Owning your own home

I do wonder what’s going to happen with conservation areas and listed buildings over the next 10-20 years

I've wondered this too; living in Scotland in a traditional tenement flat in a conservation area. I've had people knock on the door and offer internal insulation upgrades - but the layout of the flat means there's almost no space in which it could be installed - certainly not without ruining internal timber finishes and plaster cornices, which are very typical.

Roof space insulation makes sense I guess, and underfloor for the ground floor flat, but that means 50% or more of the flats in every 4-storey tenement building don't have any feasible options. Better double glazing would be an idea of course, but if that's done already then I'm not sure how much scope there is for other improvements.

looks fab! wish we had the foresight to do something similar, only used insulated plasterboard to the back of the house in the end, though suppose that's better than nowt.

Yup awaiting the same, lots of folks in nice C19th 3-6 bedroom townhouses that have managed OK the last 10+ years with gas bills, but now there is uncertainty and a bit of a wild market these folk are staring down £10k+ gas bills at this years prices and still not exactly toasty warm.

There are ways to try and save as much as possible of the original internal finishs (you can sort of cut cornice off if very careful but theres always breakages).

I would say though in my area at least there is a street where the flats are nice and heatings costs are fine (us) after doing some minor work, windows, close door, block up the cracks, tado and have an upstairs + downstairs neighbour, but then two streets over, its 5 bed 3-4 story townhouses 'worth' £650-850k, £10k+ annual gas bills. Conservation area affects all of us, which requires little to no external changes, slate roofs to be fitted and preferably wooden sliding sash.
Loads of these folks roofs are literally falling in, chimneys are actively collapsing (1 a week ago, 2 in the month before that due to total lack of any maintenance), windows that will never open again as they have rotted or collapsed into position. A lot of these folk way way overpaid for these buildings and then have nothing left to do any actual maintenance on them. Just sorting the windows, doors and obvious air gaps would likely cut their heating bill by a third, yet they either choose to do nothing, or can't afford to make the basic improvements.

There is an older couple inhabiting one of the end of street palaces, in perfect nick, yeah maybe a £mil, however they are 10 years into retirement, and haven't done basically anything to it since they bought it in late 80's, they live on the ground floor as can't afford to operate the rest of the building, yet they won't sell (its their house) on the market as they know it won't get the £mil that they think its worth, but they are amenable to someone young like us, paying a fraction of that in exchange for actually turning it into a viable family house again. A year or so ago we were talking about it with them and they were keen on doing a swap for our flat (£250/285k vs realistically £450k) when they get to that stage, and I thought it was an amazing idea. But with this years heating costs, even if I went around and foam lined the entire building I doubt we would be able to afford it at 2025> energy prices without extreme work (floors out, insulated slabs, hvac system, roof full job, chimneys removed and capped then rebuilt to keep the planners happy, strip every room back to stone and start again).
So, was a nice conversation, but actually would probably take 10 years off my life trying to do up a palace like that.

Fittingly delivered when they said they would (actually half an hour early). They have minimal packaging so there were a lot of trips (for the poor driver, I am still in Lanzarote for reasons explained elsewhere). All brought up to the first floor bedroom with no complaint (left a good tip with our lodger). Will be a while before I can put it together though.

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Electricity needs to come down in price, it should because on some days renewables are 40-50% and gas only 25% yet it’s 100% priced on the gas generation. I guess this should be in the insulation/energy thread.

In other news i have just had to go ballistic (again) with the solicitor, a conversation between buyer and seller (my partner) reveals that nobody has taken action on requests/paperwork and loads of stuff has sat unanswered for weeks while we wait to exchange despite continual chasing.
we have actively sourced updated docs/certificates in anticipation of them being requested and specifically asked if they are needed, only to get emails weeks later asking for them despite them being sent twice before??? FFS!?

we are basically doing their job for them. we are now over a year into this process and it’s taking it’s toll, i’m actually looking forward to water pissing through the flat or some refurb disaster as at least i’ll have some agency in what’s happening.

Conservation areas need to be got rid of, most of them aren't worth particular preservation. If a building or terrace really is that special architecturally and has historic merit, then list it individually. Let people insulate their homes! Pretty stupid worrying about yet another shit London sash window if it's going to be under water in 50 years time.

