Thanks. Can I ask why you hired a hammer? Was it that you could fit a wider chisel. I only ask because I always thought of these as being high powered machines for demolition, so I always associated them with removing the whole wall, rather than just the plaster! Was it heavy? I was hoping to get away with using an sds drill.
I also note AG's remarks in another reply about making sure I don't knock too much wall off with the plaster. If I said half brick wall in the OP I may have given the wrong impression. The wall is made of one breeze block, not one brick. I believed that a wall of one course is called half brick; if anyone was worried my wall was only 11cm thick then I apologise for misleading people; I should have said half block, not half brick, sorry.
That could be true: the same design is used on the other side of the road ;)
It is tiled cladding. The tiles are not brilliant; they have weathered over the years. The best way I can describe them is "sandy". It's as if the surface has eroded over time.
I didn't want to risk finding out and have to pay a fortune to get the old dilapidated look back ;) I figured there might be some officious jobs worth at the council who would complain!
Thanks. This seems to be what many others have said. I guess it is a "how long is a piece of string" question though, because at what depth of plaster do you decide it has got to go?
It has been discussed here before. ISTR TNP taking a view that
75mmx50mm horizontal battens could be screwed to the wall with 75mm PIR slabs (Kingspan, Celotex etc.) trapped between them. Counter batten at
400mm spacing with 25mmx38mm and attach the feather edge with 65mmx3.2mm galvanised nails.
My barns are all framed with timber studwork so I have been able to use
120mm long adjustable screws to secure vertical battens directly on top of the insulation. The benefit of the adjustable screws is that they
*grip* the batten and can be used to level out any hollows in the wall.
On conventional brick or render you would have to use wall plugs which might require too large a hole through the batten for the back of the screw to grip properly. I guess if your wall is flat, this may not be an issue and cheaper screws could be used.
There are several points to note about feather edge (Harry has views)...
They are cut with a large bandsaw from rectangular planks. The original *outers* may have a better finish than that produced by the diagonal sawing. I prefer to lay mine rough side out because the bottom edge creates a better drip. Don't mix because the different finishes will be visible.
If you intend to apply a woodstain finish, do it before you nail up the boards. They will shrink on drying and expose an untreated strip. I use Sadolin (expensive £10/l) and a 4" roller. A light second coat to cover blemishes, board ends and nail heads doesn't take long. I actually treat both sides of my boards to minimise warp age caused by sealing one side.
Stagger the board ends.
The lowest board needs to be packed out at the thick edge by at least the thickness of the thin edge.
There will be a 25mm vertical gap between the boards and the insulation. This is a good thing for ventilation but bad for ingress of mice and bats.
There is no *warm moist air* in my barns so vapour barriers have been ignored apart from taping the insulation joints. A house is a different kettle of fish and I will leave others to comment.
Window/door openings are usually finished with vertical boards. Your sills will be too short. I fit hardwood sills with a length of lead tucked into a groove underneath, tacked horizontally and then bent down over the top board. You can cut fancy scalloped edges if you want to impress the Pikeys.
Corners are tricky! Where battens are fitted directly to brickwork a
50mm square upright can be secured to the battens and project slightly out beyond the boards giving a neat finish. With a corner covered in
75mm of insulation, there is nothing to fix to other than the board ends. I have made up a tabbed, rebated corner which is beyond my ability to describe or draw in ASCII art:-) but starts from 75mm square.
Many thanks for that - along the lines I was thinking. I was considering 100mm or 150mm of EPS glued and mushroomed to wall (simply because it's available locally, cheaply) with vertical battens affixed by through fixings to wall. On vertical battens I'd thought of using 12mm WBP, rebated for a drip ledge where sheets meet and then the whole lot either Sandtexted or similar. An alternative would be box-section cladding, as this is easily available as seconds an should last for years. If I laid hands on the insulated cladding, even better, iwt. That could then be built up to necessary thickness of foam insulation and put on as a one-piece clad. Windows, doors and corners will present their own challenges, as you say.
