Thanks GB. I'm even more disappointed that I learned about aerogel too late for our annexe renovation

Another item added to my 'things to re do' list

''mans pressure hot water''...?

haha, typo corrected! :)

Project #6 - Solar panels on the garage roof.

Our house is listed and heavily shaded in summer by very large Beech trees at the front. So while we have a south facing roof, it wouldn't be practical (or permitted) to install solar panels onto it. However, we have a double garage behind the house that is in full sun in summer, but is permanently shaded by the house in winter. As such, it wasn't completely ideal for installing solar, but we wanted to 'do our bit' and reduce the large carbon footprint of the property as much as possible.

We had huge wrangles with the council when we first submitted the plans, where they lost paperwork and delayed and delayed. Then the Tories announced a huge drop in FIT payments and so we couldn't wait any longer and went ahead with the solar installation. It was all fitted and working just in time before the FIT payments fell off a cliff (January 2016). The council took a dim view of us installing before the planning permission came through and decided to deny us planning permission (all documented as it happened in another thread on here).

After a lot of discussion and getting the LBO out to look at the panels, they requested I resubmit the plannign documents, with a heritage statement stating that I had mitigated the impact of the panels as much as possible (i.e. they were roof integrated with black panels and frames and were on a 1990s garage, not the 1750s house), etc. etc.

In the end they relented and gave us planning permission for the panels (a massive relief I can tell you as the alternative was to remove them and restore the roof). We installed 8 panels on the East facing roof and 8 panels on the west facing roof, making 4kw in all (16 x 250w). I have since read that many people think this is better than having all the panels facing South, as it means that you have sunlight on the panels for longer.

The attached picture shows you the 'before' and 'after' pictures of the garage roof. On the Western side of the garage (pictured) we used to have two old and nasty roof windows that leaked into the garage. It's nice to now have a dry garage and 'free' electricity as well. :)

A couple of months after the panels were fitted, I connected an iBoost up to the 350l heatbank we had previously installed. Even though my parents are home all day (they live in the 'granny annexe') and my wife and I often both work from home, we still have an excess of solar energy in summer. This fills the top third of the heatbank with hot water (often maxing out at 80C on really sunny days). While the garage wasn't ideal for solar (eat/west roof and completely shaded in winter), its performance has completely exceeded our expectations. So much so, that we decided to look at installing more panels.

Thanks Richard. We are also in a conservation area, which added to the pain. The council did a 'pre-planning survey' in 2015 that was supposed to save us time when we submitted the actual plans (it didn't!). The pre-planning advice was that I should request 6 panels (1.5kw) on the West roof (which can't be seen from the highway) and 4 panels (1kw) on the east side. I decided to try a gamble and fit all of them as I'd be in trouble for fitting them without permission anyway, so I might as well be 'hung for a sheep as a lamb''. It worked out in the end, but was a bit stressful at the time.

What I have found is that a lot of the planning decisions, especially around Listed Building consent, seem to be based on the individual planning officers personal taste, rather than on set guidelines. We are lucky because the planning department seem unable to retain staff and so the LBO who liked aesthetics was replaced by an LBO who liked renewables. :)

Posted By: Pile-o-StoneI checked with the DNO and if we want to install any more solar (I had an idea of a solar pergola for the other side of the garage) we would have to pay £1500 to 'strengthen the grid'.

Would going 3 phase be an option and would it be cheaper?

Project #7b - slates around woodshed solar panels

I much prefer the appearance of roof integrated solar panels like those installed on our garage roof. The panels on the woodshed were installed on simple rails to keep costs down and I’ve subsequently battened around the panels and installed recycled plastic roof tiles. The tile roof is mostly just for show as the original felt roof provides the waterproofing. However, the top tiles prevent UV damage to the felt and does shield the roof from most of the rain. While I was making the roof look prettier, I also did the same to the front of the woodshed by fitting new cladding. I’m really happy with the result and the solar panels are really doing well. I was a little concerned about their orientation (effectively straight up) but they are exceeding my expectations.

Just to add, we intend ripping out the remaining plasterboard in the living room and fitting woodfibre internal wall insulation and lime plaster, so this should allow us to use the gasfire as a feature rather than a main heating source. This won't be done for a couple of years yet but we did the fireplace ahead of time because we couldn't last another winter with that damned multifuel stove!! We were really concerned about whether the gas stove would heat the room adequately as we were dropping from a 15kw multifuel stove to a 5kw gas one. We needn't have worried as it's absolutely fine. We must have had +10kw of heat going straight up the chimney from the woodburner because the living room is warmer with the 5kw gas fire.

Here is some of the information on pollution from various types of domestic room heating. Our gas is supplied by Pure Planet and is 'carbon offset' by planting trees. However, the sooner I can fit the insulation in the living room the better!

Project #9 - Internal Wall Insulation & Ceiling Insulation in first floor bedroom

Our house is built on three levels with the lounge and one bedroom on the middle floor. The bedroom has just one external wall, which is north facing. The west wall is a party wall with next door, the South and east walls are staircase and hallway. The lounge is positioned across the hallway and the other bedrooms are above it. As the bedroom is surrounded in this way, acoustic insulation is as important as thermal insulation.

On the connecting wall with our neighbour (their living room) we installed a wood frame with 40mm of acoustic rockwool slabs. On top of this is 15mm of woodwool board and lavers of lime plaster. On the North facing wall I put a parge coat of hemp lime plaster, with 100mm of pavadentro woodfibre and then lime plaster. The remaining two walls have 15mm of woodwool board attached to the original blockwork, covered with lime plaster. The ceiling has 100mm of acoustic rockwool batts with acoustic/fireproof hoods above the downlights. The room heating is provided with a cast iron radiator and the lighting is 6x 5w warm LED downlights.