I live in a small listed house (village toll house) and we’ve managed to improve the heat retention and insulate as much as possible with really not much issues from planning department.

We’ve had all new double glazed sash and case windows and I installed secondary glazing which is incredible at sound reduction as well as heat retention. I replaced all the floors (which were no original) and insulated underneath and we’ve added and replaced existing skylights with heritage ones which are better performing than the 30 years velux things when we moved in.

The only thing we can’t do is solar and external insulation and internal would just make the house too tiny (it’s already tiny).

I don’t think being in a listed building is nearly as much of an issue as folk make it - but maybe we’ve been lucky.

They’ll have to allow sympathetic modifications to the externals. It’s a matter of time I think.

Spot on.

Preservation has to win out over conservation.

This is me

Where is all this moisture coming from 😩

No rain, dehumidifier on all day, heating on. Not dropped below 65

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What does the 65 represent, is it RH%? If it is, that is reasonably low. I have just looked at the RH levels for London on the met office website for the next few days and it only briefly gets to 65RH a couple of times over the next few days (so you are trying to dry out the world!).

Depends on the temperature though

heating on

My point is that the outside RH is reasonably high anyway. The inside will be higher at the same temp because of cooking, washing, breath etc. The heating will reduce the RH but I would be surprised if you could get it down to 65 (unless heating is running pretty high)

I would also add that the RH sensor is probably woefully inaccurate (could be as much as 10 percent - real percent not percentage of reading)

If you theoretically replaced all the air in your house with outside air at 5 degrees at 80%RH and heated it to 20 degrees the RH would be 35% - I think.

I did open the windows for an hour before whacking the heating on for this reason.

Another calculator suggests that at 65%RH @ 20C makes the dew point 12 degrees. So if the external wall is 12 degrees there will be condensation (?)

Whilst the sensor may be inaccurate (gonna buy a good one), the condensation mark has reappeared on the wall today.

If you theoretically replaced all the air in your house with outside air at 5 degrees at 80%RH and heated it to 20 degrees the RH would be 35% - I think.

I haven't checked the numbers but yes, that theory is correct. We have several large sealed environmental chambers at work and if you turn the humidity control off and raise the temperature you will see a drop in RH but that is a 1m3, sealed stainless steel chamber. As soon as you closed your windows, there would have been things increasing the amount of airborne water vapour.

Another calculator suggests that at 65%RH @ 20C makes the dew point 12 degrees. So if the external wall is 12 degrees there will be condensation (?)

Yes

Edit: Take all of your measurements with a very large pinch of salt.

I’d love to know what the things are increasing the airborne water vapour as I haven’t cooked today and I showered at the gym.

Said it a few pages back but maybe insulation could be part of the solution. External wall is always cold to touch (single brick) so under 12 degrees is going to be pretty common for that wall.

House being at 70%RH isn’t ever going to be ideal even with warmer walls.

I insulated external walls (internally) in my last couple of houses and it made a massive difference. The bathroom in my current house was awful but I now have a warm wall that never condensates. I lost about 100mm of floorplan but it was well worth it. Someone has done something similar in a bay window on the last couple of pages. It is something that can be done easily with basic DIY skills (plenty of guides on how to do it correctly online).

I thought the whole point of a dehumidifier was to lower the indoor humidity.
I just took a shower and the humidity already dropped way below ambient.
The reading is from an external sensor, the one on the machine itself reads lower

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If @apc had a similar logger then he would have seen a similar trend. His question was why was it still extracting so much at a setting of 65. Like I said before, these RH sensors will be shite (despite what the manufacturer may tell you)

This is in London, Victorian terrace, no insulation, cooking, showering etc all happening.

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@apc - Does your de-humifier ever turn off (change setting to highest number it will go to)? Just wondering if the sensor circuit is actually working.

I’m looking to buy a Meaco dehumidifier to help with drying out damp plaster after water ingress.

Do I get a ‘desiccant’-type, or normal?

You might not have a big choice in for Maeco , I looked a couple of weeks ago and Maeco were like gold dust and maybe now are unobtanium....I'm pondering alternative manufacturers.

There has been some info upthread on which is best / cheaper for what you want and things like ambient temps.