The construction is brick/block with 65 mm cavity up to the top of the downstairs window/front door, then a lintel, which in the case of my 76 semi looks like an RSJ and is infilled each side with brick (so maximizing the heat loss :-( ), then a row of bricks laid horizontally bridging the cavity, then 9 inch blocks, probably hollow ones up the bedrooms then a 4*2 wallplate carrying the trusses. The problem is the row of bricks under the blocks is just below ceiling level downstairs so you have a massive thermal bridge here running the whole width of the house. You meed to consider doing the same exercise downstairs too (as I have), and don't forget the outside wall in the void between the GF ceilng and floor - another source of airleakage in 70's houses.
I would post some photos if I could think of a way to do it.
No, this is standard construction from the 60's right through to the
80's when building regs made housebuilers continue the cavity up behind the cladding. You can tell just be looking at the external line of the cladding compared to the brick outer skin beneath it and the brick column at the corner of the house.
Here in Pulborough, the 73 to 76 built houses had timber cladding to the front upper section (replaced by upvc over the years), the 78 built houses used solid 9inch thermal blocks which were tile-hung. It makes no difference whether the front of the house faces North. This was standard construction in the 60's and 70's.
Annoyingly, when these houses are being sold, purchasers pay more attention to the designer bog, kitchen taps and plastic windows than they do to the make of boiler and the absence of good insulation.
I have even dug out the GF screed and screwed 75*50 battens to the slab, overlaid with another dpc, infilled the 250mm gap with 70mm quinntherm and a nice hardwood floor. When I come to sell up the buyers will be clueless as to why I did it.
Remove upvc cladding and battens. Seal all gaps with mortar and fix stainless steel studs that project by
150mm. Space these about 600 mm apart in horizontal and vertical rows. Make small holes in the 100 mm PIR sheets to line up with the studs. squirt soudal 'fix all' around the perimeter of the PIR sheets and the base of the studs. Push PIR sheeting onto the studs and fix with temporary battens onto the studs (because the 'fix all' is foaming PU adhesive and wants to expand). Remove temporary battens and re-affix to class O sheeting like fermacell or similar. make holes in the class O sheeting and push onto the studs, with the vertical battens facing out. Bolt onto the studs to keep in place; cut excess studding with an angle grinder or similar. Seal the nuts and joints with Intumescent sealant. refit cladding onto the vertical battens. provided you have a vertical batten at each end, the end gap can be covered with upvc corner trim, or use the stuff intended to overlaid onto fascia boards, vertically and cut to the correct depth so that the 90 degree angle bit that would cover the bottom of the fascia board, wraps around the ship lap. Seal the gap above the top of the downstairs window and the first row of cladding in whatever creative method comes to mind. The important thing is to overclad the insulation with some class O material to prevent the spread of fire. If you don't, and haven't taken photos, then the BCO might make you remove it.
If your house is tilehung then use horizontal battens (and more of them) and replace them. This time finishing the ends is tricky. Use your initiative is the best advice. Ditto dealing with the upstairs window reveals and cill, which will by now not project over the cladding.
Even better would be remove the soffits and extend the insulation up to the wallplate since this is a nasty thermal break in older houses. Don't restrict the ventilation though. make sure the gap in the eaves that is probably open with your semi-detached neighbour is sealed with class O sheeting and rockwool and photograph it to keep the BCO happy.
A good source of information is the Irish version of Part L, which can be found online. They seem to have a lot more readable charts and diagrams in their version, whereas the UK attempt is at best impossible to understand.
By the sounds of it, it is very similar to Andrew's house. The first floor has a wall made of breeze block; I know there are different types of breeze block but I don't know how to tell the difference, so I can't say which. On the outside there is cladding made of tiles.
The rest of the house has a breeze block inside wall and a red brick outside wall with insulated cavity.
As other replies have said, rendering over insulation might be the best option for me but I would have to look into what would happen around the windows, as their sills might become recessed inside the insulation.
When my wife was exploring the practicalities of cavity insulation for her flat, I was able to view the drawings (microfiche) held by the BC office. This was for a block of flats built in the '60's!
I've been giving this some thought and decided that, since the interior fixings aren't at an irremovable stage, I may as well just go for interior dry-walling and insulation. This leaves a massive internal wall 'twixt house and workshop, which is ~350mm thick and two storeys high mass concrete. This wall can be insulated on the workshop side, thus giving me a fair bit of thermal mass to stabilise temps. I now have no need of scaffolding, or worries about weathertightness.
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