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Home warming thread (Read 8703 times)

wasbeen

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#50 Re: Home warming thread
November 09, 2022, 10:45:01 am
Conventional wisdom is that old houses were designed to breath. I think they were designed to be badly insulated and draughty. People impart, wisdom on the house builders of yore. But throughout history they have always had the capacity to build shit houses it is just that the bad ones fell down or were demolished, we are left with the best of the rest. It seems remarkable that they sent a man to the moon in the 60's but they were still building houses with no insulation for decades after. There are definitely issues "sealing" old houses particularly around lime mortar and rising damp which needs to be carefully managed. However I despise the referential treatment old houses get and theoverly protective listed building regulations. *Silly rant over*

spidermonkey09

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#51 Re: Home warming thread
November 09, 2022, 10:47:29 am
Think this is partly fair, but anyone who knows someone who's bought a new build recently will also know that buying a new one has its issues as well!

ali k

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#52 Re: Home warming thread
November 09, 2022, 11:18:37 am
It seems remarkable that they sent a man to the moon in the 60's but they were still building houses with no insulation for decades after.
And are still building houses to piss poor standards 60 years later. Not only in terms of quality but emissions too. That’s what you get when Persimmon et al are allowed to basically write their own building regs to maximise profit.

wasbeen

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#53 Re: Home warming thread
November 09, 2022, 11:37:40 am
Yes, you have the absurd situation where planning would rather see old houses fall into ruin then be restored to anything other than their particular (and vastly expensive) Hobbiton vision of its history.  On the other hand you have shit mass housing being thrown up for peanuts and sold for pine nuts  that may not even last the length of the mortgage.

Fultonius

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#54 Re: Home warming thread
November 09, 2022, 12:33:05 pm
Yes, you have the absurd situation where planning would rather see old houses fall into ruin then be restored to anything other than their particular (and vastly expensive) Hobbiton vision of its history.  On the other hand you have shit mass housing being thrown up for peanuts and sold for pine nuts  that may not even last the length of the mortgage.

Or new build city apartments that are only designed with a 25 year design life an no way to inspect the joints, resulting in zero value home reports 20 years later.....


SamT

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#55 Re: Home warming thread
November 10, 2022, 09:39:02 am

Point of order.  New houses actually have rather good levels of insulation these days.  The 2013 Part L building regs were fairly onerous and tried to force a move away from the industry standard 100mm cavity, to a 150mm cavity, (but failed as there are ways around it). 

The new 2022 regs that came into force in June (after multiple delays , was meant to be 2016 but due to Brexit/Covid etc have only just made it into law) are far more strict and less flexible. Levels of insulation, insulation continuity, air tightness etc are really high. Furthermore, gas boilers are practically impossible to specify, and heat pumps are just about the only form of heating that can get through the regs without recourse to a lot of Solar PV panels to compensate.

So actually, new builds these days are pretty good I'd say.   

Mill/office conversions to flats.. less so!!

wasbeen

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#56 Re: Home warming thread
November 10, 2022, 09:51:00 am
100% agree regarding current insulation standards. My dull moaning was aimed at the general build quality and architectural merit of "affordable housing".

SA Chris

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#57 Re: Home warming thread
November 10, 2022, 10:21:32 am
Indeed. The new developments all around us are like cardboard cutouts. The planned new town is a strange place in it's current condition.

https://chapeltonnewtown.co.uk/vision/masterplan/

Will dwarf Newtonhill (to the right of the dual carriageway) if it ever reaches completion

gme

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#58 Re: Home warming thread
November 10, 2022, 12:13:14 pm
I have just submitted a planning application for an extension and refurbishment of my house and a major part of the cost plan is for the upgrading of the insulation and heating system.Its a 1960s flat roofed rendered property with a full electric underfloor heating system which i guess at the time was very high spec but now is the most inefficient system you could have. During the winter months the heating bill was in excess of £750 a MONTH and that's at last years rates.

