There haven’t been many blog posts recently since I’ve been hard at work on the house! Plus WordPress has been playing up. Something I’ve only partially managed to solve.
My big aim has been to fundamentally unequivocally reduce our gas usage. In November 2023 we replaced most of our double glazing but our gas usage stayed stubbornly high (this was partly due to a change in working patterns). However I would like to see a definite drop in consumption beyond that allowing for a reduction in the number of people that has taken place recently in the house and more working from home. The easiest time to do any additional insulation of course is when your doing something else.
In a previous post I said I’d taken the Parquet floor up in the dining room and donated it on freecycle. For those who don’t know a Parquet floor is a patterned floor – in our case made of four small wooden rectangles formed into squares. These were then grouped into further 4 by 4 groups (as far as the room’s size and shape allowed). Aesthetically I’ve never liked it. Recently we had the front hall boards varnished and polished. I thought the boards underneath in the dining room would look better and would lighten a fairly dark room hence getting rid of the floor above. We’ve had a third PV system put in. This required running cable under the dining room floor from the system to the main board. At the same we’re going have a cable laid for an electric cooker at some point in the near future taking the same route and a cable for a heat pump or other electric heating in the future. This is the excuse I needed since it necessitated taking up at least three bits of the floor. That and the room was in dire need of redecoration which we also planned to do. So I decided to insulate underneath using the same method I used in the hall. This involves hanging the insulation (in this case glass mineral wool) between the floor joists. I couldn’t do some where pipes and wires run but I’ve done 98% of it.
After this I did under another room which we were going to redecorate and then have the boards varnished and polished.
Another place I’ve insulated is round the windows using the same type of glass wool insulation. These are surrounded by wooden panels. By tapping them like in the lounge I reckoned by the hollow sound there would be a gap between the wood and the stone. In most cases I’ve been right so far although in some cases the old disused shutters are underneath.
Doing this then involves cutting bits of panel off then dropping or pushing bits of insulation into the gaps then sticking the panel back on. This effort has made a dramatic difference to the room temperature in one room in which I’m writing this. (I’ve monitored the temperature for a while). In another bedroom I managed to insulate the panels alongside the radiator and behind it. Taking the cover off and enlarging the gap at the top with a chisel allowed the packing of insulation into the gap behind the radiator which is on outside wall. There is a considerable space behind the radiator panel since the stone is not ‘dressed’ (regular).
So far so good and the cost is about £200ish for all the above. Note. I’ve been re-pointing the outside of the building with lime so the walls are breathable – meaning no vapour barrier and therefore no mold issue internally. Our usage of gas has dropped by about 1MW so far.
The photo below shows insulation in place.
