help insulating my sandstone home?solid walls-suggestions needed please

[320touring]

The burd and I have been in this house for just over a year and the heating/insulation could do with some work.

I'm looking for any experiences/advice/suggestions you may have as to how to improve the heat retention in the house

House Description

Walls
Mid Terrace (brick wall in hall between us and 1 neighbour, sandstone wall in front room/kitchen between us and other neighbour)

Front/Rear walls solid Sandstone, approx 20-24" thick

All Walls lined with Plaster


Windows
House is fully Double Glazed

Floors
Front Room- solid wood Floor
Hall- Tiled
Bathroom- Tiled
Kitchen- Tiled

Downstairs has a "crawl space" of approx 3ft underneath it with access

Master Bedroom- Carpeted on floorboards
2nd Bedroom- Carpeted on floorboards
Upstairs has space under of approx 350mm to ceilings of downstairs

Loft
No access apparent-think it's been sealed over-unknown if insulated
2x storage cupboards in the eaves in master bedroom- potential access point

Current Heating system

18yr Old Combi Boiler (holds pressure ok)
timer system separate
NO remote/room Thermostat
Front room and Hall have "neo-classic" radiators (like old church Rads)
Bathroom/kitchen and both bedrooms have double panel Radiators with thermostats on each one


Current heating is set to run for 2hrs in the morning and 2hrs late afternoon.

house starts to get chilly approx 60-90mins after the heating switches off.

We also have big discrepancies in heat throughout the house- Warmest to coldest..
Small Bedroom
Kitchen
Living Room
Master Bedroom
Hall
Bathroom


over to you for suggestions/ideas/ingenious solutions

thanks

[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.

[euromodder]

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

Originally Posted by 320touring

The burd and I have been in this house for just over a year and the heating/insulation could do with some work.

How old is it / when was it last remodelled ?

Mid Terrace

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

Front/Rear walls solid Sandstone, approx 20-24" thick
All Walls lined with Plaster

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.

House is fully Double Glazed

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

Bathroom- Tiled

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.

Downstairs has a "crawl space" of approx 3ft underneath it with access

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

Upstairs has space under of approx 350mm to ceilings of downstairs

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.

Loft
No access apparent-think it's been sealed over-unknown if insulated

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.

18yr Old Combi Boiler (holds pressure ok)

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.

Front room and Hall have "neo-classic" radiators (like old church Rads)
Bathroom/kitchen and both bedrooms have double panel Radiators with thermostats on each one

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.

We also have big discrepancies in heat throughout the house- Warmest to coldest..
Small Bedroom
Kitchen
Living Room
Master Bedroom
Hall
Bathroom

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

[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

[euromodder]

Originally Posted by 320touring

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

Built circa 1895, last re modelled about 1994

You might want to look at better insulating windows + glass then.
Might well be worth the effort.
The latest window/door sills have no thermal bridges in them.

Getting it done while insulating the inside walls saves on work and remodelling-hassle ... at a high initial cost though.

the shower tray is built into the crawlspace!

Making it a massive heat-sink - quite literally.
I'd get that insulated even before you insulate the crawl space itself.
A box of styrofoam plates or the like around it will do a lot of good.

Floor and all walls are tiled- I think getting rid of them would be good from both an aesthetic and insulation point of view.

Getting rid of tiles and replacing them with say cork won't cost any space and insulate better / feel warmer.

Cork is really undervalued, but you can get some really nice finishes these days that don't even look like cork anymore.

It need not have the flattened bottle cork - look anymore

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

Bank robber style. Sounds rather dramatic.
Surely there must be some easier way to get in ?
There ought to be if the houses were built as separate houses back in the day ... if it was one big house divided in 3 later on, well, anything's possible then.

Cant have too much insulation upstairs

Exactly ...
Especially when you're not using the space.
Any heat going up there is wasted.

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 have thermostats on the rads though.

Give it a try over a more or less stable week or so and compare the amount of gas used / comfort.

Last year I've reduced the water temperature from over 60 C to around 45C, and burned less gas despite a longer harsher winter.

No timers here , no heat storage, just rads with thermostats, late-1980s set-up so it'd be about time to replace the heater even if it's just from an efficiency point of view.
But I don't own the place, so ...