We are converting the house to a heat pump system powered by PVs which means digging up all of the floors and replacing the electric system to a liquid one and improve the insulation in the floors which in total is going to cost over 60k. We will be pretty much self sufficient in heating and power for this investment however.

The biggest surprise i had during the development was the levels of insulation needed to get a heat pump to work efficiently. The roof has been redone recently and we have 200mm of Kingspan on top of the shit that was already there so pretty good, and the windows are all high spec double glazing, but i had thought that all we would need to do to the walls would be fill the 90mm cavities. How wrong i was, we are having to fully clad the whole external of house with 200mm of insulation and fill the cavity. We are using a rainscreen system to do this which isnt cheap but even a render system adds another 20k to the project so 80k all in.

This level of insulation is partly due to the extension having a lot of glass as planning now requires this to be compensated for in the rest of the house, and also we are trying to get things as "passive" as possible but it blew me away just how much insulation is needed and how much it costs.

I am fully on board with changing the regs for new builds but really dont know how we will ever upgrade existing stcok to levels that are really required.



ali k

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#59 Re: Home warming thread
November 10, 2022, 01:19:01 pm
So actually, new builds these days are pretty good I'd say.
Only if you ignore the massive performance gap that still exists  :worms:

SamT

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#60 Re: Home warming thread
November 10, 2022, 01:28:47 pm
 :agree:

That lies firmly at the door of Building Control, who are an omnishambles in my experience. 

Though, the new building regs, (in theory) require photos of every insulation junction to be taken at all stages of the build, for every plot, to be given to the SAP assessor and Building Control Officer.  This in an attempt to close that performance gap.  Whether or not it is workable in reality, is another question.

ali k

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#61 Re: Home warming thread
November 10, 2022, 01:52:01 pm
photos of every insulation junction to be taken at all stages of the build, for every plot, to be given to the SAP assessor and Building Control Officer…Whether or not it is workable in reality, is another question.
:lol: Anyone who’s spent time on a large housing development in recent years knows how likely that is to happen  :lol:

Cue site managers creating folders of stock images to submit and/or do swapsies with colleagues. It’ll be a tick-box exercise at best unfortunately.

gme

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#62 Re: Home warming thread
November 10, 2022, 02:01:29 pm
photos of every insulation junction to be taken at all stages of the build, for every plot, to be given to the SAP assessor and Building Control Officer…Whether or not it is workable in reality, is another question.
:lol: Anyone who’s spent time on a large housing development in recent years knows how likely that is to happen  :lol:

Cue site managers creating folders of stock images to submit and/or do swapsies with colleagues. It’ll be a tick-box exercise at best unfortunately.

That would be pretty easy to stop though. GPS and date stamped photos

Paul B

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#63 Re: Home warming thread
November 10, 2022, 02:25:55 pm
Likewise it'd stop the first time someone put in a claim against them retrospectively.

Or new build city apartments that are only designed with a 25 year design life an no way to inspect the joints, resulting in zero value home reports 20 years later.....

This baffles me. How is any designer getting away with a) a design life of 25 years for a structure like you describe and b) not designing for maintenance/inspection (which is entirely foreseeable)?

ali k

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#64 Re: Home warming thread
November 10, 2022, 03:05:00 pm
Likewise it'd stop the first time someone put in a claim against them retrospectively.
Same as when it stopped the dodgy practices of volume housebuilders the first time people started noticing defects…

Paul B

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#65 Re: Home warming thread
November 10, 2022, 03:18:27 pm
Point taken to a degree; I think a lot of people just seem to accept it rather than challenge it.

