1980s house - project ideas

SalsaDanca

I bought a house earlier this year. At the moment the house is largely empty, as I moved from a much smaller flat and don't have much furniture. The house is in good condition, so the only thing I need to do is redecorate.

I started this thread because I was browsing MSE and saw a thread about mechanical heat recovery systems and thought "that's a good idea - I even didn't know they existed. I'd be kicking myself if I'd found out about them and wanted to install one, but had just finished redecorating the house and missed the opportunity". What other potential improvements don't I know about?

So, if you had a house that was probably going to be your forever home, and you had a one-off opportunity to make disruptive changes before you started decorating and furnishing it, what would you do?

The house is detached, and was built in the early 1980s. I'm not planning to add an extension, or make changes to the layout. Cavity wall insulation has been installed. There's a detached garage.

I've had the electrics tested, and any problems have been fixed. There are plenty of plug sockets in the places where they're needed.

The main heating is oil-fired central heating. I don't think any of the radiators need moving, and the boiler is relatively new.

The previous owner installed solar panels (a 3.9 kW system). There is an Immersun controller to divert surplus solar power to the immersion heater, and there is an air-to-air heat pump which can provide air conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter. There is also a wood burner in the living room.

The kitchen is in good condition, so shouldn't need any work for a while. The bathrooms are OK but will be updated when funds allow.

Here's the floorplan:

Doozergirl

Disruptive changes would revolve around the plumbing, electrics - and insulation.

MVHR is ideal in a situation where ventilation needs to be managed and the house is airtight, rather than a typical draughty British home. I guess you're referring to a recent thread about a cellar which has little natural airflow. It won't be particularly valuable to most people.

Really, I'd sit down with a plan about how I'd really want to use the house over the coming years and how that would evolve.

I think plug sockets with USB ports are simple but really valuable when families are overloading sockets with the number of gadgets needing plugging in.

I think less thinking goes on with the more space you have available per person.

We will build our own home this year and it will be small but perfectly formed.
I've organised the layout to detail with storage, allocated dog bed space (bane of my life walking over the things on the landing) and equal bedroom sizes for the kids. My dressing table space is planned, bathrooms laid out to fit everything perfectly, doorways positioned to maximise where everything else can be positioned.

I will plan out the position of all the sockets and create a plan for lighting that will go much further than one pendant light hanging from the centre of the room.

Have loved doing it but there's little flexibility in the plan now. It's like a tight fitting jigaw puzzle.

phil24_7

I'd hard wire cat6 (or cat7) cable to most rooms if I had an empty-ish house to work with.

FreeBear

Perhaps put a door through to the kitchen from the dining room - Having to go through the lounge to get between the two looks awkward.

Before you fill the loft with the inevitable clutter, stick some more insulation up there (go for 300mm total depth) and put some boards down on stilts.

While you are redecorating, plug all the draughts so that any MHRV system will work efficiently - In draughty old houses, they are not really worth the cost (in my opinion), so if you're contemplating spending a good chunk of money on one, get the house airtight first.

divadee

FreeBear wrote: »

Perhaps put a door through to the kitchen from the dining room - Having to go through the lounge to get between the two looks awkward.

Before you fill the loft with the inevitable clutter, stick some more insulation up there (go for 300mm total depth) and put some boards down on stilts.

While you are redecorating, plug all the draughts so that any MHRV system will work efficiently - In draughty old houses, they are not really worth the cost (in my opinion), so if you're contemplating spending a good chunk of money on one, get the house airtight first.

Looking at the plan the first thing I thought was a door to the dining room from the kitchen. It's a pain to keep walking all the way round while carrying food for a meal etc.... Maybe even make it an open plan kitchen/dining depending on your lifestyle.

SalsaDanca

Thanks for the ideas. I'd forgotten that there's a mistake in the estate agent's floorplan . The door that you've suggested adding between the kitchen and the dining room is already there.

phil24_7

I would go one further in the attic and strengthen the joists. You need to work out the span and then search on line for span tables. You then need to glue (construction) and screw wood to the top of the current joists to make them the right height. Insulate between them to the required level. If you need more insulation than the depth of the new joists will allow then counter batten to the correct height (leaving a 50mm service gap on top) and the insulate in between these. Boards can be laid directly on top of this.

I would also insulate between the top and ground floor. Lift the boards and insulate with 100mm rockwool soundboard, take time to insulate along the outer wall with some PIR board to eradicate drafts and stop cold sposts.

malc_b

Hmm, not sure how you increase the height of the ceiling joists all the way to wall plates. The slope of the roof limits the height there. In any case in a trussed roof the strength is in the shape. The load is carried by the rafters as well as the joists. All adding wood does is increase the static load. If anything you'd be better going crosswise to current joists to spread the load over multiple trusses and the would be better for insulation (rockwool is far better insulator than wood).