The room has been a major job to do as I had to learn how to plaster in lime (I did the parge coat and scratch coats and employed a professional to do the smooth topcoat). While the ceiling was down, I also took the opportunity to rewire the room's lighting, the sockets in the bedroom above and while the flooring was up I rewired the the utility room below. I also lagged the central heating pipes and fitted ducting for a future MHRV. There was also a lot of remedial work, re-pointing the stonework around the joists.

The room just needs the flooring to go down and it's finally finished. The flooring will be a floating 18mm tongue and groove chipboard sat on wool joist strips with a thin bamboo engineered floor glued on top. While it's taken ages (years) to do, the end result is great and its a blueprint for how we will insulate the rest of the house. The room itself is really warm (the heating is never on) and very quiet.

The photos below show both ends of the bedroom.

Posted By: djhWell done, and thanks for the update. Looks much better to my eyes.http:///newforum/extensions/Vanillacons/smilies/standard/bigsmile.gif" alt="" title="" >

Thanks for the compliment djh, we’re delighted with the result. We just hope nothing gets wrecked when we do the full renovation of the room

Posted By: djh

Posted By: Pile-o-StoneThe flooring will be a floating 18mm tongue and groove chipboard sat on wool joist strips with a thin bamboo engineered floor glued on top.

How thin is 'thin bamboo'? And how far apart are the joists? I'd worry a bit about bounciness. FWIW, I have 22 mm T&G chip with 14 mm bamboo glued on top (IIRC). It feels pretty solid except for the odd spot where the battens/joists underneath apparently aren't quite level and I can make it creak. (It all felt lovely and solid immediately after it was done.)

I can't find the actual product I was considering, but I think it was strand woven bamboo with a 10mm thickness. The joists are at 400mm centres or less

Posted By: gravelldLooks great.

Have you got any piccies of how you are treating air tightness in the IWI works?

You mentioned a lime parge coat but this was outbound of the wood fibre - is this ok wrt moisture transport because it's lime?

It's probably the connections at the floor, ceiling and neighbouring walls I'm most interested in.

The Parge coat was applied to the exposed stone wall and consisted of at least 15mm of course hemp lime plaster. I say at least because I had to dub out some parts of the uneven wall first and so in places it's 50mm thick. I covered the whole wall from the chipboard floor of the room above down to the plasterboard ceiling of the room below. This leveled the wall prior to attaching the pavadentro fibre boards and was recommended on the Pavadentro installation guide as the lime will allow moisture to pass through. We also used lime plaster on the rear of the boards to adhere them to the wall, with four plastic mechanical fixes 100mm from each corner of the board.

I only fitted IWI on the north-facing wall in the bedroom and as the joists run east/west, there are no joists set into the IWI. There are ceiling beams running north/south and so we have two beams embedded in the IWI. For these, I trimmed back the pavadentro so there was a 20mm gap all around the beams and I then filled this gap with hemp lime plaster. My aim was to make sure that a bit of heat reached the beam ends to help avoid rot (dunno if this was the right thing to do, but it made sense to me at the time).

I didn't use any tape as this wasn't mentioned in the pavadentro instructions at the time, but I believe that they include it now. However, I do wonder about using tape in future as I want a bit of heat to reach the joist ends and ceiling beam ends to make sure they don't rot. I'll research this prior to fitting IWI in the living room (next year's project), but if anyone has any suggestions/thought's I'd be interested to hear them.

I used chicken mesh in the ceiling to hold the acoustic rockwool in the ceiling, though as this is tightly fitted, the friction held it up anyway. I did read that using chicken mesh was good in case of a fire, so fitted it. I have read that people fit breather membranes under the joists, but I want to avoid installing anything flammable and anything that isn't a natural material. The house was built in 1750, so while I want it to be as energy efficient as possible, I know that it'll never be an airtight super home but I'm hoping the sheer thickness of the lime plaster provides the airtighness (10mm to 20mm versus the paper thin skim of modern plaster). :)

We have gone from an Energy Efficiency Rating of E48 to D59 and Environmental Impact Rating of E43 to E50 (Yes, it's gone up 7 points .!!!). I guess that after adding a further 1.5kw of solar and an iBoost solar water heater, we may have shaved a little more off both, it's still disappointing to see so little change after the amount of work we have put into the house.

I do find it astonishing that after replacing drafty rotten thin double glazed windows with A-rated air tight modern units (all 40 windows), replacing the ancient boiler with a modern condensing one, creating a warm roof with multifoil insulation and 125mm celotex (to replace 40mm of polystyrene boards) and installing 4 Kw of solar panels, we would see the environmental impact rating go down not up!!

It really underlines how pointless the EPC measurements are. However, undaunted, we are going to continue with the renovation.

Project #10 - Ground floor wood burning stove. We currently have a +20 year old Coalbrookdale Derby multifuel stove that we are replacing with a new DEFRA approved & EU EcoDesign compliant ACR Larchdale woodburning stove. The stove sits in an archway inglenook that you can currently stand up in. A lot of heat therefore sits in the inglenook rather than the room, so I am building a frame that will follow the inside of the archway. The frame will be covered with woodwool boards and will have rockwool insulation within and behind the frame to make sure the heat comes into the room, not into the inglenook. The final finish on the woodwool boards will be lime plaster.

While not as clean, from a particulates view, as our gas stove that we installed upstairs, the fuel is more environmentally friendly and the Ecodesign stove will be much cleaner than our old one.

Here is a pic while I'm standing inside the inglenook and then just in front of the fire. The framing is how far I have managed to get since this morning. Hopefully I'll have it completed before the guys arrive to fit the fire, chimney lining, register plate and associated bits and bobs. The back wall is sandstone with awful grey cement pointing. This will be replaced with lime putty.