Hello everybody,
First post.here goes.

My Partner and i purchased an apartment in a renovated church last year and soldiered through an incredibly cold winter due to a few things which i will list below.
First, an idea of the area that is the problem. Our living room is the old entrance to the church which was an external space. What we have been left with is an exposed timber roof/ceiling (extremely aesthetic) which had no insulation at all internal or external. Underfloor heating which has now buckled the oak floor and double glazed steel windows with no thermal break.

Since the purchase we have complained and building control instructed the developer to insulate from the exterior with tri iso super 10.
The installation of the tri iso is unnoticeable. When the temp outside is 0c internally the temp is max 11c.
Further inspection reveals that there are large drafts coming into the room through the sarking boards and also through gaps left where the roof meets the end walls.

The architect and developer are ignoring our correspondance and i have no idea where to go from here. the energy required to heat this room to a comfortable 20c in the winter is ridiculous and extortionate so we really need to find a way of:

a)keeping ourselves warm this winter without destroying the planet on our own.
b)figure out why this has happened to a grade2 listed property.
c)get someone to take responsibility and remedy the situation.

I can upload some Pictures if this helps.

Thanks in advance.

ask your solicitor to confirm that he checked (during the convancing) that the building works had been signed off by building control.
I may be out of date but i think that this is still a basic check.

I am pretty certain Richy that the nod is exactly what happened and after having seen the part of the building that had no insulation building control offered the retrofit warmroof option to those concerned.
I will explore the nhbc option because they are i'm certain members of those bodies.

Thank you all.

I am surprised that our survey did not pick this up. Even more surprised that BC signed of a residential building without insulation of any type.

Another question is how can we retain the aesthetics of the rafters and sarking boards and insulate the roof?

"Another question is how can we retain the aesthetics of the rafters and sarking boards and insulate the roof?" Easy - overlay the roof with insulation and retile.

Overlaying the insulation and re roofing means bumping up the roof line 100m or so for kingspan, more for other insulation. Not always possible.

I think you can get them on more than one angle - BC have a "duty of care". Tri-iso is good stuff if installed properly with a layer of something like sheeps wool (if you can afford it.) Its a great moisture friendly insulator. Do it on the outside if you are precious about the looks - otherwise take it all down and put it all back up after. Underfloor heating wouldn't have warped the flooring if they had used a good oak engineered board and you can keep warm this winter with a decent wood burner - something like a Bullerjan is great for fast heating of old buildings with high ceilings - not the cheepest heater but one of the best.

before everyone blames building control you should first examine which issue of the building regulations were inforce at the time of the work. It maybe that there was no requirement to upgrade these elements. In the 2002 version of part L , existing thermal elements could be retained on a change of use application

It is the responsibility of the builder, designer and the owner to ensure that Building regulations are meet