My folks have a new David Wilson home (they've been in it about 18M) and I made it clear they should get a snagging engineer in but they refused (probably as it might've delayed them into living with me for a few weeks more) and there've been all kinds of issues. I remain unconvinced it's insulated properly as the upstairs is very poor at retaining heat and they're having damp issues in the back of all of the cupboards (although from what I gather they did plaster it when there was snow outside, without the building being watertight).

ali k

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#66 Re: Home warming thread
November 10, 2022, 06:41:06 pm
Sorry to hear that Paul. I really do pity the people who’ve bought some of these houses. What you describe isn’t unusual and will be the tip of the iceberg. I’ve heard anecdotally that the volume housebuilders have taken the view that it’s more profitable for them to throw up shit quality houses and then cough up on remedials if and when people complain rather than build properly in the first place.

webbo

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#67 Re: Home warming thread
November 10, 2022, 07:18:23 pm
When I lived in North Yorkshire some of big builders used to local tradesmen to tile floors and the like. After they done one or two houses they usually told them to stuff their job because they didn’t want to be associated with such crap workmanship that they had seen in the rest of the building.

Paul B

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#68 Re: Home warming thread
November 10, 2022, 08:28:59 pm
Sorry to hear that Paul.

Thanks but it was their choice, after all there were plenty of period properties available at a similar price (albeit with different comprises). Conversely my in-laws bought a new build just around the corner which was built by a small local firm who do 10 or so properties at a time and it's on another level. My FiL was a building services engineer his whole life and so the spec got tweaked quite a lot. Anyhow, back on topic...

Fultonius

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#69 Re: Home warming thread
November 11, 2022, 12:30:00 am
Sorry to hear that Paul. I really do pity the people who’ve bought some of these houses. What you describe isn’t unusual and will be the tip of the iceberg. I’ve heard anecdotally that the volume housebuilders have taken the view that it’s more profitable for them to throw up shit quality houses and then cough up on remedials if and when people complain rather than build properly in the first place.

Could there be a sadder indictment of this fucking country? With the fucking execs and shareholders of said companies probably gleefully exclaiming "oooh, it's aaawfully warm this November, lovely time to be in the Seychelles".

Cunts, the lot of them.

 

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#70 Re: Home warming thread
November 11, 2022, 09:44:53 am
I had 30 minute appointments with both SafeStyle and Anglian to get a quote for a new front door. Despite my saying I was motivated solely by thermal improvement neither had much to say on the subject other than claiming to be the warmest on the market but without knowing the U value of the door. One went away to find out and phoned yesterday to say their door had a U value of 0.4. This is not possible is it given there is a large glass panel, no option for triple glazing and the composite door is mainly wood?
So I’m back to my original question, anyone know of any thermally efficient exterior door manufactures?

ali k

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#71 Re: Home warming thread
November 11, 2022, 10:49:16 am
their door had a U value of 0.4. This is not possible is it given there is a large glass panel, no option for triple glazing and the composite door is mainly wood?
They definitely said 0.4? Not 1.4? Latter sounds more realistic. Former is almost certainly a lie (to be a passivhaus certified component they need to be below 0.85 so can't believe Safestyle would offer those as standard).

ben

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#72 Re: Home warming thread
November 11, 2022, 11:34:31 am
So I’m back to my original question, anyone know of any thermally efficient exterior door manufactures?
In our last house I fitted windows and doors from this company, which were excellent.  The door u value was ~0.95 as I recall.
https://www.greenbuildingstore.co.uk/high-performance-windows-and-doors/

SamT

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#73 Re: Home warming thread
November 11, 2022, 05:24:43 pm
Yeah - 0.4 is a flight of fancy and evidence that like many many window/door outfits, they simply haven't got a clue about it. Stack em high.. ship em cheap.

1.0 is the building regs target U-value  for a door (either solid or < 60% glazed).

Just off the top of my head, have a look at Rehau.. Top end swiss and probably cost the earth but often see them spec'd on the higher end jobs come across.

Worth considering the diminishing returns effect though.  You might be worth saving a bit of money on the door, to invest in draught proofing and insulation elsewhere.

I'd have thought a good composite door set, double glazed unit, with good draught seal wouldn't be too far wide of the mark. 
« Last Edit: November 11, 2022, 05:30:12 pm by SamT »

 

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