Good day all

In my never ending project , i’ve got to a bit of a conundrum, the building is an 1800’s 3 bay threshing barn, previously much messed with, slowly working toward converting it to a modernish home. All gone pretty well so far, I’ve now got to what will be the lounge, this incorporates 2 dwarf walls that project about 2m into the room perpendicular to the external walls on which parts of the timber frame sit. Whilst I’ve not gone overboard with the insulation on the external walls ( 60mm wood fibre) these dwarf walls need to be left as they are, but obviously represent huge thermal bridges from both the external wall and ground/foundations.
They soon discolour with condensation when it is cold outside, my plan is to have a inlet from the mvhr in the ceiling adjacent to each of them and an extract on the opposite side of the room ( which is 8m x 5m ), along with a radiator next to each of them, ( room has 4 rads, and designed to be sufficient for the room with flow rates of 50 degrees with external temps of 0) eventually there’ll be a wood stove to deal with the really cold days or the boiler will just get turned up via the weather comp on the boiler.
In my head I’m seeing a continual flow fresh air drawing any condensation that may form away from the walls , but ideally the input of generally drier external air and the heat from the radiators ( keeping the walls above dew point ) will mean humidity and temps are such that no problem has a chance to arise.

Whilst a long way from an ideal construction - planning restrictions , listed building consent and budget constraints , would this be seen as a sensible approach?

I think they're freestanding er ... dwarf walls, running into the room perp to the external wall, and inboard parts of the timber structural frame are built off the top of them - the dwarf walls are to keep the timber well above floor level. Presumably this matches the construction of the external walls?

Posted By: fostertomI think they're freestanding er ... dwarf walls, running into the room perp to the external wall, and inboard parts of the timber structural frame are built off the top of them - the dwarf walls are to keep the timber well above floor level. Presumably this matches the construction of the external walls?

Oh,ok. It's just that I've never come across the term dwarf wall other than in connection with conservatories or dormer bungalows. If I understand the current context then, I would describe them as piers rather than dwarf walls?

Sorry gents my description wasn’t the best. The building is an old (listed) 3 bay kent threshing barn. What i’ve described as dwarf walls are 4 foot high walls projecting 6 feet into the interior perpendicular to the external wall. , as Fostertom describes they support parts of the timber frame , they also form the divisions for the 3 bays.
They need to be retained as they are due to the listing. The external barn walls are a mix of brick and flint in lime mortar the “dwarf” walls are brick.
With the current cold snap, there is very obvious condensation forming on the bottom corner of one of these walls , ( the other adjoins an exterior wall that has a raised ground level outside this has’nt shown any obvious signs yet) but the room has recently been plastered and so the humidity levels are high at the moment.

Posted By: philedgeCould you put insulated and air tightish removeable covers over them that you can take off if needed?

That sounds like a good idea to me. They would need to be properly vapour tight rather than 'air tightish' though, I think. So some kind of vapour membrane and whatever is necessary to protect it from damage, plus tape or compression gaskets or whatever at all the edges.

Cheers gents

Had a quick word with the structural engineer and as far as he’s concerned it’s asking for lots of issues decoupling the dwarf wall from the external wall.
Asking the conservation officer anything illicits the knee jerk “ no” to any enquiry that is’nt fully detailed and justified , plus whatever is done changes the appearance that has already been agreed upon.
They have a mix of finishes ( bare brick, cement render , lime render.)
Removing the renders i could probably add a max of 40mm of woodfibre, without making them look too odd.

Cornerstone Insulating Render from Cornish Lime is strongly recommended by my favourite cob specialist (tho yours isn't cob), can go on at considerable thickness (25mm layers)

Jeff, you have no idea how contrary they can be. Their initial position is that nothing should be changed and preserved evermore as it is. But councils don’t have to keep records of changes previous allowed, so in my case there is a note of listed building consent being given in the 80’s, but nothing more. So there’s no idea as to what changes may or may not have been approved.
I had two roof lights that were as rotten as a pear , badly built initially and made worse by poor repairs over the years, these were built “on the rafter” so were above the roofline, i proposed to replace these with conservation rooflights fitted on the same basis, “no” they needed to be fitted flush to the roofline “in the rafter”.
The changes made in the 80’s have become pretty obvious as i’ve worked through the building. But I was allowed to add extra windows and doors and unify others that were later additions.
The iwi was a battle in itself and needed a reference to historic england guidance along with pointing out that such buildings have little future unless they can be made reasonably efficient to heat. All this for what is a very basic grade 2, which was most likely listed for no other reason than to stop it being demolished and redeveloped.

