I spoke too soon

Just as I said the house couldn't look any worse I have been proved wrong!

I have taken the day off work today to so some work on the garden (of which more later) and took these pictures of the house without the floorboards. In truth the news is not bad because all of the joists are in good nick but it looks terrible. The dpc is in and all the timber treated so it really won't get any worse than this! Where have I heard that before?

The quality of the pictures is not as good as last time as I took them on my mobile phone; I didn't have the proper camera with me.

UPDATE (17:00): Very embarrassingly I have just spotted that I used to and not too in the title of this post. I can't believe I did that. I am hanging my head in shame.

Radiator sizes – the final version

After much debate and very welcome input from various people I have made a decision in conjunction with our plumber on what radiator sizes we are going to use. As we now know that the under floor will be insulated and thermal plasterboard will be put on the walls I have decided to assume that to all intents and purposes that the rooms do not have solid walls and there are not three outside walls for each room.

Here are the final calculations for those that are interested.

Room	Size (WxDxH)	BTU Required	Rad Size	Rad BTU
Bedroom2	3.65x3.05x2.3m	3494.54	800x600mm	4685
Bedroom 1	3.65x3.48x2.3m	3987.21	800x600mm	4685
Back Room	3.65x3.05x2.5m	4748.01	800x600mm	4685
Front Room	3.65x4.4x2.5m	6849.59	1200x600mm	7027

We are over specified on three radiators and slightly under on one. I think this will be fine and the slightly under specified unit will take some heat from the kitchen.

I have agreed the scope of works with the plumber today and he starts on Monday. If you want to see the pipe work diagrams he has them all on his blog here.

Building Control Report

We asked the building inspector to visit the house yesterday so we could consult with them on some of the things we were planning on doing and making sure we had their support.

It is always a good idea to do this as apparently inspectors prefer to get involved at the beginning of a project and to be asked for their opinion. It saves them having lots of arguments subsequently.

The inspector will have been able to see anything he wanted as the house is completely stripped out now and this includes all but one of the ceilings and all of the downstairs floorboards. This may seem drastic but the dpc is being installed on Thursday and all exposed timber is being treated. As there is hardly an unexposed piece of wood in the building this will be fairly comprehensive process.

Overall the visit went as expected; here are some of the main points.

1. The use of steel straps to hold the upstairs corner walls together is acceptable and there is no need to rebuild the corner itself.
2. We will be expected to put thermal plaster boards onto the wall. In the case of the downstairs this will be over the special waterproof dpc render.
3. We will need to add insulation under the floor downstairs.
4. The proposed site of the bathroom and soil pipe is ok and there is no need to provide additional strengthening to any of the flooring.
5. We need to insulate the loft to the current standard.

We had not expected to add under floor insulation but have no problem doing so. It is anticipated that this will only add about £200.00 to the cost. All of the other insulation points were not in the original plan but that was only because I didn’t think of them or didn’t know about them. We had subsequently anticipated that building control would ask to add them and there is no surprise that they did.

All in all a very successful visit.

New Windows

A big moment today as we placed the first major order for the refurbishment. The contract for the replacement windows and doors has been signed.

We obtained two quotes, one prior to completion, but have subsequently made some changes to the specification and the number of windows we wanted. Two local companies re-quoted for the work and after a short negotiation we have signed with Warmlite.

From a budget point of view their proposal is only just over our original estimate and less than the revised figure. As it includes two additional windows I am very pleased with the outcome.

They originally quoted four to six weeks for delivery and installation but after a bit of pushing they will start on 1^st December. The existing windows (which are in dreadful condition) were installed without the benefit of a lintel and the surrounding brickwork is poor so there is work to be done before they can start.

New windows make such a huge difference to how a house looks I am looking forward to seeing them installed.

On a separate note the salesman for Warmlite has been plying his trade round here for years and has approached us several times although we have never had use for his services until now. It just goes to show that selling can be all about building up a relationship without any immediate prospect of a sale but knowing that you will be first in line when the time comes.

Radiator sizes

It is getting to the stage where I need to start buying some stuff and radiators are one such item. Easy enough I thought but what size radiators do I need? Obviously I will ask our plumber to advise but I do like to understand these things myself if I can.

Radiators are measured in Watts or BTU's (British Thermal Units) and there is a ridiculously complicated system for working out what sizes you need involving the volume of the room, number of outside walls, type of wall (solid, cavity etc), double glazing (yes or no), the aspect of the house (North, South etc), what type of room it is (bedroom, lounge and so on) your inside leg measurement, mother's maiden name and the number of pets you have.

I am convinced that this system has been made sufficiently complex and made to look like a dark art to stop the rest of us from trying to understand it. What makes it worse is that every different method of calculating you use gives a completely different result!

Room volume seems to be the biggest single factor in the calculation with the number of outside walls the room has being another important number. In this respect the house suffers quite badly as every room I need to heat has three outside walls. This seems to add about 40% to the calculation.

Radcalcs gets a lot of recommendation from various websites and is easy to use without being overly simplified. The only problem with this is that in one room it is recommending a radiator with 10,523 BTU's which is a very big radiator in quite a small room.

Ultimately I shall have to go with some common sense but I'll wait and see what the building control officer says during his visit tomorrow about insulation etc before making a decision.

If anybody knows of any other sites with a calculator I would be pleased to hear about it.

Incidentally my calculations state that the bedroom require 6546 and 7469 BTU respectively and the downstairs room will need 7294 and 10523. I know that Tim (see earlier comments) pointed out the downstairs toilet will be cold. Fear not; there will be a an electric towel rail / heater to take the edge off.

The "Horrible House"

Our youngest daughter (3 next February) is not impressed with our new house and calls it the "Horrible House".

Most of the house is empty now and this collection of pictures is hopefully as bad as it will get. With a bit of luck it won't be the "Horrible House" much longer. (click the picture to enlarge it).

Another expense

I have just posted the forms off to building control along with a cheque for £235.00.

I knew they would want to be involved in inspecting the new bathroom but it appears that they are also concerned with the plastering and they will insist (where practical) that we increase the "thermal properties" of the house. There is not that much extra that can be done when the house has been built with 9 inch walls without making the rooms smaller! They may insist that we use thermal plasterboard, where practical, and whilst that will increase costs slightly it is right that they force people to consider the environment.

They will also insist on the level of insulation in the loft and so on. We would have done this properly anyway but I think it is a good thing that somebody monitors this.