Hot walls

[The Natural Philosopher]

However, they are contra to modern bulding regs for gas fires.

[bigcat]

Sorry for being rude as well.

The natural philospoher:

Yes, as are the majority of houses in this country. It is not a problem, beyond one of paperwork.

The build regs at the start of the 20th century made real changes to housebuilding, helping to ensure better standards were met, in most cases. But as with many such things, they took on a life and momentum of their own, and no-one has really stopped to question the illogical maths behind many of todays regs.

Today we are at the point where at one end of the scale some BRs are about safety and utilty, and at the other end, some are about trying to avoid that one in a million case of problems down the line, and achieving that it at a cost of 1000x times the cost of letting that one problem occur and paying to fix it if it does. This is one of the reasons our house prices are so high - only one of them.

Look at our Victorian housing. Most of it is fine, no significant problems, yet they fail to meet todays BRs in more or less every single area. It simply isnt a significant problem.

A single insulated flue may not conform to paperwork requirements, but in terms of functionality it is actually better. More energy efficient, lower run cost, heats the house faster and more evenly, less polluting.

If you decide to live with it, you may need to remove and use more suitable paint. (There are other options.) But to remove the gas fire and fit electric to me makes no sense at all. Electric is 3x as costly to run, will cost money to supply and fit, and you'll gain absolutely nothing as a result.

Similarly, replacing the flue will gain you all of nothing.

NT

[alison sanderson]

replying to The Natural Philosopher, alison sanderson wrote: hi further to this post jI have just had a new gas fire and pre cast flue fitted and the walls are hot above the fire, what sort of insulation does it have to have special kind and what plaster is the best to have as my normal plaster is already cracking ? o any advice welcome thanks

[newshound]

Sounds like the flue wasn't insulated. When you say hot, can you give us a temperature measurement?

[Andrew]

Bloody hell. why are you replying to a post made in *2005* ??.

Do yourself a favour and install a proper newsgroup reader on your PC and select UK.d-i-y as one of your preferred groups.

Class 2 flue blocks are never fitted to new properties now since 2004 when condensing boilers became mandatory. I doubt if they have been used for new builds since about 1980, and many were installed by utterly incompetent builders anyway (*) and have long since been condemned by BG.

(*) Poorly made mortar joints, mortar 'snots' chucked down inside cavity and even down inside the flue blocks.

[Sam Plusnet]

It's another spamming attempt to drive traffic to that silly website.

[alison sanderson]

replying to newshound, alison sanderson wrote: i cant but its so hot you have to draw your hand away initially , to the left and right is cold just the middle that gets hot, i have called the engineer that installed it back and will check it has been insulated , is there any special insulation or plaster i should use or will normal plaster be ok if its insulated? thank you for your help and advice

[John Rumm]

I doubt the users are party to the game - its just the way its configured to inject its URL into every post - its not something it lets you turn off.

[John Rumm]

It will probably crack a bit and then stop once any residual moisture is driven off. In some respects a hot flue is good for driving more heat into the house.

[harry]

Replying to more ten year old posts then!

[John Rumm]

No harry, I was replying to yesterdays post. Do try to keep up.

(I know you are not good at comprehending what you read, but aside from being appended to an old thread, this was a new question. Vis: "further to this post jI have just had a new gas fire and pre cast flue fitted"

[Dave W]

Strangely, poor Alison's posting does not appear on homeownershub, despite the link to it.

[Tim+]

It probably does, but another part of the f***ed up genius of homeownershub is that all threads are sorted by date of *first* post, not date of most recent message.

Consequently, when posters append their question to an ancient thread (that's been promoted by HOH), they can only find replies by searching back through the ancient threads.

Tim

[John Rumm]

Its on the second page of the thread.

[Dave W]

Thanks John. I didn't spot the page index at the top as most websites put it at the bottom. I see these usenet messages are all being copied to the website. Someone needs to devise a DoS attack on it!

[Andrew]

Perfectly normal. Nothing to worry about. The flue gases could be up to 250 centigrade above the flame and that heat has to go somewhere.

The heating effect of the hot flue block (being part of the inner leaf of the cavity wall), allows a smaller radiator to be specified in the upstairs room that the flue passes through.

downstairs, the flue blocks are generally hidden behind a false chimney breast.

Minor cracking of the plaster is inevitable unless the walls have been dry-lined over the flue blocks with a small air gap between plasterboard and wall. Few builders will have bothered to do this though.

[alan_m]

Its not just the advertising URL - it's also that the post being replied to is 11 years old.

[John Rumm]

That makes the OP unobservant rather than a spammer...