winter forecast anyone?

iler with 2000 litre heat store arriving next week. Hoping to cut wood cons= umption down from 30 tons to 12. And get paid for it|!! Renewable heat ince= ntive kicks in next year...)

r 800. Still, been very good for my pv panels, earned me =A31500 so far thi= s year...)

So you run a narrow-gauge third-world steam locomotive. 30 tons of wood is enough to get you from The Cape to Cairo with a modest load. I do hope your engine has a spark arrestor because setting fire to The Dark Continent could have political implications these days. As for your positive-vorticity panels, what do they do? Logically they should suck and swirl, like a Dyson.

Tudor Hughes, Warlingham, Surrey.

Certainly third world, very leaky drafty Queen Victoria building yards from the sea. Have managed to pour some insulation granules into the cavity wall, so should help.

om the sea. Have managed to pour some insulation granules into the cavity w= all, so should help.

They had cavity walls in Victorian times? Must discuss...

Yes.

Yes. Used to prevent penetrating damp rather than for their thermal isolation. I've owned a number of Victorian piles, all with cavity walls. The current place is Georgian and has solid brick walls up to a metre thick. There is a small Victorian extension which has cavity walls. The extension dates to 1863.

the sea. Have managed to pour some insulation granules into the cavity wall, so should help.

It was not unknown, no.

Especially in very wet places where the outer wall could get damp and not affect the interior.

It has been more or less STANDARD since the 50's.

I cant recall when it became COMPULSORY.

from the sea. Have managed to pour some insulation granules into the cavit= y wall, so should help.

I recently stumbled upon a collapsed brick and stone structure in Fife that I guess was Victorian, and had something like a 12" cavity. There were special bricks for tying the two leaves together.

Another story I heard many years ago was an old house near Newcastle that had a cavity wall that was filled with heather. Unfortunately it had also been built with hot air ducted in wooden ducts and dry rot got in. Rob

The council house in which I was born was built in 1936 and had cavity walls. Some Victorian houses in the same area were probably without cavities as I recall looking to see whether they had brickwork in English or Flemish bonding.

My current house was a council house, built about 1970, and doesn't have cavity walls - one foot of (fairly) solid concrete instead.

That..is appalling.

most houses in the 60's had cavity walls and indeed most post war stock is like that.

I've only found solid walls in pre-war and 19th century stock.

Could it perhaps be no-fines concrete?

Chris

I was a BCO in New Malden, SW London. Most of the 1930s houses (predominantly built by Wates) and earlier was solid wall. Cavity walls started to be used in the late 1930s. A colleague who came from Portsmouth was amazed at this as cavity walls had come into common use there much earlier. Contrary to what we were taught at school, cavity wall construction was originally introduced to stop damp penetration, not for insulation.

Wimpey no-fines construction?

I don't recall it being compulsory.

Well it is in terms of insulatin levels, which more or less means a cavity if you are using brick or block.

Accepted that a bale of straw or a 3 meter thick stone castle wall is probably as good.