MHRV in an old house is tricky. You need 75mm pipework to every room and you can't put 75mm holes through solid joists. You need to come up with a plan for the cross the joist feeds (false ceiling, in loft then lots of drops down to each, etc.). Also 1980s likely means plasterboard on dabs so likely that will leak like anything. These days you would have a parge coat and the top and bottom dabs would be 100% to seal the plasterboard to the wall. Old style solid plaster is better in this respect.

I'd go with Cat6 everywhere and also 3 cables to each RJ45 socket so room to expand or re-purpose (e.g. hdmi to ethernet, etc.). I'd even say hard wire the door bell with cat6 so you could change that to a video unit.

Double glazing of course, plus insulated plasterboards on the reveals to get rid of that cold spot (maybe deeper double glazing frame to allow that.

There are 2 key things I reckon. 1. Identify what you don't like and try to fix that (condensation on windows and reveals is high on my list). 2. Apply maths to evaluate gains to work out which is worthwhile doing. There is so much tosh talked about insulation and heating. A typical example is loft insulation, the saving is always give for the no loft insulation at all situation which I doubt exists. Does anybody have a loft with zero insulation? Once you have some insulation the savings fall off rapidly. U value of a bare roof is ~2.3. Add 100mm of insulation and you are down to ~0.45, add 270mm and you are down to 0.16. Put that another way, 20C inside, 0C outside, 8m x 4m house, loss is 1472W (2.3x20x8x4) with no insulation, 288W with 100mm and 102W with 270mm. In other words the 100mm of insulation saves you nearly 1200W but adding another 170mm saves just 190W, about another 10%. Hence when they say saves £180 pa the truth of the matter is for most people the saving is 10% of that, £18 pa.

bouicca21

Maybe a door into the en suite from bedroom 2 to turn it into a jack and Jill.

And that door from kitchen to dining room would be better as a double door so you can be open plan or not as the mood (and mess) take you.

phil24_7

malc_b wrote: »

Hmm, not sure how you increase the height of the ceiling joists all the way to wall plates. The slope of the roof limits the height there. In any case in a trussed roof the strength is in the shape. The load is carried by the rafters as well as the joists. All adding wood does is increase the static load. If anything you'd be better going crosswise to current joists to spread the load over multiple trusses and the would be better for insulation (rockwool is far better insulator than wood).

This kinda depends on the roof make up. I can (and will) increase the height of my ceiling joists as I have ample room on top of the wall plates. Another option may be adding extra joists in between the current ones or a mixture of both (increasing the current high a little and then adding joist the same height in between these).

This will be fine for storage but wont be up to a loft room etc. This is more because the supporting wall in my house is an old fashioned stud wall designed to hold the ceiling up, whereas the floor below probably has cross bracing etc.

I'd go with Cat6 everywhere and also 3 cables to each RJ45 socket so room to expand or re-purpose (e.g. hdmi to ethernet, etc.). I'd even say hard wire the door bell with cat6 so you could change that to a video unit.

It makes sense to future proof the installation by putting cat7 cable in. It is backwards compatible with cat 5 and cat6 equipment but is a better cable. Yes its more outlay but not considering the price to upgrade it in the future should you need/want to.

Does anybody have a loft with zero insulation?

My mum and dad didn't have any loft insulation until last month (kindly installed by a local company on behalf of nPower). They are the only company still doing free loft insulation with no benefit criteria so worth giving them a shout if you have little to no insulation.

malc_b

Not sure what you mean by old fashioned stud wall designed to hold up the ceiling up. All old stud walls used timber and were not supporting walls. Why do you think your stud wall was designed to support the ceiling? From the age of the house I would have guessed you have a trussed roof.

You astound me that your parents didn't have loft insulation. Loft insulation has been pushed since 1980 at least (my first house), probably before that. That's going on for 40yrs so I would have assumed that everyone had some insulation by now.

Price wise (from amazon), 305m of cat 5e is £43, 305m of cat 6 £63, but cat 7 is £77 for 100m so cat7 is over 3 times the price. Cat5e is good to 1Gb, Cat 6 is 10Gb up to ~37-55m run, Cat 6a is 10Gb up to 100m run, Cat 7 is 10Gb but with more margin to spare. Wifi, 802.11n, is 450Mb in comparison and that's a single channel, all devices will share that. Unless you have a huge house there is little to be gained from cat7 over cat6, especially if you are not routing loads of cables bunched together so need the shielding to those other cables.

IMO the money is better spent on installing multiple cables at the same time since you can use ethernet cable for remote mouse/keyboard, usb, and hdmi (cat 6). I can think of a number situation where those might be useful (e.g. CCTV system where the box is hidden, sharing a decoded hdmi stream between rooms where DLNA is not possible, etc.)