Our journey has been one step at a time

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Have you ever struggled to keep your home warm in winter, only to battle stuffy, overheated rooms in summer? For decades, our 1930s home HINDOVER did just that- costing us more in energy bills while making our living environment increasingly unhealthy.

The facts:

Heat was escaping through our roof, floor, windows and walls,
Everyday, we create a warm damp internal living environment.
Our mechanical extract systems was outdated

The result:

With poor insulation, our building fabric was cold
The air inside my home was damp and moisture saturated. With a lack of natural ventilation to my kitchen, shower rooms and clothes drying area.
We had the perfect conditions for condensation to form.

The solution:

To improve our internal living environment and prevent block mould forming and thriving.

Our home needed ‘work doing’, so we assessed:

In Autumn 2023 we, as self-builders, started to deep domestic retrofit HINDOVER, our home for 20years. We would follow the Fabric First Approach.

First on the list:

To tackle the root cause of this common problem in 1930’s homes first by vastly improving HINDOVER’s thermal performance and overall ventilation.

Our process was to first:

Empty the attic space and remove old poorly installed quilt insulation.
Treat, as a priority, woodworm in roof timbers.

At first floor, our 1930’s detached house has sloping ceilings (SKEILINGS). Viewed from the attic, no insulation was visible, between the rafters to our sloping ceilings below.

This skeiling fabric had no thermal property (u-value). It could not prevent HEAT LOSS. The fabric elements were cold in the winter and hot it the summer. This is why our heat escaped in winter while in summer, solar heat gain overheated us.

Took the first step:

Our aim was to:

Deep Retrofit of our pitched loose rafter roof by airtighting and insulating the fabric
Our and first floor skeilings are, AND continuous with our thermally upgraded our, external cavity walls construction… attic space

We are NOT considering alternative heating systems (ASHP) or renewable energy sources (solar PV, ASHP) yet. We will, of course, be installing a whole house mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR) system.