply expanded clay in lime plaster }

Thanks. I will try that tomorrow. I wasn't previously aware google had a cache.

2 feet would definitely get below what little foundations I have. ISTR that most heat through the floor leaves close to the walls so insulation is more important there. Someone in the past replaced most of my (presumably stone flagged) floor with poor quality concrete with a dubious dpm. I am inclined to just go the modern route for the replacement.

Double glazing is one of the few jobs I have got a builder in for so far. Double glazed with hardwood frames to replace the rotting single glazed softwood. Some of the window openings showed evidence of long departed stone mullions but I decided not to attempt to reinstate those, the windows are very small by modern standards already. I didn't enquire about the type of glass. :-)

As to loft, only in one small section do I have a loft, the remainder of the upstairs is open to the pitch of the roof. Luckily this place is not listed. Nothing worth listing in the first place I suspect, it is only a humble cottage attached to a larger field barn. My heating bills aren't too bad but I could do with something on the walls that makes a significant difference without eating space. I can't afford more than 2" on most of the external walls and in some places more than an inch would be an embarrassment.

[Mike]

Foundations are probably six inches so don't do anything near them. But all the ground is fairly cold. Anything helps.

Always a difficult choice. A concrete floor pushes the damp into the walls as these have no DPC. But if that is what you have now and the walls can cope then I'd pull the soil back two or three inches and lay plastic, Kingpan then wood as a new floor.

How good is the roof underside ? Kingspan pressed between the roof timbers and plastered over is effective and looks fairly original except the timbers appear not so deep.

Thick lined curtains the size of the wall. Expensive but can look superb. Also consider improving the outside. Adding a porch, lean-to or even a cloche can keep cold away from the outsides of the wall. Also make sure the exterior pointing is up to scratch and no wind is entering the rubble cavity in the middle. Some stone appears second only to metal in conducting heat but at least if it has to escape through the whole 2 feet you're making it more difficult for it to do so.

[N. Thornton]

Fwom:Roger ( [e-mail]) The message from [e-mail] (N. Thornton) contains these words:

plaster

rubble

I really dont know what insulation value it gives. Trapped air is trapped air, so I imagine it depends on what proportion of exp clay is in the mix.

It works in cases where other more usual insulants would create real problems, hence its use.

This would be a good place to ask for more details...

[Roger]

The message from "Mike" contains these words:

The spars ar lathe and plastered over. Only the purlins (debarked tree trunks) and the ridge pole are visible. I could tear down the l&p but it would be a long and messy job and in the centre tricky. My scaffording tower will reach but that sways alarmingly when working on it at anything that requires an effort.

Tapestries? My pension doesn't really run to things like that and I have some complications to take into account. Namely one side of the doorways into the kitchen and 2nd bedrooms are flush with the outside wall and the stairs exit straight from the living room (headroom a modest 5 feet) and again flush with the outside wall at the intermediate landing.

The South side of the house (where both doors are) is reasonably sheltered from the worst of the weather but the North side and West (gable end) aren't and with a restricted vehicle entry past the NW corner much of that area can't be extended although I do have a pipe dream about a stair turret further along to get the stairs out of the living room but the planners may have something to say about that as they are more than a little snooty about any development within their extended green belt. (It wasn't green belt when I moved here).

The outer skin of the house is reasonably intact unlike the barn where the wind blows right through in places.

[Roger]

The message from [e-mail] (N. Thornton) contains these words:

[Mike]

The person who was expert with this was called Chris Turner.

[Mike]

Plenty of classes on such things :-)

Don't want to alarm you then but do keep an eye out for movement in this area. Large loads transferred into the outer random stone wall like this can cause the wall to move, albeit very slowly. Un

Then point this out in the application and say you intended to do it all along, discretely mentioning that you think your human rights have been violated by this. Usually works. AFAIK no council has yet won a full blown human rights planning judgement.

If the roof does the same then get it fixed or in these gales you soon won't have a roof.

Good luck.

Mike

[Roger]

The message from "Mike" contains these words:

I am all thumbs when it comes to anything like that. :-)

I am not so alarmed now as I used to be. The end section of my house was once a separate one up/one down with its own staircase and before than just a single storey byre. Whoever broke through to form the downstairs doorway caused a partial collapse in the wall above leaving a huge bulge tenuously held together by a cement corset in one of the 2 leaves of the wall. The bulge was such that the through stones had pulled out by an alarming amount. One of the scariest things I have every done was to rebuild that area in sections. Never did get all the throughs completely back in place but the worst one is only a couple of inches out.

The upstairs breakthrough was much later and done by my predecessor. The plans he left me called for a horizontal lintel but he was inordinately proud of the rough roman arch he had constructed instead. Removing the arch is the only other job I have called a builder in on in recent years. The crack between the side of the stairs has now closed up slightly but the doorway into the second bedroom has cracks in the plaster above and sooner or later I will have to investigate that. The alterations flowing from the projected stair turret would need that particular lintel being raised almost to the purlin above but on the plus side would provide a buttress for that wall. Meanwhile I need to complete various other lesser jobs before I can even contemplate taking on what could easily take me a whole year to build given the speed I work.

The thought had occurred to me. No modern house would get away with even

6 feet over the stairs.

The roof has roofing felt under it but Yorkshire stone slates take some lifting, particularly the rougher ones that are well over an inch thick.

[Roger]

The message from "Mike" contains these words:

I have had one go after your previous advice but don't seem to have got the hang of the cache. All I got when I tried to go further was scripting errors, whatever they are.

[Mike]

That means you're going back to the period property site rather than staying in the google cache of the site. Have another go.

[Mike]

Sounds like good work.

We had something similar but in reverse. All the internal doorways were also the lintels and some moron in the past decided to block off one doorway upstairs. Obviously he removed the doorway not realising what it was supporting and caused a partial roof and upper wall collapse. Locals tell me he did survive this attempt at the Darwin awards and filled the hole in with breezeblocks. Of course these compressed over time from the two purlins just above the old doorway so my first job was to remove part of floors to get access to solid ground, install six props to support the purlins and re-install some proper lintels.

Supporting the purlin directly usually needs a big heacy lintel. At least a three man job to put it into place.

Hmm. A neighbour is deliberately neglecting a barn in the vain hope of getting planning permission to convert to a holiday cottage. A similar roof to yours is now definitely 'on the move' due to the weather.

[Roger]

The message from "Mike" contains these words:

snip

Ha. One of my predecessors took out a doorway between the living room and what I now use as my office and widened the opening. On one side he left one end of the original wooden lintel with no support. On the other leaf he removed the lintel completely (judging by the socket height was an issue). He made quite a good job of disguising the work with a cement skim made to look like an over plastered beam but it eventually developed a rather nasty crack.

snip

Both the house and barn roofs have both been 'turned' and are reasonably secure. The building society wouldn't allow me to do that myself. :-(