The idea of using an insulating render/plaster , might well be the way forward, that i could do and no one would really be any the wiser ( especially give these walls and the sections of frame on them were boxed in and hidden during the works in the 80’s).

The whole area of listed building legislation and the “value” of many of buildings that have a listing is well overdue review , in order to properly protect the truly important buildings and make allow the rest to be suitable for modern day living whilst retaining their character.

All this from a council that has declared a “climate emergency” and pledged to put the environment at the centre of all it does , then allowed a grade 2 to be converted with no listed building consent or planning permission ( this was applied for retrospectively 6 months after things started) into a homeless hostel that the council then contracted for 3 years to provide services to the council ( very cosy way of doing things). The boiler there is never off.

However the councils duties regarding listed buildings is a discretionary rather than statutory duty, so plenty of wiggle room for them.

Fostertom, no issue with what you say, IF the approach was the same for all , the councils treatment of it’s own listed and ones it has an interest in are certainly not given the same treatment.
I was involved in a heritage grant scheme, each participant had to engage an approved architect who was meant to oversee what went on, the things they wanted to let the contractor get away with were beyond belief and made a complete mockery of the £3500 pound specification i’d paid for and against which contractors tendered. When i insisted on the contractor doing what they’d priced to do ( rather than the bodges they wanted to) the contractor walked off after i’d paid the inflated monthly valuation the architect had agreed to, ( his argumemt was that we needed to make sure the contractor earnt enough to cover his costs, which at times were greater than the work done)
The architect was more interestedin keeping the council and contractor happy than , me, the customer. The only way the job could be finished within budget was to allow me to take the works over. At the end it was privately stated by the then CO that my building was the best finished in the scheme, but couldn’t be lauded as such as it was more convenient to publicise one of the others ( which has since had to be repainted as the prep work originally done was appalling).
I realise one swallow doesn’t make a summer, but my experiences have not been overly positive.

That's a big ragbag-expansion of grievances beyond COs being anal about granting consent. One thing at a time please!

Still, it's portrait of a system that's being starved to death, professionalism being crushed out of it. Could that be deliberate? My time in Bath in the 80s couldn't have been more different - well resourced, top rate experienced old-building lovers in the Planning Office, to confer with as peers to find creative and excellent solutions. The huge, succesful grant-aided programme to bring Bath's density of coal-smoke-acid blackened Listed Buildings back from the brink of decomposition and developer rapacity, to its enduring golden (mostly) shining state, with upgrade of 1,000s of near-slum flats along the way, was thanks to the City Council as much as anything, as well as government finance and a large highly skilled local building industry. All gone.

With bad stories like that, do we want to angrily dismantle the beauracracy completely, or would we prefer well resourced, professional, effective control? We know it was possible. Let's understand who destroyed it, and not scapegoat the front-line Officers. The answer applies to Building Regs as well. And to insulating the housing stock - the huge 70s/80s Housing Improvement programme, even the Natural Gas Conversion programme show it's eminently possible.

'Times change' - or are they changed by deliberate actors? For better or worse? There's a belief that 'we' can't choose how things should be, even when there's a recent (lost) prototype of a much better way. But somebody somewhere *is* choosing how things will be, to serve somebody, but maybe not 'us'. 'We' could stop meekly accepting the logic of imposed change, and choose to work it back to how it was, or rather to work it forward from here, but with the wisdom of hindsight and understanding of who made it get so bad and by what devious routes. 'We' could stop being so helpless (as intended), start deciding.

Well, it was politics tied to the causes of the difficulty the OP is experiencing - to get a reasonable solution approved to his insulation/condensation/mould problem. And similar frustrations in getting many things approved or supported in the building industry. Aren't we interested in tackling that relatively new problem? Back in the day, GBF was very intetested in such root causes.

If "our viewpoints on such things would [n]ever come close", that's because I see the problem as deliberately created, in the name of 'removal of red tape' (which Grenfell if nothing else has shown to be a big mistake) and so 'we' could un-create; while you see it just as "times change", before which you seem happy to remain inert or powerless, or to call for more of the same.