And then it snowed

Climbing the stairs felt a bit like winter mountaineering...

The latest in bedroom decor

Air tightness not quite there yet, but it looks pretty.

New roof in progress

A lot has happened since the last post. The old roof structure (complete with dubious looking worm-like holes) as completely gone.

As we need insulation above and between the rafters, we have dropped the height of the brick walls to compensate. The top of the new rafters sit below the bottom of the old rafters!

Floors insulated, roof next

We are following in the footsteps of many other home owners in this street by converting the loft to an attic room. Due to the very poor state of some elements of the roof we will take this opportunity to renew the whole thing - and this means that we can add a lot of insulation and make it as air tight as possible.

Had the tiles and roofing felt been in good condition, we would have done something less drastic, probably placing a high spec insulation between the existing rafters and getting to modern structural standards by adding extra joists and rafters as required.

In our quest to create an ultra-low energy home, we are also blocking up other holes - including the two chimneys and the many air bricks that seem to abound in every room. (There will be ventilation - but it will be controlled using windows and a ventilation system with heat recovery, not through gaps in the building fabric.)

Deck the hall with...

Lindab ducting, fa la la la la, la la la la
And the garage with
Lindab ducting, fa la la la la, la la la la

The grand plan was that Richard would install the ducting over the Christmas holidays, but as the new roof is not on yet, the ducting will have to wait. And Richard will have to console himself by eating, drinking and being merry during the holidays instead.

For something more technical on MVHR units and ducting.... read on

Christmas is coming....

Well, as far as I'm concerned, Christmas has arrived already!

We now have a lorry-load of very beautiful Ecopassiv windows, most of which are being stored in the lounge of our rented house due to lack of suitable storage space on site.

The lead time on making and shipping these high-tech windows was less than we had anticipated. Anyway, it's nice to know they are being kept warm, dry and clean until the builders are ready to install them.

Handy hint - if you do refurbish a house and rent somewhere to live while you are doing it, get somewhere big. The place that we are renting is twice the size of the house we are refurbishing - and the extra space has proved most useful.

The other handy hint - these triple glazed windows are heavy - 40kg per square metre. We had the good fortune to know someone with a handy warehouse and forklift for unloading the windows, and then used their lorry with tail lift to bring the windows to our rented house. Unloading these from a curtain-sider in our fairly narrow street would have been a nightmare.

1950's houses have cavity walls, right?

Some people have expressed doubts that our 1950's house would be solid wall as houses of this age were supposedly all of cavity wall construction.

Well, 2 layers of brick, but no cavity here...

Ground floor insulation progressing

Steadily, the insulation of the ground floor is progressing.

Conveniently, there was a nice flat layer of concrete about half a metre below the lounge and dining room floor joists. The kitchen floor, on the other hand, needed to be dug out to a depth that would allow for the 300mm slabs of insulation. (It's quite a step up to the back door right now)

Beneath these slabs are downstands of the same insulation around all the walls (as deep as the underlying concrete would allow). These downstands are to minimise the heat lost into the ground through the walls by insulating on both sides of the walls as far down as possible.

And finally, upstands secured and taped, and expanding foam trimmed ready to receive the concrete.