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Evening All
We live in a 3 bed semi where the upstairs bedrooms are dormers. I'd say approx. 2/3rds of the ceiling area of all the rooms is under a flat roof with 1/3rd under the pitched roof. The 2 back bedrooms get ludicrously hot in the summer (south facing with sun beating down on the flat element of the roof) and pretty damn cold in the winter to the point where the temp will drop from ~21C to ~16C in my daughter's room in a matter of hours on a cold night (leading us to having the heating on manual more than I think we should if it was better insulated). House was built in 1963 and I'm guessing whatever insulation is in the roof is not very effective/non-existent. I'm assuming it's plasterboard, wooden joists, board then felt on top with either nothing or just air in between..
Next door (not the adjoining property) have had their flat roofs over-sulated (I think that's what it's called) where a new roof has been built on top of the old one leaving a step to next doors roof. This is what I want done to our house and it appears it may be eligible under the "primary" element of the grant for "improve flat roof insulation".
In addition to the poorly insulated roof, we also have these tile clad walls where the dormer sticks out (basically what isn't window is clad in tiles) - I would also bet a chunk of cash a shit ton of heat is escaping through this route..
Does anyone have any experience of insulating these two specific places and/or claiming some of the cost through Green Homes Funding?
Thanks
Nick
My house is built in exactly the same way and we suffer the same problems. Especially now the wife is working from home full time the heating is on most days. I haven’t looked into the green homes thing but will watch to see what others are saying. I could almost push rock wall type insulation in from the loft space but there is no guarantee it will end up in the right place and is likely to cause problems having no space
I have started looking into spray foam insulation but am yet to find anyone to do it
Grant or not, is there not some internal insualtion that can be done in the short term I know
they are stupidly cold houses as I lived in one for about 10 years heated only by a gas fire in lounge. massive amount of external wall compared to house volume plus uninsulated concrete floors. Get dressed quick use 2 duvets happy ?days
@marksnook Interesting that you’re experiencing the same, I guess technology and building regs have moved on a lot in 60 years! I’ve been WFH for nearly a year now as well so I’m interested in smart heating controls too, specifically WiFi TRVs so I can just heat my office and nothing else (although this is only “secondary” on the checker tool.. whatever that means).
@jag61 I’d never thought about it in those terms before but yes the external wall:internal volume ratio is not great is it?! Our daughter is only 1 and I’m hyper sensitive about her room temp and constantly checking the monitor thru the night.. No wonder I’m tired all the time..
When we looked at green homes grant, there were so many catches it just wasn't worth it
Almost as if it had been designed to be impossible to use
Infact
Thank you for sharing @kimbers
That article just goes on and on with tales of woe! Shocking really but not sure why I expected any different.
I’ve had real problems in the past getting local roofers to come out to even quote.. if I reduce the pool of tradesman due to them needing to be registered I’ve got nee chance!
Stick an electric oil rad in her room to save heating the rest of the house overnight. My daughter's room is uninsulated single glazed no rad and this keeps.it toasty. Crap late 50s early 60s bungalow.
. if I reduce the pool of tradesman due to them needing to be registered I’ve got nee chance!
I don't know about the specifics of this schemes but I know on others the adminstrative overhead was so big that it wasn't worth it for small firms, so only the bigger companies with more overheads and hence more expensive were the ones that get involved.
The hard part is that just fillings a void with insulation isn’t necessarily the answer as it can cause damp problems. I don’t know much but have spoke to a couple of people on site and a foam insulation seems to be the best solution. However it’s not cheap and there aren’t a massive amount of companies doing it. The over roofing things is interesting though, hadn’t thought of that. Complicated though as it’s a semi detached house
Just a bit of re-assurance for an anxious father. Stop getting up to check your little one. She's fine, if she's cold you'll know very quickly, they're quite good at telling you. I can't recommend enough to take whatever it is measuring the temperature away.
You're describing pretty much every single pitch extension in the UK, they're all like this, fix it if you can but don't worry yourself into not sleeping. Both our kids spent their early years in our extension and the heating has never been on at night. Mid teens is a perfect sleeping temp.
^ All that aside, I'd love to insulate mine to stop the six year old waking us up to tell us it's raining!
Thank you for the responses all. The insulation and parenting points are all really useful and appreciated.
The lady next door (not adjoining) had her roof over-sulated and the guy next door (who works for building control at the council!) was not happy about it.. there is a good 6 inch step (perhaps more) from her flat roof dormer down to his. It would look better if both sides were done at once but it's not a big deal IMO.
I'm really conscious of our energy usage and trying to insulate as best possible. I hadn't heard about the foam before so I'll do a bit of research there, sounds interesting.
Cheers
Update
I’ve been dipping in and out of the ‘IB protester shoved with car’ thread which prompted me to update this thread as we’ve now had the work completed on the dormer roofs.
All of the dormer flat roofs on the 1st floor have been over framed, solid 100mm insulation added, boarded and a rubber final membrane directly on top of the existing flat roof. The roofer confirmed there was literally zero insulation in the existing roof - just felt, board, air then plasterboard. Shocking really.
The difference this has made is noticeable. In direct sunlight the rear south facing bedrooms stayed nice and cool on the warmer days, and on the few occasions that the heating kicked in all 3 bedrooms were bouncing!
In summary - very effective but not cheap. It really highlights the scale of the task of updating all of the housing stock in the UK. This is just 1 part of a massive jigsaw of insulating our house and it cost several thousand pounds (after the above info/research into the green homes scheme thing we didn’t even bother..)
Next on the list is insulating behind the tiles around the windows on the dormers and then the whole pitched roof which is looking worse for wear.. but that’s a LOT of cash on insulation and updating the property.. and this is just 1 house. I value getting the place up to spec and minimising the amount of gas we burn as a family but think I’m probably in a minority spending money on stuff like this above holidays and what not. As above, it really highlights the magnitude of what needs doing and the cost of it.
don’t know much but have spoke to a couple of people on site and a foam insulation seems to be the best solution
The foam traps damp which fits your roof beams, it's yet another insulation scandal playing out in slow time
Good update Nick
The green homes grant farce really annoyed me, it's exactly what the government should be doing, yet they made it impossible to use and then axed it.
If weaning us off gas boilers & onto heat pumps is the plan, then before that can be done the houses have to be insulated to the max, but that first step hasn't been done, so the heat pump plan is DOA
It makes me very sceptical of anything the government does at COP