would buying a house with no cavity (solid brick walls) put you off buying?

seven-day-weekend

glenderg wrote: »

No not at all i have owned & lived in one since 1969

Same here; we bought our UK house in 1976, it is too old to have cavity walls, we still have it although we live in Spain, and lived in it until 2004. Now our son lives there with two mates.

Wouldn't put me off buying another! Lots of old houses are like this.

chriserenity

vsumouse wrote: »

we are interested in buying a house but it has no cavity in the walls, therefore not being able to get insulation in the walls.would this put anyone off?, also does anyone have experence with this.i.e higher heating bills, any other problems?cheers.

Hi Vsumouse.

Ok first, does the property you are interested in buying have a HIP? If so look at the energy performance certificate. It will tell you what the energy cost of the house is by assuming 'standard occupancy'. Standard occupancy describes how the EPC assumes the property is used in order to work out the energy cost. Standard occupancy applies to all EPCs so you could say compare this property to one with cavity walls built around the same time so you can compare the two and see what the difference is.

Second, as a previous poster has suggested you can 'dry line' the outside of the property with insulation or alternatively insulate the internal wall of the property e.g. put a vapour barrier nex to the brick then attache the insulation in bats between timbers then put plasterboard over that and bobs your uncle (this is one way to do it). Of course if you did this you would lose space due to the additional wall thickness.

If the EPC is available, assuming it recommends insulating the walls it will tell you how much money you would save over the course of a year if you insulated the walls in this way again by using standard occupancy. You can use this figure to work out whether to get the work done once you've had a few quotes from local installers and investigated the possibility of grants from the various sources available (assuming you didn't fancy doing the work yourself).

From personal experience I've lived in a 1930s property with solid walls with good insulation in the roof. The house was nice and warm but only because the heating was on most of the time. As soon as the heating went off the house cooled back to resting temperature withing about 20 mins as the heat went straight through the single brick walls.

I personally wouldn't buy a house if it would be costly to bring the whole thing up to scratch both in terms of the heating system and the property's ability to retain the heat. I would look at the EPC to determine this since as a buyer it costs me nothing to view the EPC.

Aside from the heat loss implications the property I lived in, I had a problem with mould growing on the damp walls which were damp due to poor ventilation which was the root cause of the condensation. Uninsulated walls are prone to this.

Hope this helps clarify the issue. If there is no HIP available, too bad.