[320touring]

Originally Posted by Jyden

Rockwool outside wall insulations batts. Dont know the looks of the house, but best would be to insulete all wall from the outside to awoid problems with damp etc. 100 - 150 mm should ot it.

Cheers, but we'd be looking to do Internal insulation- We dont want to change the external appearance of the house

Originally Posted by euromodder

Main question : do you plan on staying there for a long while ?

How old is it / when was it last remodelled ?

We have a Mortgage, and we're well and truly settled- its pretty much ideal (bar the lack of garage!)

Built circa 1895, last re modelled about 1994 (after being flooded!- We now have a bund built to 8ft round the street now)

So you're locked in left and right ?
Good starting point - neighbours are good insulators ;-)


So you basically have 2 giant cold- or thermal bridges ...

Sandstone doesn't insulate well.
Depending on composition, it has 2 to 5 times the heat loss compared to brick.
The harder / heavier it is, the worst it is -lighter, softer sandstone traps lots of air.
The only saving grace is its thickness.
It gets worse when it gets wet - but just about everything does.

If you can / are allowed to , have it insulated from the outside.
It also changes the external appearance of the house.

You can do that on the inside, but it eats away at the useful space, and gets expensive quickly as you'd need to redo lots of the interior.

Yeah, the sandstone doesnt help at all.
Front sandstone wall has large windows, and rear sandstone wall has French Doors- so not only do we have Sandstone, we have coldpoints also

Insulating on the outside would not be possible- A large part of the appeal of the place is the look of it- I believe you can do internal insulation, and TBH would give us an excuse to get rid of all the magnolia, and get some colour underway

Good, but OTOH, say 1980s double glazing isn't what double glazing is today.
It's also the most expensive to replace.

If you ever remodel it, think about ditching the tiles for warmer materials.
Wood. Cork. Even plaster.

I've never understood tiles in bathrooms. They're ice cold.

The bathroom is weird- the house originally had an outside toilet- so the bathroom is shoehorned in under the stairs.. the shower tray is built into the crawlspace!

Floor and all walls are tiled- I think getting rid of them would be good from both an aesthetic and insulation point of view. Again, however its solid walls all round, but no space that we can afford to lose

re the double glazing- replacement would be good, but I think there's lower hanging fruit to be picked first (and the savings can bolster the coffers for new windows)

Get it insulated with 1' of insulation.
Still leaves 2' - plenty to crawl through.

Some companies are even filling the whole lot with PUR / PIR these days

You could insulate that, but you'll have heat losses from ground to first floor anyway. It's not really a loss as they help warm up the bedrooms.
Cork chips or paper could be blown in through a hole rather than ripping out the entire floor or ceiling.

I kind of envision splitting the house into two zones- retain heat downstairs during the day, and retain and improve heating upstairs at night

Heat losses through lofts are massive.
Check it out, get it insulated.
Even if it was insulated years ago, it may well be a good idea to add another layer of better insulation.

Yep- hearing you loud and clear re that- I will try to organise access- possibly via a neighbours, or by punching a hole through.

Cant have too much insulation upstairs

Running it at a lower temp is usually more efficient.

Rule of thumb used around here is that when it's about 20 years old, you'll benefit from replacing the heater - the new one pays itself in reduced heating cost.

Lower temp? would that not only work if we had a thermostat so it could come on/off rather than the current "on for 2hrs" setup?

You can get more efficient radiators these days.

Insulate all visible pipes.
Pipes are inefficient as radiators.

A reflective liner on the wall behind the radiator helps too.

serial set-up, rather than the current parallel distribution starting off a "common rail" at the heater ?

Replacing Rads and pipe insulation are pretty much the basics i'd be chasing. The front room/hall ones can stay as they help the look and feel of the place

Plus any left over pipe insulation=grill block!

Rad reflecters are worth investigation also!



Thanks everyone